"Beware the Ides of March"

I think the time has come to revisit the Ides of March in my days of yore. I have just celebrated my 70th Birthday with a big party and an exhibition that Maya named Equinox. It is a powerful testimonial to life - a wonderful way for me to mark the Ides of March. I was not always able to do so. I used to hide away and celebrate my birthday in isolation and before I got sober, 35 years ago, I spent March 15 drunk. I just wanted it to go away.

My mother died at age 50, on March 15, my 22nd Birthday. Instead of going out to dinner with her, I went to identify her in the morgue. She was driving into Montreal from the family home in Pointe Claire to meet me and Alfie for a birthday dinner. Apparently she suffered a heart attack on the road, and being the excellent driver she was, she signaled, pulled onto the shoulder, stopped and slumped over the wheel. A driver behind her saw this and pulled off to check on her. She was dead.

Meanwhile, I was dressing and getting ready for her arrival at our apartment. Alfie and I were still in the early stages of being married. Mom was coming in to dine and spend the night. We had begun to really get along at last after many years of friction and I was enjoying her finally.

It was getting late and my Mom didn't arrive, nor did Alfie. I was all dressed up and getting agitated. It was not like my mother to be late, and what was Alfie's excuse? He worked at the university two blocks away. It was a short walk home.

That evening it was a very long walk for Alfie around and around the block. The police had called him at work and it fell to him to come home to tell me that my mother was dead. He couldn't face it. I had just begun to recover from my father's sudden death 22 months earlier.

Eventually, he had to come home and he had to tell me. The entire building could hear my anguished screams. I couldn't take it in, it was too unthinkable. Later, when I was making the identification, it sunk in. My mother was gone. I was alone. I had no parents left, no siblings and no history. Nobody was left to remember when I was small, what my first words were, how I hugged my cat, or that I loved donkey rides. I was well and truly an orphan on my 22 Birthday.

We think of an orphan as a child left alone to face the world without parents to protect it, but everyone is somebody's child and faces the loss of parents with difficulty. At the time of that loss, everyone is an orphan. There was an added dimension to all this because after my mother's death, I was also completely abandoned by my mother's family, her brothers and their families. Following the Wake the Ottawa relatives sighed with relief in the knowledge that I was married. They said things like "it's so lucky that your married" or "your husband will take care of you now". Which, when translated into reality-speak meant "thank God you're not our problem". They left with the standard, "if there's anything we can do, call us" and I never heard from them again till 20 years later when one intrepid cousin set out to find me. My mother's older brother Watson came to Montreal weekly to teach at McGill University and never once called to see if his 22 year old niece was ok. The saddest part of this sorry tale, is that I never saw anything wrong with this treatment, so convinced was I that I had no value in their eyes.

So there it is. My Ides of March was something grim for a long, long time. How can a daughter celebrate her birthday when it was the anniversary date of her mother's death? Both parents gone and worthless me still alive. The survivor guilt was huge. "Beware the Ides of March" really applied to me.

What took me from that dark place to a public celebration of my 70th Birthday? In a word, Maya. When she was born, I became her mother and stopped being my Mom's daughter. The pendulum had swung from pessimism to optimism. I was no longer looking back. A child forces one to look forward. How could I hang on to my guilt and still light the way for my daughter? I had sobered up before I became pregnant and had begun to see life as a gift. My parents hadn't raised me to cower in shadows. They were fighters who believed in making a difference and with Maya's arrival, I realized I too had a chance to do my best.

My parents died young (50 and 52) and I believed I would too. Once I outlived them,I began to realize that maybe I had better make other plans for my life, do some good for people, help my corner of the world, and respect my abilities and talents. Who knows how long I have left and what my health will be? But I'll take what comes one day at a time.