moving out

Once more at the island airport, waiting to go to Ottawa, 10 a.m. on a cold, sunny Friday morning. This is my last trip to my mother's condo; I'll pack up my pile of stuff, do the last few divisions with my brother, and set things up for the movers who are coming on Tuesday. My brother has already moved his stuff out, so the place will be half empty. This will be my last farewell, not to her, but to her physical reality.

I helped her move in about 1994, from the five-bedroom house in Edmonton where she'd entertained for my father and where he died, to this three-bedroom condo on the western outskirts of Ottawa, in the building adjoining the one where her sister lived. She agonized for months about buying it, didn't want to live out there, wanted to live downtown - and for a long time after she moved in, she still complained about the mistake she'd made. Just like, during her marriage to my father in 1949, she wept throughout because she was so sure she was making a mistake.

It was a wonderful place for her, with its huge community garden below and its vista of the Ottawa River.

My God, they're calling my flight! So efficient. Okay, the end to this musing. I am coming, Mum, to say goodbye.