This is our Inukshuk
Inukshuk is the name of the stone cairns the people build in the Arctic to show they have been there.
This is our Inukshuk to show that we have been here — together.
After Bob died, he jumped out at me from the strangest places.
No matter how diligent he felt he was in protecting me by clearing out remnants of his life from our house before he died, every where I turned, there he was.
The worn spot in the sofa where he liked to sit, the herbal teas only he drank neatly piled in the top shelf where only he could reach, his wallet brimming with his identity: his driver’s license, credit cards, old receipts, lottery tickets and a ten year old note from me telling him how much I loved him always.
One small piece of paper made me fearful to reach on to a bookshelf and pick a book to read for a long time after Bob died. In those first few months, it didn’t seem to matter whether it was a hard cover or paper back, I kept seeing another yellowed lottery ticket fluttering to the floor no matter which book I chose. The period of crazy-making after he died.
The lottery ticket had wafted to the floor before I had time to think when I opened that book. The bend from the waist quickly turned to a slow drop to my knees to pick up that ticket. It had landed squarely on the carpet from a falling arc that seemed to be in slow motion as I watched it fall.
Bob’s looping handwriting was on the lottery ticket reminding me to get cream for the coffee.
A yellowed lottery ticket with the numbers probably never checked. A prize never collected. Books I never opened for years fearing another message on another piece of paper.
The notes of suprise I came to expect. What annoyed me was a sudden need to hide those things most Bob-ish. He cringed at surfaces cluttered with chachkas. He surprised me one Christmas with one.
It was a simple little sculpture, not technically a chachka I told Bob loudly as I admired it in a store on West Fourth months before Christmas. It was one of those pieces I picked up but placed right back on the shelf.
I had learned early on about “all the truth according to Bob.” The rule of the chachka stamped forever on me at our first garage sale. All of my collected chachka treasures were piled in a heap, marked and sold as fast as Bob could almost give them away. The grey cast cement candleholder? Sold for fifty cents. The yellow enamel fondue pot? Sold for two dollars. The salt and pepper shaker hamburgers? In the “please take me home” box. All gone that day. The end of the day tally just enough to buy a dozen beer.
Bob’s surprise Christmas present chachka? It is nine rough pieces of aqua glass stuck together to form the outline of a man – an Inuit Inukshuk. When I felt compelled to put it away, I scotch-taped Bob’s handwritten card tightly to its base. So much tape so that the note and the Inukshuk melded together for st0rage.
Bob had written on one of those stark white cards in his looping handwriting:
of the stone cairns the
people build in the Arctic
to show they have been there.
This is our Inukshuk to show
that we have been here — together.”
If the notes were Bob’s whispers from the past, the journals I found in the back of the closet were shouts forcing me to hold my hands to my ears.
One journal detailed his six months of travels in Europe when he was only eighteen. Notes on sights and people with an underlying desire never quite articulated.
His Death Valley journal that transformed the way he looked at the world. A journal that brought him to realize insights into his relationship with his family.
His 1980 journal - the year of the rest of our lives together. The journal I had never seen until I found it in the back of the closet in a box under a pile of papers and bills – Bob’s organized disorganization.
I held that first-year journal closely as if I had just found some pharaoh’s treasure. I wanted to skim the pages, to read all he had to say in one huge gulp.
When I opened it and began to read, Bob’s voice was in each word. I read it from cover to cover for hours memorizing every word, analyzing every sentence, hearing all the nuances of his voice in each handwritten word.
It is almost a day by day account of beginning to build a life together over a 15-year arc that rushed by too quickly. Bob wrote of his accomplishments, his doubts, my moods, our lack of communication, our similarities, our passion, our fears, our distance.
One repeated entry was of trying to understand the connection we had. A bond at some elemental level we both marvelled at but agreed we would never unravel the why of that bond.
Every entry created a vivid memory for me. I longed to have Bob sprawled on the couch reading his journal to me right at that moment.
I re-read those entries that warmed me with their simplicity. Of the everyday life we shared and which he held so dear he made detailed notes. Bits of phrases remembering a note on his pillow before he went away. Of a telephone call made unexpectedly. Of a poem I wrote for his birthday. Of flowers waiting beside the bed when he came home for a weekend.
Some of the entries confused me because I didn’t remember the intensity of which Bob wrote. That first year, Bob worked out of town. He liked the work. He hated being away from Vancouver and me.
We had just starting seeing each other seriously. After a particularly heady weekend, I remember that hurried Monday morning I drove Bob to catch the Nanaimo ferry. Instead of catching the evening ferry on Sunday, he had decided to stay and leave in the morning.
He wrote this journal entry that evening after arriving late to work in Nanaimo:
“I heard the waves crashing on the shore tonight and thought of you — I thought how much I’d like you to be here so I could see your face, touch your arm and sit with you, our backs against a log, listening to those waves and dreaming.
Dreaming of being with you in many different places. I often think of you and me together — in funny little towns, at glamorous resorts, on sunny, sunny beaches. But mostly, just together. And it excites me when I have those thoughts.
I think we’d better be clear about what we want because I have a feeling we are going to get exactly what we want. I think that’s why I’m a little nervous today. Nervous about us — hoping I’m not putting too much pressure on you. I don’t feel that when we’re together but often a few days away I start to wonder if you are sure you want to get to know me. I don’t want to put the brakes on things because I’m a little nervous.
Just relax — I must remember that advice. You and I can be extremely good friends and more too. There is no limit to what we can be to/with each other. I don’t thing I’m nervous - I’m excited! There is so little difference between the two.
I told you last Saturday that I’m falling in love with you - no I think I told you that I had already fallen. And I’m falling more every day - with you. And with me. And with us.”
I searched the house for more journals but didn’t find any. I didn’t want to have just one journal. I wanted to find a dozen journals, each one in Bob’s voice telling me about other times in our life.
That lone journal ends with an entry soon after his birthday in August. I had sent him a ticket to fly home from Prince George for the September long weekend.
“Your call made me giddy with delight. Your plans even giddier (more giddy?). I love to fly! And to be flying home to you! It’s absolutely wonderful. However can one man be so lucky? It’s easy!
And I love you! I thought of you a lot today. Warm, rambling thoughts of togetherness. And of my birthday poem - honoured is how I feel about that. Honoured and so very special. What an exciting feeling. I am not only in lust with you but love and like and all the rest.”
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