somehow the smell of death does not feel wrong or bad but it is a bit disconcerting when you smell it on a friend and know that their ticket is up soon.  and i knew that when i was 15 and smelt it on wendy as i was following her down the basement stairs.  the space was a bit confined.  poor girl, her body so messed up from all the treatment and the cancer cells winning the battle over her good cells.

i had grown up on a farm so i dealt with the death of animals and pets.  there were times when there were dead animals in the barnyard, sometimes frozen in the snow.  other times in the summer i wud see maggots eating at the dead flesh as it decayed in the sun and heat.

maggots have always creeped me out i must say.  i cant believe people wud eat them on ‘fear factor’.  a show that creeped me out but i wud often find myself watching.  go figure.

now daya, the healer, says she can smell cancer.  she says it is not a nice smell and she screwed up her face as she told me.  she said she went right into mine, like my cancer cells,  to see what it was doing to my body.

i believe cancer comes to people for a reason.  for a number of reasons.  it can be a lifestyle thing, as in eating the wrong foods, doing the wrong things, having too much stress in your life, from traumas, or harbouring bad emotions.  in can be an inherited thing passed down from generation to generation.  but i definitely think it comes for a reason.  to teach us something or to teach others around us something.

with some people it enriches their lives because they find out what is most important to them.  when mom was dying she just wanted her close friends and family around.  she did not want to go on a vacation and see some part of the world she hadnt seen.  she wanted to be at home and surrounded by love and beauty.  she really liked gardens, my last beautiful time with her was going to her friend’s garden.  she was using a wheel chair a bit by this time.

the garden was so beautiful and the women whose place it was collected antiques like my mother.  she showed me her cute little antique shop and gave me a little ceramic humpty dumpty that still makes me smile when i accidentally find it in the little box she gave me.  it is just about an inch high.  and she showed me her cool hansel and gretel wood house which was filled with magical things.  i wud love to write a fairy tale from her digs.

mom loved to take pictures of flowers but this time she could not get out and walk around so she asked me to do it.  i felt it was a bit of an honor.  she wud point to the flowers she wanted me to take pix of and i wud.  after she went thru them, as tho editing, and said ‘that one is good’.  which makes me smile.  i used to be a photographer and have a good eye, but so does she.

it was a great memory and i am so glad i have it.  i almost missed it cuz i took off in my van and ended up in a monastery up from nelson and called her from there and she said she was off to the garden that day and i was so bummed by that.  but luckily my brother took her to the casinos instead which was actually a disaster for my mother who felt embarrassed becuz people were staring at her when she came in with her oxygen tank looking like a gambling addict.  but she used to love that too so the bro was just trying to accommodate her happiness.  but becuz they went to that, i got to have my time with her the next day in the garden and i was so glad about that.  we all knew that was her last outing – as in me dad and her.  i needed that time.