The idea that I needed to find another job, and to make a break from practising law in private practice in a small firm has been growing for a while – perhaps for well over a decade. The job market in Winnipeg was not great for an experienced, mature lawyer, and Iast spring and summer I started to apply for government jobs in other provinces.
I applied for a job with the British Columbia Attorney General’s Department, in the Legal Services Branch, in August 2005. I was interviewed in October. I was advised by telephone, just before Christmas, that I have the job. The written appointment came in the first week of the New Year.
I was treated well and I was impressed by the hiring process. I knew about my destination after a few visits over the years, and I liked what I saw on this visit. It was a simple decision, although the process of moving is going to be a struggle. I accepted the job. I have told my family and friends, I have listed my house for sale, and I am preparing to move to Victoria, British Columbia.
Category: Luctor et Emergo
Opening the Windows
One of the stories Fr. Britz mentioned during the 2005 St. Ignatius Parish Mission – the story about John XXIII and wine and company at meals – resonated with me. Fr. Britz said he was a young seminarian at the time.
Odd Man Out
My illness and surgery came at a time when Jan and her family had already decided that I had a problem.
Reuben
Reuben Warner was my roommate in the St. Boniface Hospital during my first hospital stay in January 2001. He had arrived a day and half before me. He had been blocked for a few weeks, he was bloated, he was diagnosed with a circumferential tumour high on his descending colon. If memory serves, he had his colostomy earlier than I did. I don’t think his surgeon resected his tumour when she did his colostomy, but I believe he had his major surgery much sooner than I did. He had some complications and was still in the hospital when I came back in February 2001.
Surviving
This is the second entry on the period in early 2001 when I had surgery for a bowel obstruction. I spent a few weeks at home after my colostomy. Before I went home, the teaching nurses from the Enterostomal Therapy Program made sure I knew how to empty and rinse the bag, and to how to manage the the process of changing the bag which was removing the adhesive seal, rinsing the stoma, measuring and cutting a new seal and applying a new bag and seal. I still have the prescription form for an Activelife Drainable pouch #28209. The seals are very good but taking one off a hairy belly is a delicate adventure. Sometimes the seals would peel away from skin cleanly but they tended to find any hair and take hair out by the roots – and hair kept growing in under the seal. I got some scissors to clip the hairs, if I could get at them, instead of ripping them out. It was also important to try to pick a quiet time for the procedure to avoid making a mess.
Surgery
This is autobiographical, referring to my life in the time starting a couple of weeks before Christmas 2000, until April or May 2001. I had three operations. For 7 or 8 weeks in January and February 2001, I believed that I had cancer.
Sleeping with Aliens – More
I spent a long time reading, summarizing and reviewing Sleeping with Aliens. I posted a review on the Blogcritics site, and a long commentary on this site. It isn’t kind to the New Age.
A Critical Year
My wife first asked me for a divorce on April 29, 2003. She changed her mind and stayed for a near year before she told me, in March 2004, that she had decided to leave. Through that year, I faced the question of what was wrong with me, to make my wife, Jan, want to leave. While more delicate writers might speak of our discomfort with one another, she explicitly said there was something wrong with me.
I knew that I had become uncomfortable with her family and I had started to realize that she was needy, but I loved her. When I found out what she thought of me, I realized that I had to get away from her and get on with my life.
Changing Views of Religion
My parents were immigrants to Canada from rural Zeeland, the province of Holland nearest the Belgian border. They were Catholics and saw to it, with some personal sacrifice, that my siblings and I attended a Catholic parochial school. I remember getting up to go to Mass and serving Mass in Latin, before the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. We had to take breakfast to the Church and eat our breakfast before school – which was in the basement of the Church. In those days a fast of at least three hours before Communion was observed. I went on to a Jesuit High School. As a child and teenager, I accepted being Catholic as part of my identity.
Remembering Sister Jane
Sister Jane’s drop-in Center, Chez Nous, operated in an old bank building at the corner of Main Street and Higgins Avenue. When Jane was sick, the Center was frequently closed. When Jane died, her friends and supporters on the Board of directors of the non-profit corporation were left with a decision to sell the building, or to try to carry on Sister Jane’s work.
They have carried on. Jane’s therapist and friend Vicki Frankel helped the Board to reorganize itself. The Board members trained themselves to work in the drop-in Center, and they found and trained more volunteers. They raised money, and they kept the doors open. The Archdiocese of Winnipeg has been recognizing their work, and Sister Jane’s work in taking collections and publicizing the work of Chez Nous in its internal newsletter in May 2004.
On Sunday May 16, 2004, Chez Nous held an open house to unveil a plaque in memory of Sister Jane. I arrived late and missed the unveiling. The Archbishop of Winnipeg was there, which meant a lot to Jane’s Catholic friends who saw it as supportive of Jane and her calling to work with the poor. I spoke with some of Jane’s friends about how they were handling work with addicts and street people, and how they managed their safety and emotional boundaries with needy and sometimes dangerous people. I looked at the comfortable old furniture, the posters, the pictures of visitors and volunteers. Again, I was moved to realize that while Chez Nous offers little in the way of financial support, it tries to provide a safe respite from the street, with respect and love. I realized again that Sister Jane, from her own pain and confusion, had been true to her calling and true to the Gospel message of loving the poor.
I wasn’t able to stay long because I found myself breaking down into tears. I don’t think it was honest grief for Sister Jane, although I believe that her life and death were painful and sad. It was a more personal grief, of a self-pitying kind.
Jane’s case also marked some turning points in my life. When I met Jane in late 2001 I was a few months past a series of surgical procedures and a diagnosis – incorrect as it happened – of colo-rectal cancer. I had started to go to Church again, after years of skepticism and anger at the Church. I was rejoicing in not having cancer, and in having had an explanation and an end to years of GI tract problems. However, my son was growing away from the family, and my wife was becoming desperately sad about n. and angrily disappointed that I was more skeptical than ever about her favoured spirituality – the New Age. As I worked on Jane’s case, I read about questionable Alternative therapies and human growth movements. Some books and articles directly indicted my wife’s parents, friends and counsellors. For instance Singer and Lalich’s book “Crazy Therapies” had a chapter on Neuro-Linguistic Therapy which was one of my mother-in-law’s strong interests. My wife and her parents did not like my research into cults and quack therapies. My wife became convinced that my negative and skeptical attitude to life was the main cause for our son’s estrangement and rebellion and our daughter’s emotional problems during her childhood and mid-teen years. Eventually she said that I was hurting her by criticizing the New Age, and demanded a divorce.
Visiting Chez Nous this past Sunday brought that sharply and painfully into focus. I don’t blame my decision to take Jane’s case for the changes in my own life. I think working with and for Jane has helped me, then and now, to understand what I believe in, and to accept that life comes with pain and loss.