On Losing One's Parents

My parents are both dead. The fact is neither remarkable nor unique. However, they died within 45 days of one another last winteruncommon enough to bring me and my family up hard against reality. On the northern tip of Vancouver Island I woke in the dark the morning after the second funeral, my body on Eastern time, my spirit numb. I made my way back to the village cemetery to say my own private farewell. Douglas firs were silhouetted against the first light of dawn. Colorful funeral flowers had frozen into whited everlastings. I wept into the hoar frost on the new sod and wondered what had become of these lives that had created me. I could not have guessed at the many ways that an answer was to come during the next year.

The first hint came from my children. They could feel my …