Life Is Like...

Dear Diary:

As we mature, we each find ourselves at those proverbial forks in the road, where the choices we make, the paths we follow, and our conduct along the way ultimately lead to whom we become. It can seem an onerous burden, so it’s some consolation that these decisions don’t have to be made all at once.

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In the same way, a vineyard doesn’t just “become” all by itself. This can be argued, but a true vineyard isn’t simply a collection of random vines left to their own devices. A vineyard takes planning, constant attention to its growth and its pruning, protection from disease and pests, and careful selection of its best fruit. It’s a deliberate thing, complete from the decision to start one, to the myriad choices that follow and lead to the wine in our glass. Our lives are kind of like that. 

Just over a year ago, in a tribute to my mother in-law celebrating her 80th birthday at her and dad’s favorite place, Bellissimo Restaurant, I wrote how remarkably lucky I had been to be their son-in-law, to have had such a close relationship with them. And, as appropriate for a food and wine blog, I recounted having taken them to new places in food and wine back in our Vancouver days, but certainly also here in Winnipeg after Em and I moved back to stay. Of course, I also wrote about the terrific white wine we enjoyed that celebratory evening, mom turning 80 yet still savoring life. It was a fitting salute to life and to love and to all the things that drove them both forward.

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But here is the hard part, the hardest, for to say this here is to admit this for always. On January 2 of this brand new year, the light that was this exquisitely talented, smart, funny, lovely and elegant woman in our lives flickered one last time and went out. She had left us, and we fell into an abyss that was this loss of ours, until we gathered together to say goodbye, to light a candle in the darkness of our grief. It is yet a long grey road ahead, but time is moving us forward and gives us moment by moment these chances to reflect. What we now find of Donna, of mom, of our dearly departed friend we hold tenderly within each of us.

 

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I wanted to use this blog to help give some structure to the swirl of my emotions, to find some measure of comfort in the context of this finality, this sudden deep hole in our lives. And this is what began to sprout in the quiet moments I could afford to confront my loss.

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I thought about Forrest Gump saying, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.” How true! It’s a great line and has such nuance, all wrapped in unabashed truth. Simple, even elegant. But life, I began to see, is to me much more like a vineyard. It’s not a chocolate-covered surprise, something either good or bad that awaits us (I said the word “chocolate”, I know. Stay with me now!). There’s much more to life than that, isn’t there?

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When I think of Donna, of mom in this way, I see a vineyard – a life filled with deliberateness, turning her face to the sun when appropriate, allowing for the changes in the direction she grew. Hers was mature, distinguished, with vines grounded and anchored by deep roots, having gone through everything the weather of life could shower upon her. Still, because of or in spite of it all, she grew such glorious vines that bore supreme fruit, and made the wine that delighted those who knew her and loved her.

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Now that those old vines have done what they were meant to do so very well, she has sadly but ultimately receded from us back from whence she came. Gone now, but alive in all she has left behind, a vineyard of new vintage, new and varied fruit that will continue to flourish because of her. Farewell dear and lovely Donna, yours is the essence we toast with every glass. Miss you now, miss you always. Much love. Cheers and l’chaim.

 

 

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