I remember where I was the first time I felt my sons kick in the womb. I distinctly remember the moment my daughter took her first step. I remember what I was thinking the first time I noticed E, standing at the UBC Old Boys club house, beer in his hand, laughing.. Some moments survive in our memory, travelling with us through time, their importance forever with us.

It’s 8pm and I am sitting with seven of the women on the island. Friends. Once a week the women on the island who live here full-time get together to work on their annual creation to be raffled off at the AGM.  Alternating, one year a quilt, one year a knitted afghan, these projects are works of art. Nothing you could buy in a store.

These women are talented. I am not. They let me sit with them and pretend that I am one of them. I sit here writing in my journal, preoccupied with my thoughts as I am taken back to March 21st 2000.

At 9PM on  March 21, 2000 we received a phone call from BC Transplant telling us that we needed to get to the hospital because there was a new heart available for E. Driving down to the hospital, two girlfriends came with us. We were fully aware another family somewhere was getting a very different phone call. E’s bravery to walk into that hospital knowing the surgery ahead of him was beyond comprehension.

As he lay in bed that night waiting for the heart to arrive he was cracking jokes “You realize they are cutting out my second favorite organ tonight? “.. “If it doesn’t go well can you have the service at Splashdown.. take me for a ride down the slides in your bikinis”. To be honest, I remember little about that week. Days and days at the hospital with no sleep as we saw him through the operation and home to safety. It’s a blur.

But I remember the phone ringing and I remember where I was standing when it rang.  It’s hard not to travel with that memory at the back of my mind.

E is at home tonight working on the music for an upcoming Mexican party on the island. He spent the day today covered in mud working on the water system (this time it’s really fixed!!!)  I am sitting with my friends talking about wool, and wool spinning, drinking  and eating chocolate.

We will have a nice dinner tonight and open my last good bottle of red. But I believe it safe to say we remember the second we got the call, but we have taken that moment and happily moved on

with our lives