Mystical Mistake
Author: Eleanor Cowan
Published in The Forum
May 2002
Dedicated to my brother, Charles Edward, (1956-2004)
“This must be a slip”, I thought. I’d gone too far, traveled to the edge of my boundary line and then crossed over it. Actually, I drove over it in a van. With twisted reasoning that made some kind of sense at the time, I decided to do something that felt very uncomfortable.My 22 year old daughter was leaving home in Montreal to work for the summer in Kingston, Ontario. She asked me to drive her and her belongings to Kingston over the weekend. This was just fine with me and off we tooled on a sunny Saturday morning.We discovered that the place she thought would be home was a dump. We stopped for coffee, bought a paper, made some calls, drove around but had no luck finding her different lodgings. When I was ready to call it a day and drive back to Montreal, my daughter made an impassioned plea. Since her bed and belongings were in the van and since we were halfway there already, she wanted to know if I would please drive her to Toronto – another 300 miles or so. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and I was tired. I’d already had a busy, demanding week. I needed to rest. I wanted my daughter to come home and use our internet services before we set out again.
What was it? The look in her eyes? The passion in her voice? “Please, Mom, please? I really need you to come through for me today.” Was it all of this? I wanted to say, “No, this is nuts. I need to rest before work on Monday, and that’s final.” Instead, I melted. “All right,” I said, “let’s go.”
She sang gaily beside me, the sun sparkling in her eyes. I smiled too, but I began to wonder about myself. Despite my discomfort and confusion, I sensed that somehow I was doing the right thing for my daughter. We visited a dozen places on Sunday morning, all to no avail. I paid a sky-high hotel bill, felt anxious in a city where I’d grown up in an alcoholic family, and was getting more and more uncomfortable being in a place crowded with difficult memories. Suddenly, it occurred to me to call my brother, Charles. We hadn’t seen each other for quite a few years. Although we spoke on the phone from time to time, I didn’t feel comfortable seeing him without giving lots of advance notice. Charles was a daily drinker and there had been some problems between us in the past. A few years ago, after some personal reflection, I decided to clear the clouds between us and we began chatting again. We never spoke of the past. We seemed to start again on a new path that felt fine for both of us. He sent me e-mail jokes and we had more than a few loving exchanges. So, on that Sunday, anxious and stressed, I surprised him with my call from a phone booth at a grocery store. He instantly invited us to his place. Driving to his home, I thought it strange and incomprehensible that I was back in a city that was connected to so much suffering in my youth. Here I was, on my way to a completely unplanned visit to someone in my family who still suffered from active alcoholism – even after all we’d been through as children. I wondered what was going on. My brother welcomed us. We hugged, and he said some nice things about an older sister who had encouraged him a great deal. He spoke proudly about his daughter and his son. He shared how happy he was with his new renovation business. He enthusiastically announced that my daughter could stay at his place till she found a job.
He said he’d gladly clear out his tool room for her, that she could use his computer, internet service, fax machine and phone. He said he would even drive her to interviews and do anything to help her out.It was wonderfully touching. I clearly experienced my brother’s generous spirit. There was only one problem. He was drinking. My daughter quietly let me know that she could not stay for that reason. After making gentle excuses about changing our minds, we drove back to Montreal. Late Sunday night, I arrived home upset about a wasted weekend, my exhaustion and my boundary slip that cost me about $600.The next day I returned the van, took a day off work and focused, with the help of some dear friends, on dealing with my profound anxiety. I felt I had betrayed my own boundaries by saying yes to my daughter when I really meant no.
Over the following weeks, I learned some compassion for myself, more about not being perfect, ever, and about doing the best I could in pinch-hit situations. I grew less rigid, less recriminating about how well or not I was doing. All of that was in May. Four months later, I decided to go to a local meditation center to listen to a lecture. At the last minute I felt somewhat hesitant about going, but I received some real encouragement from a friend. Upon arrival, I discovered I’d misread the brochure and I was, in fact, two weeks early. On my way out of the center my eyes fell upon a small book by a familiar author about what death meant to him. I bought the book with the money I would have spent on the lecture. When I arrived home I received a call from my sister telling me that on that same day, October 4th, our brother, Charles died suddenly of massive liver and kidney failure. My daughter lit beautiful candles in our living room and kindly sat with me as I cried and read the vastly reassuring, comforting and inspiring little book that I had bought just minutes before I would need it so
much. Recently, a friend of mine referred to my boundary slip as a “Divine slip” and so it was. If I had not said yes to my daughter in May, I would not have had the opportunity to see my brother for the last time. I would not have been able to comfort my sister at his funeral by relaying the wonderful things he’d said about her, nor would I have been able to reassure his children of how proud their father was of them.
The Wisdom of Life continues to write straight with crooked lines. I am so grateful, more than words can ever convey, for the gifts of mistake.