Remembering the dead: The real-life story of Edna and Anne

Edna loved hearing about our garden; she was particularly fond of red geraniums. 

Six years ago Covid was making its presence known in our lives. This time last year, it was all I could think about, so I wrote about it. But at this time this year, I don’t feel the need to mark its wretched anniversary. Instead, I want to remember my late mother’s good friend Edna, who died in February.

I’ve been thinking about how we mark the death of special people in our lives — when it happens, of course, but then year after year we continue to do so. How do we do it? For how long do we do it? Does it matter?

It will be two years in April since Mum died. It was eleven years in January since Dad died. Remembering is an act of love, isn’t it, so of course there is no one right answer to the why or the how or the how long. Remembering in our own way, whether every day or occasionally or only ever on the anniversary itself, is both the grief and the gift of the love we have experienced in our life. So, today, I remember Edna Abel — friend to my mother, and then friend to me, also. Of course, by remembering Edna, I cannot help but remember my mother, too. 

Back in the fall of 2018, my mother’s 90th birthday was approaching, so an enthusiastic friend of mine recommended that I arrange for various high-profile public figures to send their congratulations to her on this life milestone.

A novel idea, thought I. Something my mother would not be expecting, a good way to give her a surprise on the BIG DAY, so I got on it, emailing the Prime Minister’s office, the Alberta Premier’s office, and the Governor General’s office. The Queen reserved her congratulations for those marking their 100th birthday; that request would have to wait…

But before hitting SEND, I had to figure out how to keep the arriving certificates of congratulations secret, so that Mum would receive them all in one big glorious delivery on THE day itself. I wanted the impact of the momentous surprise to land with its full weight.

Mum’s good friend, Edna, was the obvious co-conspirator. If Edna, who lived one floor down in their seniors residence, was willing to receive the mail on Mum’s behalf and then deliver it on her birthday, the plan would work.

Without hesitation, Edna agreed to my plan. I did not tell her what specifically would be arriving, just that it would be mail needing personal delivery on November 4th. These arrangements made, I hit send on my emails and thought nothing more of it. I became busy making a special birthday card for Mum and inveigling my friends to send their own — many of them had met my mother over the years or knew of her through my writings and photos of her on Facebook. Instructions to them were simpler: send a card to arrive on or around November 4.

And send them they did. Mum was, at first, mystified, then, I think, delighted to receive such a variety of birthday wishes and acknowledgements of her — and of her raising of me. She wasn’t much for sentimentality, but I found every one of those cards in her desk drawer when I was clearing out her suite after she died. A testament, I believe, to their meaning for her.

Back to November 4, 2018. 

Edna delivers the large envelopes to Mum’s apartment. Mum is surprised. What on earth could they be? She opens them and is…surprised, perplexed, bemused and, finally, a little bit outraged. A sentiment that builds over the day until at supper she and Edna are talking about the certificates that had arrived, unbidden and not really wanted. They shared shared their individual and then combined outrage that all these important public leaders should be wasting their time and our public resources on sending pieces of paper with their congratulations on Mum's natural aging…Not quite the response I was looking for.

Because I had told neither Edna nor Mum what was coming, they didn’t know it was I who had made the arrangements. In their genuine ignorance, they thought the Governor General, the Prime Minister, and the Premier knew entirely too much about Mum’s life milestones and were inserting themselves into what should have been a purely personal day of celebration. When I spoke with Mum later that evening and confessed I was the instigator, she didn’t really know what to say to me about it. Certainly, those formal certificates were far less interesting to her than the personal wishes in the cards she had received from ‘real’ people!

I maybe should have guessed this would be my ever-practical and very private mother’s response; oh well. But I’m glad to have provided her and Edna with what was surely a topic of lively conversation at dinner that evening, for dinner was often the highlight of their days: to meet up in the dining room, to contemplate the menu, to choose the least-awful-sounding meal, and to then critique it as they ate it. Both women were good cooks themselves and deplored the lack of finesse shown by their seniors residence kitchen.

Once the eating was done, they would move on to talking politics — Edna a tad more conservative than Mum, but neither of them suffering fools of any political stripe gladly. Their conversations were wide ranging, not restricted by their differences that existed in many areas: Edna lived with an abiding faith, enjoyed shopping for new clothes, and kept her suite immaculate. She grew up a farmer’s daughter, lived all her life in Alberta, and never learned to drive. They liked each other, I think, probably, because each was exactly who she was, without artifice or need to impress. Certainly, that is how I experienced Edna, who welcomed me, first as my mother’s daughter and later as her friend in my own right.

She was game for anything, especially if it involved bringing pleasure to Mum, so Edna was a willing participant in the Christmas plans my sister and I concocted for Mum each year. These involved packages that needed delivering to Mum every day in December leading up to Christmas Day — a small something, a delight of some kind, often edible, to be opened in the dreariness of an Edmonton winter day. Mum would often save the opening for dinner time, so that Edna could enjoy the surprise, too. Fun shared is fun doubled, isn’t it.

Edna was fun-loving, full of life, full of goodness and kindness. After Mum died, I would call Edna for a visit over the phone, establishing our own tradition of dissecting the politics and politicians of the day. I would send her photos of my garden as it developed over the season. Over time, our conversations came to include a growing list of ailments Edna was enduring. Eventually, she moved into the closing stage of her life and, on February 11 this year, Edna died. 

I think of her often. 

I miss her — often in the same moment of missing Mum, because they were connected, lovingly, to each other, comrades in arms on their late-life paths, after meeting by chance at their seniors residence. 

I remember Edna Abel today.

And I long will.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.