The story of my mother begins with her birth. My mother, Mary Helen Frizzell, was born two months premature on January 17th 1954. Her life began much like how it was lived, with struggle, adversity, fighting against all odds and hard earned success. My mother was born in the birthing room, a converted spare bedroom at the back of a farm house on a cold and blizzarding day in Prince Edward Island. Due to my mother’s unscheduled arrival and since, at that time, infant survival rates were low, my grandmother refused to acknowledge the baby. But my great-grandmother saw something in that two and a half pound baby that she wanted to nurture. She cleared out the back of the wood burning stove, laid my tiny infant mother wrapped in blankets inside and fed her on sugar and water for nearly two months. This is how my mother entered the world - early, unprepared, unwanted and hanging by a thread. That thread was my great-grandmother’s belief, her hope. So began my mother’s journey.

She lived the beginning of her life surrounded by 10 brothers and sisters, on a farm impoverished of money and means, void of a stable father figure, in a home that praised boys over girls. She survived, fighting to find equality, power and praise, which came very infrequently and dissipated almost instantly. My mother left home at eleven to work as a cleaning lady in a bed and breakfast.

Charging forward, intelligent and hard working, my mother eventually put herself through nursing school at seventeen. Nursing school had been a second choice for her. Originally my mother wanted to become a mechanic. She has always had an uncanny ability to understand even the most intricate details of the inner workings of motors and vehicles of all kinds. Unfortunately at the time for her secondary schooling, grants and loans were sexually bias and the governing bodies believed she would far better focusing on a more feminine career. My mother fought them on this issue, all the way to court, until they finally relented, giving her a grant to attend mechanic’s school. It was for not; she was already in nursing school. This then became her career.

Along the way my mother met my father. She had just started school in Halifax and commuted (hitch hiking in the 70’s) from there back to Charlottetown to see my father. Half way through her first semester, she found out she was pregnant with me. Attending an all women’s school run by nuns wasn’t exactly a nurturing environment for an unwed, pregnant, teenage mother. She endured, creating elaborate excuses for morning sickness and wearing baggy sweatshirts.

My parents were married in October 1973, in a small ceremony, my mother wearing a borrowed dress, pearl in colour. I arrived two months after her 20th birthday. My mother graduated from school married, a new mom, and the only one with an education to provide for her new family. This is where my story meets my mother’s and becomes one in the same; her story is my story.

My father tried to find work and that drove him out to Alberta into the oil fields. We followed soon after. We lived in many small towns in southern Alberta supporting my father’s quest for rig work. My father wasn’t the most reliable individual and I spent many of my younger years playing under tables at the restaurants where my mother waitressed. She finally got a position in a local hospital.

My father left when my mother was pregnant with my sister and I was four; we were suddenly alone in a province without family or friends, and broke. She made it work. At 24years old, my mother was divorced, a mother of two young children and the sole provider for her family.

We moved around a lot. Town after town, province after province. I have lived in almost every province and one territory. We covered this great land literally. My mother used to play a game with us. She would come into our room in the middle of the night with the old Twister board. She had removed the sock, hand and left and right. She replaced them with north, east, west and south. She would wake us up and tell us to “give ‘er a spin”. Whatever direction the needle landed in we headed. Right then and there. Into the car we shuffled, nightgowns and all.

We eventually found ourselves in Yellowknife NWT. A new law was coming into effect that required RNs to have a university degree. Even though she had been an RN for over 15years, she was now facing possible pay cuts and job insecurity. Once again, with her family at the forefront, she battled the governing bodies and obtained funding for school. She wagered her time to return to school at 35 years old, becoming the first RN in history to be paid 75% of her wage and school fees. Her payback was to work in the NWT for 7 years. So, my mother headed to University of Lethbridge Alberta where she graduated with a 3.6 grade point average.

On the heels of this success, she headed north. Her family nest emptied and she pursued a solo nursing career in the rural communities of the NWT. After many years of isolation in the Artic, she found her soul mate. Of all the adversity my mother has faced and all the success she has obtained, her greatest accomplishment to me has been finding her peace. She now lives in northern BC, with the love of her life, working when she chooses and redesigning her gardens. My mother has created her world through hard work, careful planning and sacrifice. The richness that encompasses her life now is the product of never being a victim to circumstance and her belief, her hope.

My mother and I sat across from each other. We were sitting on my grandmother’s back porch having breakfast - strong black coffee and cigarettes. My grandmother was dying. I had just made a whirlwind trip from Melbourne Australia to Charlottetown PEI to be right there, next to my mother. ‘Next to my mother’ was really only a physical location. Both of us were world’s apart, deep in our own thoughts.
I had arrived to a chilly reception. Death brings out the worst of our fears and sometimes the worst of character: my family was rich in both. Only when faced with death can life be brought into perspective. Without the conclusion, the inevitable ending, death, one is unable to see the real value in the middle, the living. Our thoughts were our own that morning. My mother was deep in her world of sadness contemplation, regret, past, present and future. I was struggling with coping. How could I enable my mother to cope? I was never close to my extended family and all my attention was on my mother, how could I support her?
My mother and I had never discussed death or even living for that matter. That’s where I thought I would bridge the gap. Discuss living.
“Mom, when you were younger, did you sit around with your friends and discuss the meaning of life? The question of existence, the purpose?”
My mother looked at me for a moment, as if I had just materialized right out of thin air.
“What?”
“Life, the meaning of life as you saw it. Did you ever discuss our purpose for being here with your friends?”
My mother looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup as she took another sip. I held my breath in anticipation. I was about to be passed some ancient wisdom, passed down from life experience to daughter. Some light of my mother’s history. A pearl of knowledge cultivated from different philosophies, in a different time, carried inside my mother waiting to be opened by me.
“No, no I didn’t. We all had fuckin’ jobs to go to.”
Ah. The meaning of life. Live it. Life isn’t made richer by discussing it, it is made invaluable by experiencing it. That is meaning.