Pop 89: For Heather’s Sake

By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com

The religious historian Huston Smith prefers to think of luck as grace. Well then, my first summer in Val Marie I was graced with Heather Richardson as a neighbour. She lived across the road from me in a two-story duplex commonly known as The High Rise. I wrote the following piece about her and kindness and humour and performed it at the Lyric Theatre. People couldn’t get enough of Heather. I believe that because her whimsical take on things taught us how to spot the tiny, goofy blessings that graced daily life.

Heather passed away last week. This is my wee tribute to a big, beautiful soul.

My first morning in my new home she was leaning against the doorframe, her own frame long, thin and wiry. In her pageboy haircut, seventies glasses and mischievous grin Heather’s age was hard to pin, though her lined face belied a hard life. She usually had a cigarette in hand, but on this particular morning she held a couple of freshly knit wash cloths.

“Your housewarming gift.,” she announced, handing them to me. “I see they finally got that stove out of your living room.”

“Stove and washer. And drier! I made the mistake of complaining to Maurice about the appliances on my rug, not realizing that he was the head of the housing committee. I got a big lesson in patience from him. Prairie time, girl you’re on prairie time, now. When in Rome…”

“Rome. Please. Like anyone no one on that committee has been east of Ponteix.”

“Then he said: ‘What are you complaining about? You could open up a laundromat.’ I kinda lost it. I’m afraid I’m not the cool cucumber I thought I’d become.”

“And thank Christ! You’d bore me to tears! Don’t worry about Maurice, he likes to tease people.”

“Yes, well, he reeled me in good.”

“Don’t sweat it. I’m headed over to the colony to see what they’ve got for vegetables, you wanna come?”

Having almost died on the surgery table Heather evolved a philosophy of not sweating anything. For her it doesn’t matter whether the glass is half empty or half full. Hell, she’s “just happy to have a glass!”

On any given day she will get in her truck, and ask it, as if it were still her childhood horse, where it would like to go today. Often it’s to the Hutterite colony to buy buns and vegetables and a pie or two. That particular day, driving back to Val Marie down Highway 4, Heather spotted a stranger walking toward town. She slowed down, rolled down her window and called out:

“You got plans for dinner?”

“Well…no.”

“Here,” she said. “Have a pie.”

She was always baking birthday cakes, filling abandoned planters, circling the village with her watering can, saving thirsty flowers. One day she decided she it was time to pass her “wisdom to the youth”. She asked our friend Betty if she could “borrow” her grand-daughter Ashley once a week to teach her how to quilt. “Never mind Ashley,” I protested when I got wind of her scheme, “what about me?”

“Well I’m not really in the market for a 58 year old grand daughter but yeah, sure, you can come to, we’ll see if there’s any hope.”

My first session I was told just to watch Ashley make a tote bag from a pair of old blue jeans.

“Clever,” I conceded.

“Oh she’s a sharp one this kid. Show Madonna how you can get this thing into third gear. Ok back her up, watch where you’re going.”

I was itching to give it a go. Once I got my foot on the pedal I took off.

“Woah, where you headed?”

“Looks like the Cypress Hills to me,” chimed Ashley.

“Better back ‘er up and start over and be sure you got ‘er in the right gear,” Heather told me, then winked at Ashley. “I think she just ran over an old man.”

By the end of the afternoon I barely managed a hem, but Ashely sewed me a diploma anyway.

After Ashley left Heather cracked open a cold beer and handed it me. “Great kid, but I had to lay down the law from the get go.”

“What did you say?”

“I got three rules. One: Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Two: We’re here to have fun. So if I start getting bossy just tell me to BACK OFF!” She took a drag from her cigarette and a sip of her rye.

“And the third?”

“Oh yeah- don’t use my good scissors to cut your toenails.” She took another drag and sip then said: “By the way, I saw your old stove on the road.”

“What? Where?”

“Maurice decided it would fit in the neighbour’s place so he decided to push it over. But once he got to the top the hill he couldn’t budge it. So he just left it there.”

“What hill?” I asked, looking around. “There’s no hill in Val Marie.”

“There is when you’re pushing a stove.”

One quiet Saturday, when I was still cooking at The Harvest Moon Cafe, she ordered a coke, then sat down and then pulled out a piece of paper as worn as an old Kleenex. “This is what I want sung at my funeral,” she said.

“ ‘When the sun says hello to the mountains’…Oh yeah, I know this one in French.”

“English, French, don’t matter,” she said. “I’ll be dead anyway.”

Heather explained to me that day why people in the village take a long time warming up to new folks. “They’re just waiting,” she said.

“For what?”

“To see how long you plan to stick around. You get attached to people here and then they leave.”

When Walt retired they decided to move back to Piapot. Before leaving she invited me over and waved her cigarette at a pink recliner. “You want that?”

“Sure, does the foot-rest still work?”

“Sure does, you just give it a good kick and, voila!”

“Great! Now I just gotta figure out how to get it over to my place.”

“Piece of cake,” she said. “We roll it over. Hell, it’s all downhill from here.”