Open Every Window: A Memoir

By Jane Munro

When Jane Munro’s husband is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the Griffin-award-winning poet must chart a path through the depths of grief, learning to live with loss and to take solace and find freedom in the restorative powers of writing.

Open Every Window is a genre-bending prose account of the unravelling of a life—two lives—when Jane Munro’s husband, Bob, is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Evoking Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, this memoir charts a path through sorrow—the pain of seeing a partner age and approach death, the exhaustion of caretaking, and the regret in seeing life’s scope narrow and diminish.

Writing with courage and love, Munro grapples with what it means to care for a husband who is gradually but devastatingly deteriorating while her own identity is eclipsed by a single word—caregiver. Even a doctor admonishes, “What job could be more important than caring for your husband?”

In this portrait of the myriad lives contained in a single life, Munro ultimately finds respite in the power of writing, Iyengar yoga and in the rhythms of the moon—not to heal but to face grief without breaking.

A poignant evocation for anyone who has experienced loss, Open Every Window reveals the pain and power inherent in loving and being loved. Framed with short observations of the moon—from a New Moon in Pune, India to the following New Moon in Vancouver, Canada—this memoir will entrance with its lyricism and comfort with the writer’s hard-won warmth and wisdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Release date: Sep 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781771622974

Jane Munro

Jane Munro is the author of five previous books of poetry. Her work has received the Bliss Carman Poetry Award and the Macmillan Prize for Poetry, and was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award. She is a member of Yoko's Dogs, a poetry collective whose first book, Whisk, appeared in 2013. She lives in Vancouver.

Book preview

Jane Munro’s memoir is a jewel: spare, bright, and sharp, effortlessly elegant, and illuminated by love’s many facets.

—Annabel Lyon, author of Consent

Munro’s lyric prose is lit from within. A remarkable memoir, both fresh and graceful.

—Jan Zwicky, author of Songs for Relinquishing the Earth

"Open Every Window is a story of life lived expansively, a story of seeking, and the fine threads that hold life together, whether children or yoga, love letters, giving care, or the cycles of the moon. Munro’s strongest thread—the question of ‘What is it to be a good woman?’—is the resonant touchstone in these pages."

—Alison Acheson, author of Dance Me to the End: Ten Months and Ten Days With ALS

"With characteristic clarity, honesty, and restraint, Jane Munro unveils the extraordinary devotion of women to parents, children, husbands, families, to everyone but themselves. Open Every Window reminds me of Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women as it charts the socialization of girls over a lifetime. When does one yield to expectations? When must one resist? Never a word wasted, never an extraneous detail, Munro reveals the conundrums, self-denial, the invisible labour of women in all their roles. She writes with insider knowledge of the conflicts women face as they try to preserve a life of their own. The lingering beauty of Open Every Window is the revelation that a single life can hold so much more than one life."

—Ian Williams, author of Reproduction

"I read Jane Munro’s beautifully written memoir, Open Every Window, with the mixture of pleasure and sadness that comes with recognition of what it means to forge a life that diverges from expectations. A husband’s dementia, a tragic fire, the intricacies of family on the stunning west coast of Canada, a different life in India: the pieces moved and altered relationship as I read. They are shifting still, like pieces of glass falling through the shade and sunlight of ocean water. There is something heartbreakingly sane about Munro’s perspective: it remains with me and refuses to settle."

—Marilyn Bowering, author of What is Long Past Occurs in Full Light

"Open Every Window is a window into a full life lived, with the many choices and challenges, sorrow and circumstance, that years bring. Warm, lyrical, and candid, Jane Munro shows us how to somehow stay open hearted, even when your heart is gripped by grief."

—Christa Couture, author of How to Lose Everything

Jane Munro

Open Every Window

A Memoir

Douglas & McIntyre

Copyright © 2021 Jane Munro

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright,

www.accesscopyright.ca

, 1-800-893-5777,

[e-mail]

.

Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.

P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

www.douglas-mcintyre.com

Edited by Elaine Park

Dust jacket design by Anna Comfort O’Keeffe and Carleton Wilson

Text design by Carleton Wilson

Printed and bound in Canada

100% recycled paper content

Supported by the Government of Canada

Supported by the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council Supported by the Canada Council of the Arts

Douglas and McIntyre acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Open every window : a memoir / Jane Munro.

Names: Munro, Jane (Patricia Jane Southwell), author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210251301 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210251484 | ISBN 9781771622967 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781771622974 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Munro, Jane (Patricia Jane Southwell)—Marriage. | LCSH: Amussen, Bob—Health. | LCSH: Alzheimer’s disease—Patients—Family relationships. | LCSH: Alzheimer’s disease—Patients—Biography. | LCSH: Caregivers—Biography. | LCSH: Grief. | CSH: Poets, Canadian (English)—20th century—Biography. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC RC523.2 .M86 2021 | DDC 362.1968/3110092—dc23

The moon and sun are eternal travelers …

every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

—Bashō

(Narrow Road to the Interior, Sam Hamill’s translation)

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

New Moon: Pune, Maharashtra, India

Part 1. Wind’s Labyrinth

Easter

Monday Night Class

Diagnosis

Tides

My Job

Maggots

Correspondence

Submersible Pump

Headland

Easter

Boys

As If It Were a Migration

Part 2. A Sally Port

Mrs. Monteith

From My Father’s Letters

Early Childhood

The Farm

Boatyard

The Day My Sister Was Born

My First Autobiography

A Woman’s Greatest Fulfillment

Be a Man

Plain

California at Christmas

Levitation

Wedding Dress

Part 3. Halfway Round the World

A Married Woman

Turkey

Three Kids in Five Years

Divorce

Also Pink

The Front Door

Arriving in the Dark

Sari Tying

New Delhi

Not Your Top Priority

Bengali Wedding

Varanasi

Thirteen Kinds Of Marriage

Part 4. Moving to a Colder Climate

Burn Ward

Bob

Carried

New York

Honeymoon in India

A Buried Creek

Departures

A Colder Climate

Bandages & Beakers

Part 5. Knife Edge

Middle Beach

Patanjali

Knife Edge

Pune

BKS Iyengar Interview

Bob Log

Shock

Baseline Assessment

Fogust

September 7, 2011

Inner City Nursing Home

The Letter

Grief

Institutionalization

Part 6. Open Every Window

Pune

Open Every Window

Shirodhara

Clarity

A Little Step Dance

Who is the Seer and Who the Seen?

Dream

Waterfalls

Northern Flicker

Part 7. A Large Country with Many Terrains

Flying West

Jumpings

Moon & Owlets

The Spring

Flying West

Intention & Attention

The First White Woman

Flying West

From My Father’s Letters

Wedding Park

Flying West

Waning Crescent—New Moon

New Moon with the Old Moon in its Arms—Waxing Crescent

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

The names of some people and institutions have been altered to protect their privacy and, in one instance, to avoid confusion with another character. In doing this, I followed my own usage: I used first names for those I addressed by first name, titles and surnames for those I addressed that way.

In writing this book I drew from journals, notebooks, poems, and earlier drafts. I relied on clear memories, prompted and supported by various records, including photographs, maps, letters, and memorabilia, as well as my own written material.

new moon

New Moon: Pune, Maharashtra, India

November 18, 2017

The official New Moon—its totally dark moment between waning and waxing crescents—at 5:12 p.m., just before sunset. The start of a new lunar month.

I walked in the park across the street from the apartment we’re renting for November. Flocks of crows streaming in and a clamour of birds in the canopy of trees. Bats flitting about. In the twilight, edges of cumulus clouds caught a pinkish light but mostly smoggy, smoky air with a high layer of hazy cloud.

Each time I’ve come to the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute—2009, 2011, 2014, and now in 2017—the pollution in Pune’s been worse. I haven’t seen you, Moon, for ten days.

But you cycle on through our days and nights. It’s only how we see you that changes. Tonight, you are the dark Moon I know is there—like much of my self—present but unlit, past but also beginning.

High 29°C, low 15°C. Scant breeze midday. Passing cloud.

Part 1

Wind’s Labyrinth

Easter

/

Monday Night Class

/

Diagnosis

/

Tides

/

My Job

/

Maggots

/

Correspondence

/

Submersible Pump

/

Headland

/

Easter

/

Boys

/

As If It Were a Migration

Eleven Moon symbols in a row, showing the change from new moon to waxing, to full moon, to waning, and back to new moon.

Easter

2005

Right away, his voice was icy. You left me without a vehicle.

Bob! He’s a beautiful baby. Ann’s exhausted but okay.

You left me without a vehicle. I didn’t know how to reach you.

I closed my eyes and swallowed. Is something wrong with your truck?

You abandoned me. The power went out. His voice rose. You left me without a vehicle.

People passed. A woman glanced at me. I was on a pay phone in the basement of St. Paul’s Hospital just outside the cafeteria. He was in our kitchen at Point No Point. I’d come over Friday night. My younger daughter, Ann, and her husband, Mark, had asked me months ago to be with them for the birth of their first child. This meant a lot to me. Bob knew all about it. I’d left contact information and filled the fridge. I’d warned him, it could be a long labour. It was, and then a C-section. My older daughter, Alison, had called him with updates.

What happened to your truck?

It’s dead.

Call BCAA. Their number’s on the fridge.

You abandoned me! Bob shouted.

Call Stu and Sharon. Their number is on the fridge.

You abandoned me!

Bob, do you need help? I’m going to call Stu.

No! You left me without a vehicle. Don’t call Stu!

I felt hopeless. At times like this, I just wanted out. But I said, I’ll come home.

---

The trees bordering the ferry terminal—a big parking lot at the end of a causeway—streamed like long hair flat out in the gale. Dark clouds grazing whitecaps sped toward the mainland. No ferry service. The ticket seller couldn’t tell me when the next sailing would arrive or leave. I had to get home. But what if I didn’t go home? What if I went to Alison’s. Phoned Stu and Sharon to look in on him. Called my lawyer.

I parked at the end of a queue of vehicles. Water scudded across acres of pavement. The car shuddered as a rain squall hosed its windshield. Hunkered down, I could have done with a blanket.

Ours had been a love built on friendship and generous conversation. His kids called him the language man. Now, talk blew through on a jet stream.

The power went out in the terminal. No prospect of coffee. I piled on layers—extra sweater, extra socks, gloves—and zipped up my raincoat.

If this was just going to be for a couple of years, maybe I could be a good wife and cope. My father had said, The only downside to marrying Bob is that you’ll be a widow sooner. Bob never thought he’d make it to eighty-two.

Although I had no doctor’s diagnosis, I was convinced Bob had Alzheimer’s. He got lost walking half a block from the dentist’s office to a coffee shop. I found him paused in bewilderment at a busy intersection, on the verge of stepping out into traffic. He got lost in a supermarket. He couldn’t make sense of its aisles or the shopping list and didn’t know what he’d set off to find. He didn’t answer letters or return phone calls. I’d done his taxes for him. All too often, he was angry.

It takes two to fight had been my mother’s theory. When she was fit to be tied, she’d stride round and round the kitchen garden. I’d watch her through the window. If I went out to make amends, she’d shoo me away. I’m not talking. I’m too angry. Later she’d explain, I am not angry with you; I am angry at your behaviour. Her recipe for a peaceful life was to stay out of fights. Good girls put others first.

Keep quiet. Practise yoga. Be nice.

His gloom was as familiar as the basement stairwell. It sucked light out of the house. Sometimes I’d know what would upset him—being late, contradicting him—but just as often, it would be something unpredictable. When I needed fresh air and open spaces, I’d walk the beaches.

The car shuddered as another squall hit. I lifted the lever on the driver’s seat and pressed its back down as far as possible. Pressed my hands onto my belly. Slid deeper. The car was a metal capsule wrapped in a sheet of rain.

My life—my marriage. My home.

I’d held my newborn grandson while Mark stayed with Ann in the recovery room. Crooned whatever I could think of: Be bop, I love you baby, be bop, I don’t mean maybe, be bop, I love you baby—I’m sticking with you … Swayed with him, danced—his milky brown fingers latched onto my forefinger. Gazed into his calm, attentive eyes.

One of the cars ahead of me turned on its headlights and pulled out of the lineup. Funnels of light from the departing car swept across the parking lot as it swung in a wide arc through the rain. No ferries had arrived. I turned the key, started up, switched the wipers on, eased forward. Closed up the line.

There was no good solution but only one thing to do. It filled me with dread.

Monday Night Class

Shirley spotted me walking toward the yoga centre and paused so I could join her. The cherry trees along Meares Street were heavy with blossoms. In the watery haze—I had drops in my eyes—she could have been a vivacious thirty-something, not seventy-four.

She would arrive at the studio with an idea of what she’d teach, but once she had a look at her students, everything could change. That evening, after seeing me walk in unable to focus, her priority became clearing the vision. She told us that one correction from her teacher, BKS Iyengar, could make her whole trip to India worthwhile.

She started us in Headstand—an asana we usually did later. Her voice was a flashlight moving through my body. When she repeated, pull up your kneecaps as she came closer, I guessed she was looking at me.

Men and women, young and old, we did our best to follow her instructions. Now wait, she’d command, and listen to me before you do anything.

She was ardent about the need for self-observation—ruthless self-observation—and insisted this seeing must happen in a context of hope. How do you know you can’t do that? she demanded when I was afraid to move my hands eighteen inches out from the wall for Handstand.

I tried yesterday.

That was yesterday. I’ll spot you. Just do it.

And, to my surprise, it was easy.

Now, do it three more times.

Partway through the class Shirley got us working on Tortoise Pose. Whose feet are those? she asked as we struggled to cross our ankles.

At first, they did not feel like my feet—over my head, out there glued to the floor in an improbable position. Where were the muscles to wiggle them together? I realized it was the same question, whatever part of me was hard to own: Whose anger was that? How could I forge movement when I got stuck? Eventually, I crossed my ankles, reached my hands behind my back, and rested my forehead on the mat.

Now you’ve gone into your shell, Shirley observed.

She’d taught this asana the night bombs began falling on Baghdad, reminding us that we need to turn inward to protect our energies when we cannot stop a disaster. Clear the mind, create inner vision.

Oh, to be a tortoise, at home in myself.

Toward the end of the class, Shirley lectured us about moving the struggle with our bodies into a level of practice where mind and body become one.

Where does body end? Where does mind begin? Where does mind end and spirit begin? What does the soul look like?

I drove the long road home with fresh eyes and a sprawling mind.

Diagnosis

2008

It took eighteen months to get into the gerontology clinic for Bob’s baseline assessment. And then another eighteen months before his follow-up appointment.

Bob was curt with Dr. Cameron, who picked up on his antagonism, was delicate with him, and asked me in the hallway while Bob was undressing if I’d noticed a change in his personality.

He’s angry more often.

Does he get violent?

I hesitated—what counted as violence? Not physically.

---

I was allowed to sit in the room but not speak or have eye contact with Bob while the occupational therapist administered a battery of oral and written tests.

He didn’t know what year it was. After ten minutes of questions, when the therapist went back to five words she gave him earlier, they were gone. Not a trace. My jaw clenched.

But he could count backwards from one hundred by sevens. That was impressive.

What he drew for a clock face was a bulging half circle—a gibbous moon shape—in the top right-hand corner of the paper. Given the therapist’s gentle prompts, he added numbers—in a column from top to bottom outside the clock, not distributed around the dial. He did not draw the clock’s hands. Because he was sitting sideways, I could see the paper clearly. My head began to throb. Why hadn’t I understood it was so hard for him?

After a break with tea and cookies, we were ushered into Dr. Cameron’s office.

Your scores have slipped over the last year and a half, he said to Bob. "I’m sorry to have to tell you it’s now