Patricia, my love, you were a success!

Posted on March 2, 2017 by thebows99krug

Hey Pat in your writings about yourself, you got it wrong!  Thinking about our 48 years together I realise we really had a beautiful happy marriage. Yes this is absolutely true: Our quiet, sharing love was a spiritual union of souls: two individuals united before God but still separate, different individuals. We respected each other’s privacy but were still touching. We were always aware of each other’s presence even when we were not in the same room. Pat your love poems are a testament to the strength of that love and are the words most true about our marriage.. Oh there were stresses and tensions but nothing serious; not even the times you got very upset and angry with me. Always remember our realest and best achievement is our son, his wife and our lovely granddaughters. A successful family is a far greater achievement than any military victory or political movement. In China a successful family is the be all and end all of life itself.

 Pat you also  achieved what you wanted above all else: to be a published author. Your books and poems and thoughts survive you.  You are respected by your colleagues at the University of Waterloo and look at the fellow writers that came to your funeral some from quite far. Everyone you touched thought only good things of you and that you were a success.

The last few years were near perfect despite your frequent depressions, since pensions and benefit packages meant we had no financial worries and were relatively well off.. We had even planned and paid for that  return to Nova Scotia you so wanted. Wish Christ had defeated cancer as well as Death but cancer is part of that great sea, that some call free will, that we can’t change only steer our ship on a tiny bit.

Even religiously your life is a success. The tributes from Holy Saviour are an achievement. I’m still receiving complements on your gentleness and faith. It is not often that the choir dedicates a choral BCP evensong to a parishioner as it did on January 15, 2017. You had a “movement,” the promotion of the Book of Common Prayer  and the choir was very much aware that you and I were BCP Anglicans. Always remember our journey to God is not over yet. You are in Heaven now waiting for me in the place  Christ promised to prepare for us. God still has plans for us; we are to achieve C. S. Lewis’  “God and us” goal. Okay I’m feeling real pain but by not being called first I spared you this pain and I know how much you feared pain.  Only thing that could have made things really perfect would have been  dying  together hand in hand asleep in our bed. But it was not to be. Now we  both wait on God’s will  and plan for us – you in Heaven, me here on earth. Pat I love you forever.

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Pat and Pooka, I loved them both

Posted on February 26, 2017 by thebows99krug

pat-pics-24-06-2006-03

Patricia A. Bow July 20, 1946 – January 7, 2017

Pooka September 17, 1987 – January 8, 2017

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Erin reads at Pat’s Funeral January 15, 2017

Posted on February 23, 2017 by thebows99krug

I am Erin. I’m James’ wife, Pat’s daughter-in-law. I’m here to read a poem.

Pat, when she got this diagnosis, of course, sat down and put everything to square and picked out her hymns and specified the wishes for her funeral because that’s who she was. She was much more at peace I think than the rest of us.

I’ve never really gotten over the shock.

I don’t have a reflection. My  daughters, they’re too devastated to come, but one of them asked me to tell the leopard story.

A couple of years ago Pat and Eric were taking the girls out for breakfast so that James and I could get the house ready for a showing. It was winter and they were trying to get the kids into their mittens. We could not find mittens for Nora and suggested that we check Nora’s backpack. She was six. She’s a tiny little mathematician.

Out of her backpack came thirteen single mittens, most knitted by Pat, but not a single pair.

Pat said, “How can this be? What are the odds?”

Nora, of course, immediately starts working on her fingers to figure out what the odds would be.

I said, “You know, I think they’re like the socks. I think they go to live with Jesus.”

Pat said, “I guess he must need them for all of the lepers.”

Nora said, “Ah, that’s right because we are missing 12 mittens and any leopard would need four mittens so we are missing mittens for three leopards.”

Pat looked at her and said, “You’re so good at math.”

Nora said, “Why does Jesus need leopards?”

She was the grandparent who would tell Nora that she was good at math and not school her for losing 13 individually hand-knitted mittens.

My children and the family will miss her very, very much.

In the order of service this says that it’s Pat’s poem. It’s not Pat’s poem. It’s my poem but it was her favorite. She was the proof reader for this book and for everything else that I wrote.

I was not sure which poem to read to you because she didn’t specify and there were a few that she liked, but I was reading … James and Eric gave me the diary that she kept when she was ill to read.

It begins with something labeled day one and it begins, to my great surprise:

“I am dying.”

That piece ends, “There’s so much I will lose, the beauty of the Earth and of the skies and the flowers.”, so I thought she would like this poem.

It’s called “While the Earth Remains”. It’s the Revelations poem from my book of biblical poetry. It’s hard for me to get through so be patient.

While the Earth Remains

While the Earth remains, seedtime and harvest-time, cold and heat.
Summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. 
             -  Genesis 8:22 (God's promise to us after the flood)

Let there always be taxol and chamomile,

abnormal pap smears and little shirts

with red snaps. Let there be trout with ginger

and green tea in the evenings.

Let there be months with nothing

but mac and cheese.

Let there be days when waking

is a heavy weight, a thickness

breathed in. Let there be weeks

together like this, weeks of sourness,

then on clean dawn in frost, the lawns smoking.

Let there be ticks in the saskatoons.

The one who picked the saskatoons with me

one summer far from either of our lives

writes to say she cannot write or speak.

Let there be a lamp for her,

lasting oil, a little salt. Blessings.

.

Equinox today, and the fall is coming.

Juniper dusty blue with berry, sumac

brushing. The tattered cherry

blooms again, a few bright blossoms.

.

Is that hope or hopelessness? The fruit

will never set. The flocks grow restless.

On this day the year is hinged

like a door. Let there always be

the gates of morning, the gates of evening.

Wheels. All creatures walking.

.

Let every  thing take its right name;

rice and paper, salt and beans. Let dust

remember skin, or does it? Let dust

film everything. Oh Lord, what comes

between us? Dust and thirst,

a lack of patience. Shyness.

There’s skin at least, a secret

I don’t know I’m keeping. What name

does it have? Shame or Eden.

.

While the Earth remains let there be spareness,

winter with one hawk and no hiding.

Let there be Junes jam-packed , chock-a-bloc, thick

with berries. Let all the graves have names.

Let us pray indifferently, pray in fear

and whispers. Let us pray and be blasted

open. Let there be garlic and chili

and cream for the coffee, the salty

and sour, the sweet and the bitter, the desperate

and dappled, the morning

and evening, the over

and over, the first day.

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Blessings

Posted on February 12, 2017 by thebows99krug

Counting our blessings:

Thinking about our 48 years together I realize we really had a beautiful happy marriage. Yes this is absolutely true: “Patricia and I  were lucky enough to discover that quiet, intense love that is basic to life itself; it is seldom found in real life. We had the eyes to see and the words to tell the truths that are most real to each other.” O there were stresses and tensions but nothing serious. Pat achieved what she wanted above all else: to be a published author. We have a son with whom we are well pleased and two gorgeous granddaughters with whom we are also well pleased. The last 10 years were perfect since pensions and benefit packages meant we had no financial worries and were relatively well off.. We had even planned and paid for a return to Nova Scotia  the REAL holiday Pat and I so wanted. Pat’s departure was in Peace in her sleep with none of the pain she so feared and she died at home where she wanted to die. She is in Heaven now waiting for me in our place in Heaven Christ promised.  Okay I’m feeling real pain but by not being called first I spared Pat this pain.  Only thing that could have made things really perfect would have been  dying  together hand in hand asleep in our bed. But it was not to be and now I wait in pain to join her in Heaven. Surely I can’t be criticized for not waiting patiently on God’s will  or plan for me and praying daily that God take me now to join Pat in Heaven. Even Christ on the cross prayed for death though He added “Not my will but Thine.”

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Dealing with my beloved’s death

Posted on January 21, 2017 by thebows99krug

Patricia and I  were lucky enough to discover that quiet, intense love so often written about in those love stories that move you to tears but seldom found in real life.  I used to pray nightly that the first girl that attended Church with me would be the girl I married; well Pat was the first girl that attended Church with me. She even became an Anglican and Christianity is very much a part of our love. I love her with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life;  and now that she is in Heaven, if God choose, I shall but love her better after death. However right now, her death is like a hole in my very being, that can never be filled again, that I don’t want filled, that I’m scared to live with and scared to live without. Pat didn’t make me promise but she did crook her figure at me and order me not to follow her by my own hand

I am trying to come to terms with Pat’s death by writing my thoughts on our life together, reading and commenting on inspirational writings and her diaries.  Her diaries, you say, isn’t that an invasion of her privacy (Pat was a very private person) and her trust. No, she wrote in the October 19, 1975 entry: “Maybe when Eric reads this diary (as I hope he will — he hasn’t yet)  he will add something to clarify the situation.” Back then we used our diaries to communicate feelings we could not vocalize, ask the difficult questions, and speak our love for each other. Pat had great difficulty saying out load that she loved me.  So glad she overcame that; in the three weeks of her palliative care at home, every night before sleep, we kissed and said to each other “I love you forever.”

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James Bow’s Eulogy at Pat’s Funeral January 4th, 2017

Posted on January 16, 2017 by thebows99krug

Those who know me know that, throughout my life, I never called my mother nor my father “Mom” and “Dad”. I always called them by their first names, “Pat” and “Eric”. It shocked my friends the first time I called up to my parents in their company. “Hey, Pat!” They could not fathom how they could possibly get away with such a thing. It took me a little while to realize just how unusual that was.

Because it was something that never came up. Once, when I asked my parents about why they never made me call them Mom and Dad, the best answer I got was that they felt that the only way they could do this is if they called themselves “Mom” and “Dad”, and what unfolded was like something out of a scene from the Beverly Hill Billies. “Ma!” “Yeah, Pa!” “Let’s go visit cousin Ethel!”

It was unusual, though, as I learned when, without really trying, we convinced my daughters to call me Dad and Erin Mom. I’ve even used the phrase “Mom” to refer to my mother-in-law Rosemarie.

Do I regret this? To some extent I do. A small extent. Because the truth is, I didn’t have to refer to my mother as “Mom”. She knew who she was.

She put band-aids on my scrapes and bruises. She comforted me when I cried. She was my cheerleader, and she was my mentor. And if I was in the wrong, she was my nemesis. Though I feel that I learned enough quickly enough that she was never my nemesis for long. She walked me to school. Nagged me to do my homework, and shared in my victories.

And she asked for my advice when she was writing a story that eventually became “The Spiral Maze”. She valued my input as she worked on other tales as well. And she returned the favour, proofreading my stories, catching my typos. Her colleagues at the University of Waterloo called her the best proofreader they’d ever seen, and an editor’s editor, and I was grateful that she lent her skills to my work.

She respected my writing enough that she didn’t refrain from constructive criticism, but she never stood in the way of what I wrote. She offered great advice, and with Erin, helped make my writing better.

She was also a fantastic grandmother to Vivian and Nora as well. She gave so much of her love and her time, knitting for the girls, and trying to teach them how to knit. She read and wrote for Nora, who loved her dragon stories. She read Terry Pratchett to Vivian. They miss her greatly. She knew who she was to them as well, though they reminded her constantly by calling her “Grandma Pat”.

I knew my mother loved me, loved Erin, and loved my daughters. I took great comfort in that feeling. I did not call my mother Mom as much as perhaps I should, but she knew who she was.

I still wish that I’d had more time to let her know that I knew too.

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My Eulogy at the Funeral January 14, 2017

Posted on January 15, 2017 by thebows99krug

We are here for the end of one stage of Pat’s journey and the beginning of her journey in heaven.  I thought it appropriate to explain how our marriage journey began. Pat knew this was my favourite story and would kick me under the table when she sensed I was about to begin it yet again

Both Pat and I went to the Faculty of Library Science in 1968/69. On Fridays, some of us went pub crawling as soon as they opened at noon. We called it POETS Corner. Yes, you guessed it: it’s an acronym for Piss On Everything, Tomorrow’s Saturday. On Friday, November 15, 1968, Pat was a fellow student’s date at the Red Lion. I was attracted to her and sat beside her. When Steven Horne left her alone to talk to some of his buddies, I was there and since it was by now late afternoon, I asked her to supper. She said yes. She went home to Rochdale to change and I picked her up there. Rochdale had just opened and there were a lot of graduate students there, so you can’t assume that Pat was a hippy. (But we were kind of hippies – long hair and all.) We went to Hungarian Village on Bay Street.

We had the Transylvanian platter for two. That is, three salads, rice, fried potatoes, beef tenderloin, Hungarian sausage, bacon, grilled pork chop, Wienerschnitzel, cabbage rolls, and pickled beets, all accompanied by a full bottle of the Hungarian wine known as “Bull’s Blood”. Between us (though mostly Pat), we polished it all off. Then we had apple strudel and two each apricot brandies (remember, we started the date drinking beer all afternoon!). After Hungarian Village, we went to hear Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry at the Riverboat in Yorkville where we also had pastries and coffees. The date was not over yet, though it was past midnight. We went to Plaka, a Greek nightclub on Queen Street where we listened to Basuki players from Athens and threw dishes. There, we had two Zombies and a sharing tray of Greek cheese. I was thinking, boy, can this small girl ever eat and drink. I’m a foodie and was truly impressed. Got her back to Rochdale early Saturday morning and, after getting to know each other Hippie style, I proposed to her. She said “no.” Didn’t get much sleep before having to head off to my Saturday job at the undergraduate library at U of T. After work, I dropped by her place to ask her to Church on Sunday morning.

Pat accepted, and came to the Church of the Redeemer with me on Sunday; this confirmed that Pat was the girl for me. I used to pray nightly that the first girl that attended Church with me would be the girl I married. It took two more askings but on February 9th (4 days after my birthday), she said she loved me and would marry me. On Valentine’s Day, we went together to buy her engagement ring. Her finger was so slim the jeweller had to cut down a size 4. We were married at St. Stephen’s-in-the-Fields on June 21, 1969.

Oh, I should explain why she was able to eat so much on that first date. The National Library paid Pat a small monthly salary to go to Library School on the first of each month. Pat had used it to buy herself a new coat and had been living on rice for 15 days. She never ate like that again. However, for 47 years, every November 15, we made it a point to go to a Slavic restaurant to celebrate our first date. This past anniversary was the day we got the shock. Pat, who had been dealing with a strange blood clot in her legs, had accidentally taken a double dose of her anti-clotting medication and so went to emergency. The nurses and doctors were good natured, saying she was worrying about nothing. However, she then asked them to check out the pain under her sternum she’d been having. The Nurse Practitioner felt it, and didn’t like what she felt and ordered a CAT scan. Instead of celebrating the 48th anniversary of our first date, we sat in Emergency waiting for the results. Then came the news that Pat had pancreatic cancer, stage four. Huge shock! November 15, forever for me is now going to be mixed with the joy of our first date and the sorrow of that diagnosis.

Sorry, James and Erin, but Pat is my favourite writer. Always has been. She wrote books for kids. By kids, she meant children, tweens, young adults and anyone of any age who enjoyed a good story. She wrote what she loved to read: stories of adventure, mystery, suspense, and fantasy. Stories about ordinary people mixed up in extraordinary trouble. Stories, magical and haunting and sometimes bizarre, stories that creep into your imagination and your dreams — like mail delivered by the Goblin Postman. You have only to come to our house to see how much she loved reading and books. Every room in our house is full of books. For the over 48 years of our life together, she couldn’t get to sleep without a read. I am eternally grateful to my son who read every night to her at 7:30 during her far too brief palliative care at home.

Now I want to read to you Pat’s 1955 Christmas poem. She wrote it when she was seven. It shows she was destined to be a writer.

Christmas

by Patricia Anne Smith

1955 age 7

Christmas is coming and everything’s jolly.

The doors and the windows are all decked with holly.

Christmas tree lights are seen from afar

And at the tip-top there’s always a star.

The stores and the houses, they all have a tree.

And Happy children all dance round with glee.

Mothers and fathers are going Christmas shopping.

And dozens of snowflakes are silently dropping.

The children are hanging their stockings up high

While old Santa’s visit is fast drawing nigh.

They climb into bed with a sigh and a yawn,

Eagerly waiting for morning to dawn.

Then they leap out of bed and down the stairs run,

And every small child is up with the sun.

And they open their presents. Says father, “Ahem!”

While they look to see what old Santa’s brought them.

There’s tin soldiers and balls and golden haired doll’s

And popcorn and candy. Everything’s dandy.

And tied on the tree are cute little things.

There are horns and balloons and little tin rings.

For Christmas dinner there’s a turkey fine,

And watermelon without the rind.

For dessert there’s pie and chocolate cake.

Come on, let’s eat, for goodness sake!

Stars and  angels are our Christmas stories and poems. Father Neil, in The Church of the Holy Saviour Advent Newsletter, pointed out that Jesus promised his followers that they too would become morning stars. Pat died on Epiphany. On that day, the end of Christmas, Pat rose as the morning star in my heart. Her message to me is “be not afraid , I am still with you though now in Heaven.” She is preparing that place Christ promised for us in Heaven, as she prepared our journey here on earth for happiness. Thank you Fr Neil, I receive and share that message; its assurance indeed brings me peace, now and throughout the days that lie ahead. Pat, I’ll love you forever!

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U of W Bulletin Obituary

Posted on January 15, 2017 by thebows99krug

Remembering Patricia Bow
by Brandon Sweet in today’s Daily Bulletin
Patricia Bow.Retiree Patricia Bow died on January 7.

Bow joined the University of Waterloo in 1998 as a communications officer, doing writing, editing, proofreading and publications work in Communications and Public Affairs (a predecessor to today’s University Communications unit).

She is remembered by her former CPA colleagues as a kind, gentle person who was always read to tackle a new writing project with quiet gusto.

“She was such a rock for our communications office, such a quietly competent and professional writer who you could count on for any type of writing assignment,” writes Martin Van Nierop, who led the University’s communications team from 1986 to 2010. “But more than that, she was friendly, kind and nice, someone who you couldn’t help but hold in the highest regard as a person.”

Bow was the assistant editor of Waterloo magazine and contributed to the Gazette, the Daily Bulletin, and the University’s website. She had an uncanny ability to make sense of the most complicated research and could write in a way that made it understandable and interesting. She was also the main backup editor of the Daily Bulletin, filling in as needed for editor Chris Redmond, and was the content lead for UW Mobile, a push news app for BlackBerry and iPhone developed by Waterloo student startup Polar.

“Pat is…a true ‘editor’s editor,’ meticulously organized, careful in all things,” wrote colleague Kelley Teahen on the occasion of Pat’s retirement in 2011.

“Pat is one of the best proofreaders I’ve ever worked with,” says Teahen. “Her gifts were widely known and people from other areas of the University would request that Pat go over their material as a kind of gold-standard safety check.”

Indeed, she was the office’s go-to grammar expert and senior wordsmith, the keeper of the CPA Style Guide, and always willing, with a red pen in hand, to review documents and mark them up with gentle, but firm, corrections. She was known to use a magnifying glass during the proofreading process, in order to catch errant double spaces and mix-ups of “en” and “em” dashes.

Chris Redmond remembers her as “a source of the perfect word and the dryest comment.”

Bow’s writing efforts were by no means confined to her day job: she was a published author with more than 20 works to her name, including science fiction and fantasy aimed at young adult and middle-grade audiences.

“I started out trying to write romance fiction,” she was once quoted as saying, “but the body count kept getting too high.”

Bow won a Waterloo Regional Arts Council award in 1997 and a CCAE gold medal in 1999. Her 2004 novel The Bone Flute was nominated for an Ontario Library Association Silver Birch Award.

Pat is survived by her husband Eric, son James and daughter-in-law Erin (both published authors) and two grandchildren. She was 70.

Her memorial is on Saturday, January 14, with a visitation from 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m., and service at 11:00 a.m. at the Church of the Holy Saviour on 35 Allen Road East in Waterloo.

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Patricia Anne Bow July 20, 1946 – January 7, 2017

Posted on January 15, 2017 by thebows99krug

Obituary for Patricia Bow

Patricia Bow

Bow, Patricia:
The Bow family is sad to announce the death of Patricia Anne Bow, nee Smith, who died peacefully on January 7, at home as she wished. Her battle with pancreatic cancer was brief but difficult.Pat was a word person to her heart, and some of her own words tell her story: “My family descended from Scottish, Irish, and English pioneers who settled in the Ottawa Valley when it was still mostly uncut forest. Family stories infected me with a fascination for history — but above all I loved the hints of adventure and mystery in those tales.” She was born in Ottawa in the middle of that big family story, with three older siblings and three younger siblings. All six survive her: Gordon (and Madeline), Dorothy (and her late partner Bruce), Deanna (and the late Dieter), Margaret (and Leon), Bette, and Edward.

Chasing her love of history and story, Pat studied history as an undergraduate at Carleton University in Ottawa, then took a graduate degree in library science at the University of Toronto. She wrote: “I love libraries, their richness and generous openness and even their smell.” She loved them so much that she married fellow librarian Eric Bow in 1969.

Settling in the Bow family home in Toronto’s old Chinatown, Eric and Pat had one child, a son, James. Becoming a stay-at-home mother, she raised James into a very fine young man. When James went to university and Eric retired, the family moved to Kitchener-Waterloo. Pat took another degree, this one a diploma in journalism. She worked for the New Hamburg Independent, then joined the University of Waterloo communications office, “where for 12 years I wrote about quantum mechanics and the history of war and peace, and other serious stuff.” She retired in 2011, and “decided to go ahead and write what I love to read: fantasy and speculative fiction.”

Pat’s son James married Erin Noteboom in 1998, and in 2005, Pat became a grandmother, first to Vivian, and then, in 2008, to Nora. She adored them.

The whole Bow family – Eric, James and Erin, Vivian and Nora – survives Pat, who was only 70. We will remember Pat as sister, wife, and mother and grandmother, and as the maker of wonderful things: pie crusts, mittens, stunning quilts. And then of course there are the books: she wrote and published more than 20 novels, full of ghosts and dragons. Best known, perhaps, was The Bone Flute, a finalist for the Silver Birch and Red Cedar Awards. She was a word person but words cannot express how much we will miss her.

Cremation has taken place.

Pat’s family will receive relatives and friends from 10-10:45 a.m. on Saturday, January 14, 2017 at the Church of the Holy Saviour (33 Allen Street East, Waterloo). A memorial service will follow in the church at 11 a.m. Interment will take place at Memory Gardens cemetery following the service. A reception will take place in the church hall after the burial.

As expressions of sympathy, donations to the Waterloo – Wellington CCAC,The Canadian Children’s Book Centre or the Church of the Holy Saviour would be appreciated by the family (cards available at the funeral home).
Visit http://www.henrywalser.com for Pat’s memorial.

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2015 The Lost Year

Posted on December 28, 2015 by thebows99krug

This was the year I had a heart attack. Didn’t post anything even though there was a Canadian Federal Election. Spent from May 14 to May 21 in St. Mary’s Hospital and from May 22 to December 7 recovering and attending rehab. Feel like I lost a summer and fall. I’m almost fully recovered now and expect to start writing new posts on this site in the new year 2016. Glad to be alive!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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