Acknowledgments

Heather Fox, Elizabeth Causton, Marg Cooke, Mags Johnston, Susan Auld, Lorna Ross, Lorraine Fracy, Bill Pechet, Claudia Haagen, Don Hannah, Kristin Watson, Eleanor Vincent, Chris Welsh, Joan Tuttle, Beth Shore, Mike Collins, Mike Matthews, Carol Reid, Jamie Reid, Marilyn Lerner, George Bowering.

A special thanks to Michelle Dale for her exquisite thoughts on death and to Alayna Munce for her brilliance.

Patricia and Terence Young for the use of their cabin in the woods and Andreas Schroeder and Sharon Odie Brown for their cottage in Robert’s Creek.

Leigh, Lee, Ava, Saul, Pauline, Sails, Spencer, Niko, Elisa, Marijke, Pedro, and Jonah.

First readers: Thea Gray, Bill Gaston, Patrick Friesen, Carol Matthews, Jennifer Fraser, Patricia Young, Lucy Bashford, Dede Crane, Janice McCachen.

To the doctors, nurses, counselors, volunteers who continue in the work. And to the dying with whom I worked and the dead who are never far away.

Thanks to the B.C. Arts Council and Canada Council.

A warm thanks to Cal Barksdale and the staff at Arcade and Skyhorse Publishing.

To my agent extraordinaire John Pearce, thank you.

Patrick for our conversations about death (and everything else) out of which the form of this book emerged. What we started talking about in a doorway those many years ago, and what continues, has deepened my life beyond anything I could have imagined.

In a discussion with the late poet P. K. Page shortly before her death, we talked about how metaphor, the engine of poetry, is also the language of the dying. She was intrigued and asked if I had written about that. I hadn’t. This book is my response to P. K.