Saturday morning. Sky slowing lightening. The solar lantern on the deck ontinues to flicker like a candle in the night. Days are getting longer. Where once its light lasted only a few hours, it flickers throughout the night. I imagine wayfarers of centuries gone by passing through the ethereal night, using its beacon of hope as a marker on their journey.

It is the time at the edge of night. The world outside my window remains quiet. The new lights on the pedestrian bridge changing colour, from rose to blue to yellow to green. A string of incandescent shimmering light strung from east to west, growing ever dimmer as day slowly breaks across the horizon.

In the past week, the ice and snow that clogged the river has disappeared. Spring is awakening. One long sliver of ice covers the gravel bar on the other side where geese have gatghered for the past month, honking and flapping their wings, a raucous welcome to returning flocks of family and friends.

The two coyotes have returned to the trail along the riverbank outside my window. I think of them as ‘mine’. I first saw the two of them on the morning of my mother’s Celebration of Life 3 years ago.

“Look!” I said to my sister who was here to participate in the celebration and lying on the chaise beside me, reading as I put the finishing touches to the eulogy I would be reading later that day. One coyote sat at the back gate looking up at me sitting in the large window where my writing desk is strategically placed to catch the happenings along the river. “It’s dad and mom. See how he’s turning his head to who us mom hiding behind the tree? He’s telling us she’s okay. He’s got her now.”

I believed then, and continue to hold onto the comfort of believing, my father, who died 20 years before my mother, stood at the gate that day to tell us, they’re reunited on the other side. All is well.

They’ve been ‘my coyotes’ ever since.

This is my favourite time of day. Quiet morning. The house sleeps while I muse, latte steaming in a mug beside me. Olavar Arnalds playing softly in the background.

I cannot see my coyotes this morning. I know they were here last week. We had friends visiting from New York and Gerry was excited to spy the two of them wandering back and forth along the train.

“They’re waiting for me,” I said confidently. “They want me to know, all is well.”

And it is. All is well with my soul.

Tonight. We’ll be 12 gathered around our dining room table. Laughing. Chatting Sharing. Our ‘family’. At least the family who lives here.

“Our family” includes dear friends, my eldest sister and her husband, my youngest daughter and her partner along with his father, my beloved’s son, the daughter and her fiance of dear friends whom I have called ‘family’ since moving to Calgary in the early 80s. And my oldest friends here in Alberta whom I met in the late 70s and have remained close to ever since.

We shall be missing some but they will be with us in spirit and in our hearts. Some have left this earthly plane for horizons unknown.

Others live in other cities or are enroute back here as they move from the east to west to return home. Or, like his sister who cannot join us due to a long-standing engagement this weekend with a group of atheletes.

There are others I’d love to invite but, interestingly enough, COVID (or perhaps it’s the wisdom/affects of aging) has curbed my desire/need to fill our table to overflowing. Where once I thought nothing of putting on dinner for 20 or 25, now, I find 12 a comforting number.

And as I stop typing, the lantern on the deck stops flickering. The sky is pale blue streaked with gold skimming the treetops to the north. Strands of wispy, still night-tinged clouds, skim the sky.

And the river flows on.

Whether it is Easter, Ramadam or any other festive occassion for you, may you share good times with those you love and cherish. May your heart be full of comfort and ease and may you always know there is a place for you at the table where you belong.

Namaste.