Althorp

I am in the process of sorting books - trying to re-home several shelves-full to make life easier for my family in years to come. It’s a labour of love, each one stirring that feeling that comes from none of the five senses - that feeling deep in the gut that takes you back to the place and time of purchase, or study, reading or anticipating what lies inside the covers. All are significant, even if they were barely skimmed. All are full of their writers’ intentions, deep thinking, and full of promise and potential. Hope. How lucky we are to have that energy in our homes.

Shelves may be empty now but every table, and even the floor, is covered with piles of books awaiting new destinations. They will fill bags -green disposable ones from the dollar store - and be hefted into the car next week and left, like my dog when we couldn’t bring him back to Canada, at the doorway to a new experience. Napoleon knew his role and he played it well, sitting at the gate with his new family, calmly watching me drive away, not frantically trying to follow me as he usually did. I think of my books like that - they know that this is a separation that has to be. They are looking forward to being opened afresh and they are making it as easy for me as possible. It has turned into an unexpected positive experience.

But there is one book - a large thin 46 pages with a shiny pale blue cover - that can’t find a pile to sit on. It gets moved from the used bookstore pile, to the recycle box, to the library book sale bag, to its own pile of one. It is called simply Althorp, and is the souvenir from my visit to Princess Diana’s home in England. It covers the history of the stately home, and of the current Earl’s famous sister, displays of her toys, clothes etc. Tucked inside is a paper napkin from the café newly built in the stables, where we visitors had tea with Diana’s favourite scones. I visited Althorp in 1998, that first summer after Diana’s death. The atmosphere was surreal, dozens of us mourners lining up across a misty field at nine a.m., each clutching flowers to be laid in front of Diana’s memorial, none of us really believing we were there.

Althorp joined my other Diana books on my bookshelf and has moved with me ever since. I can’t bring myself to throw it away but I can’t imagine anyone who would possibly want it. Except Aruna.

The following year, I moved to my first purchased home, alone, to a place where I knew no-one. At a women’s connecting group I met Aruna. Beautiful and dignified, originally from India, she was a Reverend Doctor with the United Church, brilliant and caring. We became good friends, bonding over Princess Diana.

Aruna loved her. She loved the stories of my visit to Althorp. Over the next few years we shared deep theological and spiritual conversations - and together, we went to an exhibition of Diana’s clothes in Toronto. All the books I had gathered about Diana ended up on her bookshelves, plus a coffee table book I knew she would enjoy even more than I. Aruna officiated at my daughter’s wedding by the lake; I remember us sitting together that afternoon, sharing our views on marriage and family.

And then she retired from the church, but not from the peace and justice work that drove her days, founding a local United Nations group and working with inclusivity all over Canada. The last time I saw her was around her retirement, leading a UN group on diversity. I didn’t know it was the last time when we hugged Goodnight. In my memory she went to India after that, and by my thinking. she had moved away. So I didn’t call her any more and for some reason she didn’t call me and we lost each other. I always remembered our friendship if I drove past her house, thinking it had new owners. Why did I create that in my mind? Had our connection run its course?

Yesterday was Aruna’s funeral. I had opened our local paper to her obituary, suddenly shocked and saddened. She hadn’t moved away at all. In fact she sometimes spoke at our local church; I had no idea, not being a member. The church was packed; her sisters spoke lovingly of her, the first of five of them to pass away. The mayor said that Aruna’s life was marked by faith, scholarship, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to justice. Many church dignitaries wondered if she was now challenging God as she had indeed challenged them - in her gentle but forceful way. A friend spoke of their laughter at baking accidents and somehow that laugh rang in my ears.

A sister talked of her love of travel, and I have no doubt that on one of those sojourns to her favourite city, London, she found time for a visit to Althorp. That thought makes me very happy. Another sister spoke of their education in Calcutta with Mother Theresa and I remembered that Mother Theresa had died shortly after Diana - who died mere weeks after my father. And for a while Mother Theresa, my father, Diana, and Aruna got all mixed up in my head and they all seemed connected.

Newspaper articles speak of Aruna receiving the King Charles Ш Coronation Medal for being one of our most important ambassadors of tolerance, diversity, and interfaith understanding. I sacrilegiously thought that this would be the closest Aruna would have come to Diana, the inked signature from Charles on her certificate - she had no patience for Charles of course. It struck me as kind of funny, imagining the conversations we would have had at the time.

I came home from Aruna’s funeral, so grateful for our friendship, proud that Aruna had chosen to spend time with me, and not regretting its lapse, but wishing I had known she had been so close that we could have maybe connected again before she died.

I put the pale blue book, Althorp, back on the shelf. It is large and floppy and doesn’t fit easily; put in sideways, it sticks out. That could be a metaphor for something but then I’d go down the Mother-Aruna-Diana-father rabbit hole again so instead I rest in the knowledge that we are all connected, and our lives are a series of choices and decisions and maybe - just maybe - they all lead to the same destination. Like my dog settling in with his new family, and me meeting Aruna and feeling valued for who I was, fandom and all, and my beloved books ending up on shelves they were meant to be on in the first place. As a group of singers sang yesterday at Aruna’s funeral, there is a time for everything. It’s all an alchemical magic - even in something as mundane as cleaning out a bookshelf.

On the empty shelves I plan to put my Ladies - women’s statues of pottery and china I bought in every place I lived in. I haven’t seen them since 2011 - maybe around the same time I saw Aruna for the last time. I wish I could remember when that was. I’ll search for the box in the cellar, dust the ladies off and give them light. Like memories - sometimes we have to give them light, and sometimes we have to give them away.

Bless your journey, Aruna - heron, fly her home.