Ah... the beginning of our audit began this morning. Audit is not a good word in my world. The very mention of it sends me into a panic. I feel vaguely guilty but have no idea why. It's just been one of those years. Our confusion and loss has shown itself in many facets of our life not the least of which is our tax forms. So Revenue Canada came for a visit.
I'll back up a little here and tell you how this came about. I had intended for this blog to be solely about my artistic life but it's increasingly difficult to separate the art from the life...
Up until August of last year Tony and I owned a little organic grocery store. We had both been in and out of music for years and after we married longed to try something that felt a little more stable. We wanted a place to put down roots. We wanted to do something simple and good. It was an honest and noble attempt but we were ill-prepared for the hours and the financial losses. The store itself was beautiful, beautiful... but probably doomed from the start in some ways. The area we chose was in a bit of an economic decline we had hoped would turn around. I got very sick in the year and a half we had the place... the irony is not lost on me that I was my sickest when we owned a health food store.
Our plan was to have our business up and running, staff the place and go back to music, but once into the thick of the experience we realized there was little chance of that happening. I had lost my voice due to repeated bouts of pneumonia and we were both too drained of energy to hustle at music. It became quite the escapist fantasy... "Some day I'll leave this place and play music again..."
We didn't have much time to mourn the loss of the store and the life that went along with it. Two days after we closed we received news that Tony's mom had terminal cancer. She was visiting relatives in Italy at the time of the diagnosis and because the disease was so advanced, she would not be returning home to Canada. We lost her in March. Tony was able to get back to Italy just in time.
So today when the tax representative asked us if we had experienced a terminal loss in 2003 our minds did not automatically focus on the matter at hand. We had lost family... losing a business in addition was too much for us to wrap our minds around.
I guess it's little wonder I'm feeling out of sorts. I've been trying to push all these feelings down and away so that I can get on with things. Record my CD now that I've regained my voice. Pack up the guitars and head out of town. It's the quiet that's been bothering me. This in between time... this time before the releasing of the CD and booking tours and doing press and all those exciting things... it's very still. And it gives me time to finally think.
And it gives me time to finally grieve.
the little store that once was...
my mom-in-law in blue and the bride wore green...
(She had this lovely little story about how when she was first learning English she thought the term was 'mother-in-LOVE' not 'mother-in-law'. That's the way I've always thought of her.)
