The Shovelling Man Series

In Cape Breton, there are two kinds of people: those who curse the snow and those who pick up a shovel and get on with it. Frank belonged to the second group. He had spent a lifetime clearing driveways, sidewalks, paths to woodpiles, and the narrow trails that connected one winter day to the next. He had shovelled before work, after work, and in storms that buried cars to their mirrors. He had shovelled in moonlight, in blizzards, and in the blue stillness that comes just before dawn. Like generations of Cape Bretoners before him, Frank knew that winter was not something to conquer. Winter was something to live with. There was a rhythm to it. 

The lift. The toss. The whisper of crystals drifting on the wind. The steam of breath rising into the cold. The deep silence that follows when the work is done. Most people saw it as a chore. Frank saw a conversation. The snow fell. He answered. One shovelful at a time. When Julie died, the world lost its shape. Friends spoke of moving on. Books spoke of healing. Time was supposed to help. Yet none of those things offered the certainty of a shovel in his hands.

Snow was honest. It arrived. It accumulated. It demanded attention.

And if you wished to get through it, you picked up your shovel and began. So Frank shovelled. He shovelled through winter. He shovelled through memory. He shovelled through grief. And somewhere beneath the drifts of loss, he began to uncover a path forward.

He shook his head at his silent chaos and the unsettling feeling of death still alive in his mind, a feeling of deep grief. When he stepped outside, he raised his shovel like a sword against the icy air, a tool for his life after loss. Julie was probably watching him from above. "Keep the light on for me," he said to the pale grey sky.

As he backed the truck out of the garage, he looked at the blue shutters with the cutout hearts─Julie's choice. Everything was her choice. Frank followed the plough tracks down the road. When he reached for his sunglasses, he looked at her gloves on the passenger's seat, her sunglasses in the cupholder, and the statue of St Christopher she hung from the rearview mirror to keep them safe. How could she have passed and left so much behind? Every inch of their home was hers. Now he was navigating life after loss. Who knew the challenges of a life without Julie..

On the nights when Frank couldn't sleep, he would shovel, then head to the backyard, where he would sit in the snowbank behind the garage, beneath the big spruce, hidden from the neighbours. In those moments, he often reflected on how Julie had pointed at him  and said, 'You can do this!' Frank was always nearby, just in case she needed him.   

He awoke, startled by the bizarre dream of a shovel in his eye. "Shovel in my eye?! Shovel in my eye?" he thought, bewildered. "See what? Am I supposed to see something?" The strangeness of the dream bothered him like a message only half heard. He had zero patience for anything that wasn't as straightforward as death.

Frank watched the sunrise reflecting on the beauty that surrounded him. He had not slept because his mind was ablaze with the possibilities of his life. Ideas beyond his ken, as though he had stepped through a gateway—a portal to the places of his imagination where adventures awaited. 

He and Julie had done everything together; they were a good couple. But now, as he grappled with grief and healing, Frank found himself alone, and time was ticking away on his clock. 

The Tibetan Book of the Dead's descriptions of the Bardo's states between death and rebirth resonated deeply with him. He felt caught between the states—between life and death —following Julie's passing and contemplating his own rebirth into... that was the question he feared to pose. He did not know what life after loss looked like or what would mark the beginning of his new life.