Celebration in Honour of the Life of Anne Schlenker McBryde (May 16, 2026) “I love you all the time/ And I’ll love you forever.” On April 30 of last year, when Anne and I celebrated our 46th anniversary of conjugal life by feasting on Ottawa’s finest Chinese food, Anne was herself: healthy, feisty, full of..
Obituary for Anne Schlenker (McBryde) 1958-2026 “I love you all the time and I’ll love you forever.” Anne’s last words to her family before her emergency brain surgery, May 12, 2025. It is with profound sadness that we wish to announce the death of Anne Schlenker (McBryde). Anne passed away in the early morning hours..
A Woman with Heart For Anne, this Valentine’s Day A heart in every room – stone, cloth, glass – Anne, collector of the world’s pulse, your shelves hold tributes, tender and small, while your own heart, the true north in this house, expires quietly beneath hospital lights. You taught me to find heart everywhere:..
A Tale of Two Annes Back in high school about 250 years ago, we studied A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I feel like I’m undergoing a novel experience of a much more intense and baffling sort in my personal life: A Tale of Two Annes. My wife Anne has been stricken..
Ikebana dreams My wife creates decorative arrangements that include miniature dried flowers. Recently, she learned that her art resembles Japanese Ikebana, an aesthetic of which she was previously unaware. Ikebana (literally “giving life to flowers”) is the Japanese art of flower arrangement, in which the arrangement brings nature and humanity closer together. The..
Anne as an indomitable decorator: A feisty artist whom brain cancer can impede but never defeat Everybody who knows Anne knows that she’s a decorator; she calls herself the “Decorating Turkey.” Our sons have dubbed her “couth”; even the house in which we raised our rowdy boys in suburban Quebec City was “couth” and..
Taigu Ryokan was a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and poet of the Edo period, known for his unconventional lifestyle and unadorned, deeply personal poetry. https://allpoetry.com/Taigu-Ryokan Haiku’s more visual cousin, the haiga, unites a haiku poem, written in calligraphy, with a simple painting. https://poets.org/text/haiga-haiku-calligraphy-and-painting In our new world of shared grief and absurd wonder..
An update on Anne’s suffering from radiation treatments and chemotherapy Like life itself A world of beauty, Ikebana floral art: Fleeting poetry. My wife Anne is afflicted with glioblastoma, an incurable form of brain cancer. Glioblastoma – Wikipedia https://www.braintumour.ca/fr/types_de_tumeurs_cerebrales/glioblastome/ Anne is currently suffering from severe nausea stemming from the intensive radiation treatments..
The tragically hip and the tragical blip: Anne faces glioblastoma, a fatal cancer of the brain My wife Anne has been stricken by an incurable, highly aggressive form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma: Glioblastoma – Wikipedia Voici un lien en français: https://www.braintumour.ca/fr/types_de_tumeurs_cerebrales/glioblastome/ Her life expectancy is about 12 to..
Splendid, resilient birds in freezing rain: a Tanka poem Beauty breaks the ice; The storm within subsides; Ethereal glimpse. Revelation with feathers, Gone… irretrievably lost? Photo credit @Lorne Coughlin Facebook Photo credit @ (20+) Beauty Of The Don (Toronto,DonValley) | Facebook Tanka poems follow a set of rules. They all have five lines and each..