UPDATE (Ursula Banke) - September 2024
It's been awhile since I wrote and published "Once in a Lifetime". I want to thank all my readers and followers for their support.
I am filled with gratitude at having lived through so many amazing experiences... so many lifetimes in one lifetime!!!
I have been keeping journals all my life. Sometimes not as faithful to the discipline, but still keeping a written record of my thoughts as I travel through each experience, with old friends and new, exploring old and new lands, recalling the old memories and making new ones.
It was in 2020 that my husband became seriously ill with many layers of issues. It started when he took a fall that injured his pelvis. Then an infection took hold in his legs. On top of that, the state of his heart and lungs were complicating his situation. Surgery was not an option. In May, he was placed in Tofino Hospital where the doctor informed me... "We are doing our best but your husband's condition is so poor, you need to prepare for the end of his life". How painful it was for me to hear those words. This is my partner... my soul mate, the man who shared most of my life ... I never stopped to think that this situation could ever be a possibility.
After spending 4 months in hospital, receiving physio, medications, and even overcoming pneumonia, he finally came home... in a wheel chair... never to walk freely again.
By this time, we knew changes had to be made. We had to sell the house and move to a larger community with a broader scope of medical services. On November 26, 2022, after 56 years of living in Tofino, my husband and I left our beloved Tofino home and moved into an apartment in Courtenay BC. On December 13th, 2022, my husband, and partner of 50 years, died. In my fantasy way of thinking... I thought my love and care could save him. But in my reality, I could not.
Almost six months later, in September 2023, I experienced discomfort in my throat that eventually turned into painful spasms that travelled upwards to my ear. The pain was uncomfortable yet familiar. I thought I was suffering from an old esophageal ulcer. The spasms continued more often and lasted longer in duration. I went to the hospital where the medical team tested and noted my rising Triponin levels. This indicated cardiac stress and I was admitted for further testing. All the tests came back normal. The last test done was a stress test. So with a mask over my nose and mouth, I began walking on the treadmill at a slow pace. At the end of 3 minutes, the spasms returned, followed immediately by a heart attack. Nitroglycerin sprayed under my tongue brought my symptoms under control.
The next day, I was transported by ambulance to the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, for an angioplasty procedure and a stent implant. I was awake during the procedure, fascinated while feeling the catheter enter my wrist. Watching on the very large video screen, I lay captivated, and followed along as the catheter put the stent in place. I was in awe as I witnessed, first hand, the scientific and technological approach to opening my blocked arteries. That journey was other worldly.
Four months after the procedure, with a strict diet and exercise... and the required regime of medication... I not only lost 30 pounds but also decreased my cholesterol levels by half. I knew that I was given a second chance at life... of keeping healthy as I can while here on earth. A second chance at living... 'Once in a Lifetime'!!!
Now, a full year later, I am trying in my own way to adapt to my new role as an independent and living in a new environment. Returning to my piano and guitar to support my singing. Singing is good therapy for the heart. It is in the singing that I recognize my peace. Writing, painting and drawing holds a similar space for me. A place I like to visit often and communicate the messages that travel into my mind... from God knows where... and through my voice... and my hand... I continue to enjoy communicating my joy. Blessed I am, when this happens. Being at one, living in the moment... feeling and doing... because I still can.
NEXT PROJECT - to digitize my book 'Once in a Lifetime' and make it available as an Amazon e-book.
PRESS RELEASE - September 2015
"Once in a Lifetime" - a creative memoir
...written & self-published by BC artist & storyteller Ursula Banke ...
It is the fortune-teller who changes your life… she says that you will marry a sailor.
You will have five children and live beside a big forest... in a cabin surrounded by a picket fence.
It feels like she is reading from your dreams. – Once in a Lifetime
Author and artist Ursula Banke was 12-years-old when she first heard the fortune-teller’s prediction. Seeking that promise led her to create her own Robinson Crusoe lifestyle – as an off-grid homesteader on Beck Island with her husband, Carl and raising their two (not 5) children. Banke wrote the story about their uniquely lived life and in the fall of 2015, launched her memoir, Once in a Lifetime.
The memoir is narrated by the omniscient presence of her grandmother, Iffi, who died long before Banke was born, but with whom she formed a relationship through the process of the writing. “Once I adopted my grandmother as narrator… the writing came relatively easy,” said Banke, who, now a grandmother herself, penned the memoir to create a legacy for her own grandchildren.
Once in a Lifetime includes all the high adventure of island living that you would expect: from idyllic family boat trips, camping on the beach at Crazy Eagle Bay; to the perils of wild animal encounters, chimney fires, danger trees and hurricane force storms. Banke takes you with her: through the challenges of being a new wife, living off-grid while raising children and rabbits; canning fish and bottling beer. Sharing her inspiration of being an artist, singer and song writer, the book illustrates her songs and watercolour paintings.
“When I first drove to Tofino in 1967, I travelled through a blackened landscape revealing the charred remains of a huge forest,” said Banke. “The trip from Port Alberni to Tofino took over 3 hours, driving around deep potholes on the gravelly switch backed logging road.” Then there were no cell phones, only citizen band radios to stay in touch with other remote homesteaders. Homesteading on an island solved the ever-present short-term rental challenges but, more importantly, it was a lifestyle choice.
“The Park was not yet established and many beaches were populated by resident ‘hippies’ creating their own solutions for housing by living in driftwood shelters on Wreck Bay. If you had a car, you could drive it right onto and along the beach. You could indulge your free spirit; to build a bonfire and dance around it and when you’ve had enough… you could sleep in your bag under the stars and listen to the surf, feeling the rhythm of life on the beach.”
Banke admits that the fortune-teller was right and while she might have created such a unique life elsewhere, “For us… I think it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Beck Island was where we found the freedom to grow and realize our dreams.”
for personal presentations, art shows, readings, discussions, interviews or press permissions
Contact: Ursula Banke
Email: ursulabanke@gmail.com
Website: http://www.ursulabanke.com/
