One Weekend in May
by Gordon F.D. Wilson

---

It is a bright, clear Saturday morning when Ken Graham’s ex-wife stumbles through the front gate of his sheep farm, having walked, inexplicably, from the hospice facility where she has been spending her last days. Lena, suffering through a rare form of dementia compounded by a brain tumour, is convinced she is Gilgamesh, the main character of the epic Persian poem that made up her academic life’s work. Lena’s arrival draws in and galvanizes the people that make up Ken’s—and her—life, demanding they make a change; from Sheena, their daughter, who has kept the father of her son a secret from him, to Asher, the career-driven son of Lena and her previous husband, whose resentment toward Ken and his family has prevented him from seeing his life clearly; from Jessica, one of Lena’s care workers, a closeted lesbian from a Scottish Presbyterian family, to Janis, Ken’s openly gay farmer-neighbour, with her own conservative upbringing as the daughter of a Rabbi. For Ken, Lena’s arrival brings on an onslaught of remembered feelings, lost dreams, and compassion for the woman who broke his heart. For himself and everyone else, it is a reminder of the unyielding reach death has into all our lives, the constancy of change, and the need to rise to the challenges life sets before us. In the face of certain death, everyone must learn we cannot hope to chase time any more than we can hope to outrun it. There are times in one’s life when fate’s fingers flick us in the ear and awaken us from our self-imposed slumber to face providence, confront our fears, and recognize that life and necessarily death, not our longings, triumph—this weekend in May is such a time.

www.gordonfdwilson.com

---

Gordon F. D. Wilson is an author and scholar who has spent forty-plus years studying in the fields of geography and demography, pursuing deep, varied questions around human culture and politics. Born in Vancouver, Canada, and subsequently raised—until the age of sixteen—in Kenya, Wilson received his undergraduate schooling in New York and a graduate degree from the University of British Columbia, cultivating his interest in questions around the problems facing modern humankind. He himself spent a decade in capital-P politics, serving as Minister of the Crown in several ministries in B.C., including finance, international trade, and Aboriginal affairs—during which time he was responsible for signing the Nisga’a Treaty, the first modern treaty of its kind in Canada. A constitutional scholar, he has also served as a consultant on matters pertaining to the Canadian Constitution. He has travelled extensively and lectured abroad, and is author of A Civilized Revolution (Ronsdale Press, 1996), in addition to several stage plays he has also produced, most notable among which are Billy’s Question and The Sundowning of Frank Tyler. Wilson continues to be fully engaged in the study of population dynamics and the rise of identity politics. Outside of writing, his primary preoccupation is farming, and at seventy-five, he has retired to write his stories and grow old on his sheep farm in Powell River, British Columbia.

---

Contributors

Author

Gordon F.D. Wilson

---

Other eBook Editions

This book is also available in eBook format from these sites.

• Amazon Kindle Store
• Nook Store
• Kobo Store
• Apple Books
• Google Play