The discovery of Richard III’s grave is pretty awesome. Bonus, he was still inside it! It’s really hard to get the motivation to leave a grave though, it doesn’t happen very often anyway, and is entirely with assistance.
And here’s another thing entirely:
The mass shooting in Connecticut was tragic, and it’s amplified by instantaneous news making irresponsible reports, misidentifying accused suspects, and encouraging copy-cats by propelling the shooter to world-wide notoriety instead of leaving them in obscurity where they came from.
It doesn’t take a malicious act such as this to harm so many children, even carelessness and un-regulated utilities can cause much more death.
So while we feel personally affected by a tragedy on the other side of the continent, to people we don’t personally know, it is important to keep some perspective and remember there are tragedies at home and in our country we can work on if we need an outlet for our grief in order to sooth our souls.
We may not be able to convince the Americans that they have too many guns, but we can directly influence our Prime Minister to meet with a community leader so that children have safe homes and schools there.
One of the oddest things about death is that there’s no way to reach that person by their usual phone number. We can call people in Antarctica, in space, in Tehran, on the toilet, or flying through the air. We can’t call people on the phone after they are passed on, however. It’s just another unfortunate, gut-wrenching reality when it comes to death. The feeling of being apart when they aren’t here, that used to be resolved through phoning, just wasn’t solved by Bell and probably never will be by anyone else.
My Grandma, who was 93, passed away today after a difficult week for her. I visited her yesterday, after medical people helped to stabilize her, and she was able to have simple conversations. She had trouble eating yesterday, was literally tired of being old and said as much with, “I’m too old for this.” Her body agreed with her, the following day. She was expertly cared for, and as comfortable as possible in her final years.
Life isn’t easy not being able to see very much, and she had to give up playing card games on the computer, and emailing people (which she started doing in the mid-90s on a Compaq 8086 then IBM 486 my Dad and I helped set up for her and Grandpa). Macular degeneration can take a hike, by the way. She had to move out of her house many years ago, and was getting by at the lodge in Lafleche for a while, walking downtown to get her mail even. This past year she’d had some small strokes and lost some of her short term memory, and had to move to the Foyer in Gravelbourg. Her mother had lived there for a time in the early 1970s.
I’m thinking about a lot right now, obviously. There’s a lot to consider. While I’m sad, I’m also trying to remember that my Grandma had a good, long life that can be celebrated, with plenty of family to remember her fondly. My Grandpa’s death was sudden and not really expected, and this death is sort of the exact opposite. There’s still a numb feeling, having heard the news, and knowing it will hurt as I contemplate everything.
Stories she’s told me stick out right now, and I feel I have to write them down again so I won’t lose them. Like how her parents met (re)hanging laundry; our family’s connection to Napoleon; how her older siblings were told she blew in on the cold February wind. Or how I may have had a different name if she hadn’t been in Africa while I was born, since I was born 100 years after her father’s birthday. She’d have suggested my parents choose my Great-Grandfather’s name, although my Mum wasn’t too keen on that option it turned out anyway.
So now I just have memories of my Grandma. How she enjoyed gardening; our trips to the casino; her vegetable barley soup; how she liked to provide ice cream for her grand kids, and how I got to return the favour by delivering some to her in the Foyer in August. She had a life well lived so it’s better to celebrate her long, fulfilled life than to mourn her death.
ADDED: Online condolences.
Here’s a bit more about being blown in on the wind.
A well known Wood Mountain resident passed away recently after a long cancer illness. Sherry Mielke was a friend of my family, and it’s not going to be the same visiting my parents’ home. I grew up working with Sherry’s computer requests, and building computers for her and her family who lived just down the street. The town just won’t be the same, driving by her and Bill’s place and knowing she’s not there.
Condolences to her family, and gifts in honour of her can be made to: “Sask. Cancer Agency, gift to support Allan Blair Cancer Centre or Screening Program for Breast Cancer, 204 – 3775 Pasqua St., Regina, SK S4S 9Z9″
Sad morning in Canadian country/folk music as word spreads that Raylene Rankin of The Rankin Family has died of cancer at 52 . She passed away in hospital in Halifax.
Last Summer, April and I went to the Red Shoe Pub, the Rankins’ cafe in Cape Breton, in hopes that we’d catch one of the famous singers. We didn’t, but enjoyed the experience anyway.
Fourteen years ago last night I was laying in a new bed, on my own as an adult in the wider world for the first time. Besides my worry and wonder about the coming school year was my nostalgia and longing for the previous Summer months when my Grandpa was still alive. He’d passed away only two weeks prior to my moving away from home to start university. I still remember staring at the semi-illuminated cindercrete wall past the foot of my bed, and wondering if I’d ever go a day without falling asleep thinking about missing my Grandpa, and how unfair death is.
I don’t remember when it was that I stopped thinking about his death at least once a day, but that’s the way how. You have to lose track. Not lose track of the person and the memories, but of the sense of loss, and not feel guilty about doing that.
In the fourteen years since then, I’ve met (and forgotten) scads of people. Some people who I met precisely 14 years ago are still my friends, and that was something I wouldn’t have expected then, and strive not to take for granted now.
Today I’ll probably meet a couple hundred people. Many of them are in the same spot I was in fourteen years ago — away from home for the first time, missing their family, and wondering what’s next. I love this time of year. Getting busy building a new life, a new reality, is a choice worth making.
Neil Armstrong has passed away, at 82 years of age.
He was the first person to walk on the Moon. No one has set foot on the Moon since I was born. It’s possible the last human to ever walk on the Moon has already done so, and that’s terribly sad.
He once was asked how he felt knowing his footprints would likely stay on the moon’s surface for thousands of years. “I kind of hope that somebody goes up there one of these days and cleans them up,” he said.
I agree with Armstrong, since that would be preferable to the alternative that they are never seen again, in-person.
The Moon last night.
My Dad’s cousin, Gil Dumelie, passed away last weekend. I was at his funeral today, along with about 600 (or more) other family and friends. Gil was a memorable guy, larger than life, and from the size of his family and crowd he drew to his farewell, others thought so too. He’s someone I always expected would be there in the background of my life, and his sudden passing was unsettling even though it was as peaceful as death can be.
Gil’s brother, Larry, was a Grey Cup champion in ’66, and that’s part of why I have stories of the Grey Cup being in my Grandparents’ basement in ’66 (or soon after). There’s even a photo floating around somewhere out there of their pet dog posing in the then short Cup. Ron Lancaster was asked to go knock on the door of my Great Grandmother, who was pleasantly shocked to find the quarterback on her doorstep, and Lancaster amused at the glee in a little old lady that he was there in small-town Sask, and at her door. Gil’s funeral procession was set to an uplifting, trumpet rendition of Green Is The Colour.
Last time I was at his place for a Dumelie family gathering I heard the story of how as a teacher he was taking kids to some place in the city like the Legislature, with a tall stairwell. Suddenly there were drops of rain. Wait, that can’t be rain, someone’s spitting! Looking up, he caught a glimpse of a Klein (I think it was) nephew above him and some others. Every good story needs a rascal, and Gil had a lot of stories and the right amount of good-hearted rascals to help make them with him and his very well extended, lovely family.
Andy Suknaski, award winning poet and visual artist, has passed away at age 69.
-Photo sent to me by Dale Caragata. Andy is front-center.
Andy was from my home town of Wood Mountain, and I have some memories of him as I grew up. He lived only a block away (not big odds on that, when the village is only five blocks in any direction), and the two not very notable memories I have of him are him working in his backyard on some yard work, maybe chopping caragana branches back to prevent overgrowth, and of him visiting with my parents and Bob Shields in Bob’s backyard. I was later vaguely aware of Andy’s relative fame, and am realizing he may not yet be included on the village website or Wikipedia entry, which is something I’ll have to correct. I recall a documentary about him appearing on CBC, and my Mom being somewhat unimpressed by their depiction of him. During his last years he was not particularly well, and it prevented him from writing more.
From the UCC website:
One of the most acclaimed Canadian poets of the second half of the 20th century, and a visual artist Andrew Suknaski was born in 1942 on a homestead near Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan in July 1942 to Julia (Karasinski) and Andrew Suknaski, Sr. He was educated at the Kootenay School of Art, the University of Victoria, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School of Art and Design and Simon Fraser University. He has worked at a variety of jobs from farmhand to night watchman to managing a portable one-man publishing venture that specialized in limited edition mail-outs.
Suknaski’s narrative style was the dominant influence on the Canadian Prairie poetry in the 1970s and 1980s. His published works include The Ghosts Call you Poor (1978), East of Myloona (1979), In the Name of Narid (1981), The Land They Gave Away (1982) Silk Trail (1985). His works are included in the anthologies Canadian Literature in the 70s and The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English.
In 1979, Suknaski won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award for The Ghosts You Call Poor. He has been the subject of a great amount of critical attention, including articles by Jars Balan, “Voices from the Canadian Steppes: Ukrainian Elements in Andrew Suknaski’s Poetry.” Studia Ucrainica (1988), Dawn Morgan’s, “Andrew Suknaski’s ‘Wood mountain time’ and the chronotope of multiculturalism.” Mosaic (1996) and Tatiana Nazarenko’s “Ukrainian-Canadian visual poetry: traditions and innovations.” Canadian Ethnic Studies (1996).
In 1978, the National Film Board of Canada made a documentary film on Andrew Suknaski entitled Wood Mountain Poems. In it, Suknaski talks about his part of the world, about its multicultural background, its Indian heritage, and the customs and stories of its different ethnic groups. In June of 2000, the BRAVO! channel aired a 30-minute interview with Suknaski.
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Hindsight. It’s a bitch. It’s also bitter and hypothetical at times, so take these particular musings in that context. It’s a “what could’a been”.
Jack Layton would have possibly been Prime Minister last year, had a sweeping campaign of election fraud with voter suppression not taken place across the country.
Take a moment to let these results sink in. Imagine what could have happened from the honest result of Canada’s electorate (using our effed-up-and-ancient First Past the Post electoral system). The NDP were projected to win over 100 seats, while the Conservatives were to win fewer seats than a majority. Had the Liberals (and Greens) finally decided that Canadians had had enough of a Harper minority government, they may have formed the fabled coalition with the NDP. Layton, having the party with the most seats in the majority coalition, would have been PM.
Was the state funeral for Layton granted to ease PM Harper’s conscience, since Layton could have rightfully been the Prime Minister at the time of his death last year?
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Hat tip to Rabble for the idea.
