Not according to plan

Today's post was supposed to be a cheery one, celebrating the fact that this little blog has been going (and been reasonably active) since this date in 2006. 

Eighteen years. That's how old you need to be to vote, to buy alcohol or cannabis products, to get married without parental consent. The powers-that-be have determined that as the age which deems one an adult. 

Instead, this day is filled with shock and sadness as we have learned of the death of Alexei Navalny at a prison camp in the Arctic in Russia. 

No one in what we consider as the Free World is thinking of this as anything but the execution of the person who served as the greatest and most outspoken threat to the tyranny of Putin. 

Strangely, when I sought a bit of comfort in an online word game, the first words played on the board (the computer posted two, I'd only played one) seemed to agree that this death was no accident. 

Three stars will shine

I'm not pretending to know what happens to a person after they die, but it's hard not to think of the most recent of our losses as writers who deserve to each become a star in the heavens. 

The first of these, Brian Fawcett, died at the end of February. Considered by many as a Toronto writer, it always seemed his heart remained here in BC, specifically in Prince George where he was born and grew up. 

He said his goodbyes on Facebook, commenting in that wry way of his, that he knew the end was coming and that the words he'd posted would be his last on social media. I suppose it would have made him happy to know that he was right. 

Midway through March, it would be Ellen Jaffe who would 'leave this mortal coil.' Our paths first crossed in the early 1990s when we were co-judges for a poetry contest for the League of Canadian Poets. Soon after that, we found ourselves working as co-editors for another project for the League, and it wasn't long after that when we finally met up. Our friendship endured over the years; I ended up writing a blurb for one of her books of poetry. When one or the other of us travelled east or west, we'd invariably find the other and at least have a good long gab. 

She took the time to phone me ten days before she died. She wanted me to hear it from her that she was going into hospice. I knew she'd been doing cancer treatments for months and months, and that it had been a recent decision to stop taking them, as they were no longer offering effective treatment. So although I was sad, it wasn't a big surprise when only ten days later, she was gone. Her son was kind enough to phone me when her time came. 

But then yesterday, yet another death, and this one came with the blunt force of shock. I knew Steven some, and had once interviewed him for a literary magazine. But I knew him best by way of his writing. He was prolific, as the pile of books on his website will attest, and many of them earned him awards.

Because this is National Poetry Month, last week at our local Open Mic, participants all had to read a poem. It didn't have to be a poem they had written, they just had to give credit to whoever had done so. I read a poem, but not one of my own. Without knowing he was ill, I read a poem by Steven. It's piece that was included in the book of his that I'd read most recently, the one in the photo above, Reaching Mithymna. Oddly, it's the only poem included in the book, which is actually a memoir of his experience in 2015 when he was a volunteer in a refugee camp. If you scroll to the bottom of this obituary on CBC, you'll find the poem I read, "Christmas Work Detail, Samos." I'd chosen to read it because it seemed like the strongest poem I knew to deal with the daily crises facing refugees, so many of whom keep streaming out of Ukraine. It's a poem that's bound to stay with you, just as my memories of these three wonderful writers are bound to stay with me.  

The empty shirt in the empty chair

Those of us who live in British Columbia have much cause to observe Overdose Awareness Day. Over the past months, more people in our province have died from using drugs than from the much-more-publicized COVID-19. 

During July of this year, 175 such deaths were reported. That's over five a day. If a similar number of deaths were the result of car accidents, plane crashes, or drownings, everyone would be screaming at the government to do something about it. 

But no, too often the person who died is someone who lived in poverty, eking out the best they could to get by, one of the people who have become invisible. 

For the most part, I prefer to call these deaths what they are: deaths by poisoning. Too many of them are the result of a person using drugs that have been cut by unscrupulous entities, often with fentanyl or carfentanyl or their even deadlier cousin, isotonitazine (iso).

Yes, Vancouver has long been home to safe injection sites, but during these 'virus days' with rules about social distancing and staying home, too many people are using in isolation and as a result, not only using alone but dying alone. 

The city has several memorials to those who've been lost to this latest spate of drug-related deaths, including murals in the Downtown Eastside, and an array of shoes fastened to the Burrard Bridge. 

While I don't have anyone's shoes to mark the day, I do have a shirt from a friend who died a few years ago. To the best of my knowledge, his case was not yet one involving fentanyl, but was blamed on a batch of overly powerful heroin that had made its way into the city. 

Because I recently had to write a piece about grief, I did a fair bit of research. One of the expressions I kept coming across was that of 'the empty chair' -- the place at the kitchen table that will never again be filled by the person who has died. 

And yes, the green shirt hanging on that empty chair is in fact a shirt that once belonged to my friend, he of the unexpected death one Easter weekend. Yet another person who erred in thinking he could use alone. 

Over five deaths a day?? That's completely unacceptable. Our laws need to change -- and soon. 

Disturbing

Events of the past few days make me think of what Obi-Wan Kenobi says when the planet Alderaan is blown up: that there's been "a great disturbance in the force."

That's how it's felt, with altogether too many deaths, both global and personal.

The globe-shaking event has been the deaths of 157 people on the Ethiopian Airlines flight. So many of the victims were involved in humanitarian or environmental causes. Today's newspaper headlined their profiles with the tag, "They wanted to change the world." No wonder the UN called its members to stand and observe a moment of silence. 

Yet there've been even more deaths -- what might have to be called a spate of them. Thursday alone was the day one of our best known poets Patrick Lane died, just days shy of his 80th birthday, a day when his family planned to celebrate.

Sadly, he wasn't even the only one to go that day, not even the only poet. Carl Leggo, a poet and teacher at UBC, a man who inspired many Vancouver writers, succumbed to cancer on the same day.

Perhaps more quietly, at least with less public notice, the son of a longtime friend died that same day -- of the identical cancer as his mother, right down to it appearing in exactly the same spot.

So the weekend was one of sadness and remembering. But this particular rift in the force hadn't yet finished announcing itself.

Yesterday morning, Joe Rosenblatt, yet another of our country's great writers breathed his last. He'd been ailing for a long while, but still, no one was ready for this. His publisher was in the final stages of printing covers so he could bind Joe's new book, Bite Me! The only blessing in Joe's passing is the fact that the first review of the book came out on the weekend, and hearing that a friend had taken the time to read it to him.

As for the rest of us, certainly, we go on. But not without feeling saddened, diminished. Even the hellebore's blossom, outside this morning, looks as though it too feels the need to grieve.

Fleeting glimpses

Where the Vernal Equinox was yesterday, today is the first full day of spring -- and it feels like it. It's bright and sunny, and there's a light breeze that carries the sweet scent of blossoms. It's even quite warm outside (as long as you're in the sun).

But it's a day that brings a small chill along with it, as it marks one month since the death of a friend who lived in the neighbourhood.

She'd always seemed frail, but maybe in the way that thin, pretty blonde women can appear to me. She embodied that lovely fragility we once associated with old-fashioned china dolls.

There hasn't been a service -- not even an announcement -- so I suppose I have some unresolved feelings surrounding her death, especially as I was the one on the phone with the 9-1-1 person.

I probably won't forget what it was like to be standing in the road when the firetruck, lights flashing,  sirened its way to a stop in front of me. Nor will I forget the confusion of several conversations going on at once, as the struggle to get her to treatment went on.

There's more that I remember, but that's something I still need to hold in my heart, a heart that still gets a knot when I think of her. It feels something like that heart of knotty tree roots enclosing the batch of crocuses in the photo.

Someone too young, someone to remember.