Loss

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I lost my cousin this week. Today was his funeral. I tried to prepare myself for this event.

It turns out there is no possible way to prepare oneself for a funeral.

Grief. Loss. A misery so profound when his surviving mother wailed out loud how she lost him. It filled the chamber, cutting through all those in attendance.

A dagger in the heart.

Life took him along a different path then mine; our paths diverged. When I knew him, he had a ready smile and a quick wit. A sense of humour that made him popular and well regarded by all. An athlete as well, baseball by choice.

I have to admit, I was jealous. I did not have that natural charm and grace that he seemed to so effortlessly exude. That pointed to my own personal insecurities however, and I have been working on those since those days.

I had not seen him in some time. Weeks became months, months became years. Life kept pushing us onwards. It was only his passing that brought us together again.

It is my shame to admit that. Family has always been a point of friction in my sense of self. I needed to withdraw in order to find some manner of healing within.

At his funeral, I learned how much had experience he had accumulated in his life. He had a family of his own now. A son, tall and proud. He looks so much like his father. He travelled. He climbed a mountain.

He battled his own demons. Sometimes he won. Sometimes the demons won.

I did not know any of this. How could I have missed those moments? Why didn’t we connect beforehand?

Before it was too late?

So I listened, to his friends, to his family, as they talked of his achievements. I listened to the elders as they spoke of journey into the next stage of his existence. He is now surrounded by his siblings who preceeded him, by his ancestors. They said he was home now.

He was a good man. I miss him. I could have learned from him.

During the ceremony, there came a time where the speaker asked if anyone wanted to stand and speak of his experience with him. The chamber was silent but for the occasional sniffs of the tearful. I clenched my hands on the pew in front of me. My feelings were bursting, my sadness was overwhelming.

I said nothing.

My thoughts were spinning around my head, memories of our times together, the sound of his laughter, his easy going nature. Times I’ll never have again. He was gone. He is gone,

Just gone.

Something inside me needed to be heard. These words demanded to be written. My cousin is gone, but he will be remembered.

Thank you Jeff.

The Slide

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A memory I often revisit is in when I was a child, living in New Westminster, British Columbia. This suburb is entirely built on a hill, sloping down towards the Fraser River. My family lived on what was near the bottom, a short distance away from the river, although numerous factories and other industries blocked our view.

My elementary school was located some distance away, practically straight up the hill. I walked every day, up the hill in the morning, down the hill in the late afternoon. The weather in British Columbia was always either sunny, or raining. Only very rarely it snowed. I was never prepared for any eventuality regardless.

During those times of the year when it snowed, the mild weather always ensured that the snow melted quickly during the day. During the night. all that water froze. Frozen water is also called Ice in many countries. It is however, largely unknown in New Westminster.

I hated those mornings, staring at the steep, seemingly endless ice-sheathed slope I was forced to ascend. I knew how difficult it was going to be, I dreaded it actually. But every day, I walked up that hill.

Cautiously, ever so cautiously, I would plant one foot, then brace it as I prepared to move the other. Such determination would have been unusual to observe in one so young had any been watching. Plodding focus brought me up that hill, 2 meters, then 10. Then it happened, as it always happened.

The Slide.

The sidewalk seemed to grow weary of my feeble attempts and of it’s own volition would shift, pushing me back down the hill. I had done nothing wrong! My feet were planted, my pace steady. I had taken no unnessary risks. Yet the bottom beckoned.

Spreading my feet wide in an attempt to maintain my balance, I watched helplessly as the progress I made fell away. As I came to a stop, I realized that I had still some progress. I didn’t have a backpack then, just a paperbag containing my lunch, a bologna sandwich with mustard on one side and buttered on the other, and a small collection of worn pencils stuffed in one of my jean jacket pockets. I moved the lunchbag into my other hand, hoping it will help with my balance.

I resumed my climb.

I have no true recollection of the number of times I walked up that icy hill on those ‘winter’ mornings. No recollection of the munber of times I fell and hurt myself, freezing my hands as they pushed against the frozen sidewalk. Forward progress marked by frequent backward progress. Dogged determination took me to school, every day.

I tried so many other ways to get to school. Different roads, different paths. I always started off at the bottom of a hill, there was no way to avoid that particular fact. I never once considered asking my dear old dad for a ride however. That way was madness.

I am much older now, looking back on those times, that younger self that stopped at the bottom of the hill every morning and looked up at the climb ahead. It was then, and still is now, the perfect metaphor for my life. Progress marked by setback after setback.

It is also a exemplary example of my work to combat depression.

It is the Hill upon which I walk.

It is the Slide that pushes me down.

It is my determination that brings me up and over that hill.

Every day.

Cycles

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He rolled over in bed as the alarm went off for the tenth time.

 

“I am going to die,” he thought to himself.

 

He thought that thought every time he woke up. At this point in his life, it was almost reassuring. Still, he dragged himself out of bed and got in the shower.

 

The day awaited.

 

The city was empty. Almost empty. A sharp wind swept through the downtown core, forcing him to pull his jacket close against it. The sun was bright and intense, yet when he stepped into shadow, the temperature dropped instantly.

 

The change in the world was most noticable in the core. Buildings were mostly deserted, manned by the slimmest of work crews and security. The bus drivers of the public transit system were the most obvious, in their matching uniforms. They gathered were they could, singly, in pairs or less frequently, in larger groups. They were extremely noticable, like a cult perhaps. They always acknowledged each other with a nod or a word.

 

They were required to be in the downtown core but there was nowhere for them to BE in there.

 

He coughed suddenly. That old worrying cough. It had nothing to do with the current crisis sweeping the land, but he cast a furtive glance around to see if anyone noticed. An approaching elderly man caught his eye, then the old man intentionally adjusted his face mask in response and provided extra space to separate them.

 

A sensible precaution, he thought, as the old man wandered by.

 

He was sick, it was true. It had nothing to do with the global pandemic sweeping the world however. The cough was likely from growing up in the house of a chain smoker. His was a mental illness, a disease of the mind, of the soul. It would take his life as sure as any cancer though, if he was not careful.

 

The social restrictions in place were meant to keep the disease from spreading, to limit it’s spread and keep it to a manageable level. That meant keeping people at a distance. Staying away from them. He had no problem with this. This was his normal. Reaching out was always the hardest part for him, and now he couldn’t do that.

 

He was drowning inside himself.

 

He looked up at the sky, squinting against the hard glare of the sun. The universe spread out before him, a hard and indifferent place, vast and unknowable. He was insignificant, he knew that, accepted that. A mote contemplating infinity. Strangely enough, this thought brought him peace.

 

Wars erupted continually across the planet. Civil unrest grew here and abroad. Illnesses swept through the world. He would survive these, or he wouldn’t. He understood that his actions didn’t matter in the long run. He could still get sick, or shot, or jailed.

 

So, he wore a mask. He washed and sanitized his hands regularly and maintained as much social distance as was required. He also kept his mind open to the racial unrest that was happening out there. He listened, and tried to understand.

 

He was hopeful, at the end of the day. The world would get better. It would survive this. Or it wouldn’t.

 

The next morning, he woke up and thought to himself,

 

“I am going to die.”

 

Then he pulled the blankets over his head.

The Final Wish

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Ellis was never a conventional man.

This was the most apparent when he died.

His beloved common-law wife, in the midst of her grief, found his will amongst his various possessions. Reading it with trembling hands, her eyes skimming the words until a passage caught her attention. Shaking her head in disbelief, she began to laugh, tears of laughter mingling with her tears of grief.

His last wish, his final wish, was scribbled in on the very bottom of the last page, in his typical, barely human version of the written word. “Dearest beloved”, he began, “what I am about to ask won’t be easy. It may well be impossible. But, I know that you have the strength, the determination, and the smarts to pull off the impossible.”

“Babe,” he rarely used that word, “I want to be out there, among the stars. I need you to send my brain into outer space.”

She sat for a time, pondering the implications of his last request. Wheels began to turn in her mind. Then the plan came into focus.

The immediate needs came first. She had his brain carefully removed and stored, preserved in inert fluids and sealed in a clear, see-through jar. She refused to look at it, being far too unnerved by the sight.

She cremated his remains. He was indifferent in his will as to what should be done with his body, he considered his brain as the center of himself, his soul as it were. She never agreed with that, considering his heart to be his greatest strength. After an emotional three day trip, she scattered his remains under the tree that she planted as a child on her family`s plot of land. The tree, grown now to a majestic size, solemly accepted the new company.

She took some time afterwards for herself. The next step would require all of her focus. She knew it would not be simple.

She sent several querying emails to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She was looking for general information about booking passage and estimated costs. She received no response. She was not surprised.

She looked at SpaceX, a private industry that dabbles in space work. Their response was swift: a return email with the question, “Are you serious?”, with several laughing emoji. She calmly responded with the details of Ellis’ will and simply asked for an estimated cost. They responded with a number. She was not surprised at that either.

With limited funds at her disposal, she turned to social media. A crowdfunding campaign swept throughout the internet. She had considerable experience in managing her social prescence; she knew how to get results.

The novelty of Ellis`s last request under her management caught the internet`s attention.

A first, local celebrities, some she knew personally, lent their support. This caught the attention of local media. Before she knew it, she was managing interview offers from around the world.

The world, then, so full of fear and uncertainty, was entranced with her work. The notion of once again reaching out into the stars was a welcome diversion. The crowdfunding campaign far exceeded anyone’s expectations. Soon, she acquired had the funds to professionally pursue SpaceX to fulfill their initial agreement.

They were happy to take her money.

The plan was simple. The container holding the brain was to be shipped into Earth orbit during one of SpaceX’ routine supply runs to the International Space Station and launched onboard a rocket. Their only request was that they broadcast it live for publicity purposes.

The rocket was a basic yet sturdy design, with a limited chemical propellant. A fire and forget model. With the excess funding, she was able to modify Ellis’ container with plastic googly eyes. She knew he would have wanted that. She also wanted him to not be alone for his final voyage, so she sent with him the ashes of his beloved cat, Wesley. The pair were inseperable in life, so it seemed fitting for them to be together again for this trip.

The rocket was launched with much fanfare. The world watched and wished it a safe voyage. The destination was the center of the Milky Way galaxy, a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A. The estimated time of the journey would take 450 million years, at a rough guess. The world moved on, and soon forgot about Ellis and Wesley.

Attempting to hit a target at that distance, some 28 000 light years away, even a target as large as a super massive black hole, was not going to be a simple task. This was compounded by the fact that the navigators working for SpaceX did not take the task very seriously. They mostly just eye-balled a flight plan. No one would be alive to find out that they erred.

So, in the fullness of time, Ellis missed his final destination.

The little rocket and it’s two occupants bore silent witness to the life of a galaxy. Stars were born, other stars died. Life flourished on some worlds as it also died on others. Various gravitational forces made the googly eyes fastened to Ellis’ container jostle, just a little, as though they were actively watching the passing of eternity.

The aged and decaying rocket, after a significantly longer period of travel then anticipated, was finally captured in orbit around a small blue-green world. Mostly ocean, with a few large land masses, life had found a foothold here. The ancient Milky Way galaxy was crumbling, collapsing really, but life, beautiful, wonderful, life, had once again reached out and up on a small and insignificant planet.

Trapped in an inexorable death spiral around the planet, the rocket began to heat up as it entered the upper atmosphere. The aged rocket swiftly disintegrated under the immense pressure. The container holding the brain of Ellis and his beloved cat evaporated and spread out along kilometers over the surface of this new world. The googly eyes frosted as it encountered atmosphere but soon it too was destroyed, the frost appearing as tears on the plastic eyes.

A pair of life forms witnessed the fiery demise in silent awe. Lovers, they each made a wish upon the fallen celestial object. One reached down and picked up a small domesticated felinoid creature that it loved as well, though in different measure. The felinoid nuzzled affectionately against it’s owner’s chest.

Home, they all felt. They were home.

Standing in the Face of the Storm

 

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I haven’t written much lately, I have a lot on my mind, and a not inconsiderable portion of it involves the Coronavirus. I worry about Us. All of Us. I know, I know, big thoughts from a small person.

 

It doesn’t feel right to talk about what’s happening in the world. It feels more like a private matter, like I’m violating a private taboo. Which is of course, completely ridiculous.

 

We all face death on our own, that much is true. Some beg. Some cry. Others accept it with grace and solemnity. I can’t say for certain, but I might laugh at mine, or perhaps challenge it to a game of Twister.

 

We, as a species, are facing an event that we haven’t seen in generations. The people who survived the Black Plague would have some sage advice for us in the coming months. We are not ready.

 

We choose not to be ready.

 

This is a vital distinction.

 

I work in a postition that can be called ‘front line’. I drive a bus for the city. Every day, I drive hundreds of people to and fro. I am frequently exposed to the illnesses of others. I have little to no protection against the common diseases that people spread, in fact, I am more susceptible because I have Type II Diabetes: I get sick easier and stay sick longer.

 

In the wake of the announcement of this new pandemic, many employers have had their people work from home. This has certainly affected the number of people on my bus. I’d hazard a guess that I pick up about a third as much as I used to.

 

That still leaves about a hundred people I encounter per day. Any one of them could be infected. I think about that any time someone coughs on my bus. And I get a lot of people who do.

 

I transport a lot of seniors. My route passes through numerous retirement residences. I hear them talk about why they are going out; several don’t believe in the seriousness of the situation and scoff at those who do. Others say that they don’t have much choice in the matter, They have errands that need to run, food that needs to be picked up, bills that need to be paid, and no one to help them. It breaks my heart to hear them talk so.

 

I pick up day workers and others who can’t afford to not work. A lot of people live Hand to Mouth, living day by day. I was once one of them. It is hard to see them, determined but also fatalistic. They know what they are doing is dangerous, but they have no choice.

 

Those are the ones I see that are coughing the most.

 

So here I am, sitting in a bus in Canada, watching the world respond to this outbreak. Some countries are trying to be responsible and get ahead of the situation, others, less so. I am also watching some world leaders use this pandemic to further their political agenda. And I fear for us as a species.

 

Not that I fear that this disease will wipe us out, but I fear that we will learn the wrong lessons from our survival. An Us vs. Them tactic, an isolationist approach. Things that only divide. Already, many countries are more blatantly espousing old hatreds and pulling out the drums of war.

 

We will be reduced if this allowed to continue.

 

We have made so many steps forward, we cannot allow ourselves to slide backwards.

 

We can get through this if we work together and stay together.

 

Please, pratice safe distancing and wash your hands.

 

 

 

Communication is Key*

 

A friend posted this photograph of a sign they have in their house. Simple, yet ever so powerful. Damning, despite the cheery background.

 

At this time, Wet`suewet’en protesters are blocking the construction of a pipeline on their lands. Indigenous people across Canada are blocking railways in support of this issue, crippling transport and passenger train service. Standoffs are occuring, people are being arrested. And this photograph has never felt more succinct.

 

I am a Nakoda Sioux, from the Carry the Kettle reservation near Wolseley, Sask. I am First Nations. I am  Indigenous. I am Native. I am Indian. And I am about a dozen or so racial slurs that have been invented for us over the years.

 

They are fighting…no, WE are fighting for control over our lands. For acknowledgement that this land was ours. We are fighting to reclaim the knowledge that was destroyed by colonization. We are fighting to recover the identity that was stolen from us.

 

My parents were taken from their reservations, from their families and homes, then placed in residential schools. What they experienced there was something they would never speak of, except in alcohol slurred whispers. The memories were far too much for them to endure.

 

They were children.

 

They were fragments of people when they returned. Bits and pieces of indigenous and christian teachings, jammed together, neither fitting well with each other. When they found each other and began a family, this little bit of knowledge was all they could give. They could understand their language, but my mother could not speak hers, and my father, only a little.

 

I grew to adulthood with this little amount of knowledge. I was native, and proud of it, though I knew so little of my ways. Practically none.

 

I was an adult when I first heard of the Canadian government’s attempt at reconciliation. Money. Lots of it, being thrown around at the survivors of the residential school system. Just money.

 

I spent my entire life watching my parents struggle with their experiences, with their traumas from living in a residential school. The government seemed to think that money would solve everything. But would it? Did it?

 

It didn’t. Reconciliation is a simply a word, a concept. Writing about it, making a speach and broadcasting it to the world doesn’t make it any more real than the positive effects of the phrase “Thoughts and prayers.”

 

Reconciliation happens when two groups of people finally open up about their experiences. The problem as I see it is that the government is essentially a faceless organization with multiple, sometimes contradictory, urges. Urges that are fulfilled by various levels of bureaucrats. How can true reconciliation begin when the faces of the government change as if with the season?

 

The leaders of these protests have perhaps learned from the lessons of the past. The protests and standoffs that are taking place across Canada are perhaps a new form of communication. One that the government of Canada cannot afford to ignore.

 

The government will listen. We will make them.

 

Reconciliation is Dead.

 

But communication is still possible.

 

*Credit to Rebecca Holm for the excellent photograph and the kernel of an idea.

The Promise of Eden

The military transport rolled lazily through the plains. The gunner on watch duty lit a cigarette and laughed along with the joking going on inside the vehicle. The plains went on for kilometers, providing him with unrestricted line of sight. An ambush here was unlikely.

After another hour of travel, the vehicle stopped at an intersection. An ill-used road peeled off in a northerly direction. A lone passenger tossed a large dufflebag to the ground and disembarked, then waved goodbye to the driver and other occupants. A roar of goodbyes echoed from the transport as it roared away, covering the person in a cloud of dust.

Covering her face with her left hand, the woman easily picked up and shouldered her dufflebag with her other hand. She pulled out a cap from her pocket and settled it on her head, covering her short cut, blonde hair. Removing her hand that covered her face, she glanced at it. Already coated in dust. She sighed.

She did not miss dust at all.

Petra Sigurdson, first lieutenant in the New Eden Psychic Armed Forces, took out her favorite and to date, only pair, of sunglasses and was just about to place them over her green eyes when she stopped. She scanned the rolling plains around her, noting nothing out of the ordinary. Brown plants mixing with brown ground, then lifting up into a blue skyline with only a few clouds. Boring. Nothing changes around here.

She closed her eyes and focused her concentration. It came easily to her. She was a prodigy, her instructors proclaimed. She opened her eyes, and the world was lit anew.

Vibrant shades of colours, colours she could never clearly describe to others who were not gifted as she, danced before her vision. Life was coloured like this. She could see the tiny auras of insects crawling along the ground, rodents burrowing in the ground. Even the plants swayed with a hypnotic colour. Everything shimmered. It was beautiful. It captivated her every time.

She lifted her own hands into view and examined her own aura. Healthy. Happy. A small slash of anxiety? She looked towards home and the slash grew a little. She was wasting time. Blinking once or twice, the world shifted back to normality. She slipped on the sunglasses and began walking towards home. Towards the small village of Carter.

A brisk hour later, Petra crested a rise and the dozen or so houses that comprise the village of Carter came into view. Waves of nostalgia swept over over her. Memories of her childhood spent here, playing with her friends in the fields and pastures. Education in the small, cramped school house. Huddled around the fireplace during the cold winter nights, listening to tales told by her grandfather.

Her grandfather! She stopped suddenly, lost in reverie. She missed old Jesiah greatly. She focused her mind, and the memories became crystal clear, as though she were living them for the first time.

The wind roared outside, rattling the windows. A cold draft blew in through the bottom of the door. Ma and Pa were in the kitchen, cleaning up after a tasty dinner. She could hear their giggles as they laughed over something. Young Petra was sitting by grandpa Jesiah as he tended the fire. Petra loved the old man. He smelled…stale, but then her young mind imagined that all old people smelled like that. She tugged on his pant leg.

“Grandpa? Grandpa?”, she asked. “Can you tell me about Earth?”

Jesiah chuckled as he put the fire iron down. He sat back down on his chair with a groan. He motioned for his drink, which Petra ran off to retrieve. Moonshine. His own special concoction. He takes small sip and winces as the fluid burns its way down.

“All right, all right,” he rests the drink in his lap. Petra excitedly sits down in front of him, her back to the warm fire. He rubs his beard thoughtfully.

“Let’s see,” he begins. “Old Earth was the cradle, do you understand? We began there, all of us. But we were stupid, short-sighted. We used her up. Poisoned her sky, burnt the earth, drained the oceans, all in the name of ‘progress.’ We couldn’t live there anymore, we had to leave. So, we stip mined her for the last time, and she gave us the last of what she had left.”

“The old earthers, they were clever. They built ships. Space ships. Gen-er-a-tion ships.” He sounded out that last part. “Ships that people would live and die on, and their kids would do the same. And their kids, and their kids. All the while, the ship would fly through the cold dark of space. Twelve ships left Earth and aimed for the nearest galaxy. Do you know the names of those ships, Petra?”

“Of course Grandpa!”, she replied. She straightened her back and receited from memory the names of legend:”

“There was the Hope of Tomorrow,

The Starlost,

The Wayfarer,

The Longstrider,

The Song of Distant Shores,

The Light in the Darkness,

The Remembrance,

The Greater Good,

The New Dawn,

The Seeker,

The Stellar Eye,

and our own ship, The Promise of Eden.”

“Clever girl, very clever,” Jesiah says with a smile. “You’ll go far. But you missed one,” he says mischieviously.” Petra is confused, her teachers never mentioned a thirteenth ship!

“The last ship to leave old Earth, they spent years in orbit, holding prayers of remembrance, asking forgiveness for what humanity had done. They didn’t follow us, no. Instead they turned around and shot for the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, the home of old Earth.”

“That ship was The Mourners of the Lost.”

Young Petra’s eyes widened in excitement.

Jesiah continues, “the twelve ships scattered, each following it’s own course, a sliver of hope really, to find a habital world. For more years then I can count, our ship flew alone in the dark. Each ship was a marvel of science, holding everything we need to make a new home. It’s finest feature was an art-i-fic-ial intelligence. A brain, that ran the whole ship.”

“Somewhere in the long night, that big old brain went insane. It came to see the people on board as vermin that needed to be destroyed.” Petra shuddered.

“The brain was smart, but limited in what it could do. It couldn’t do anything big against us without harming itself, but it had control of all the drones, so it began a war of machine versus man.”

“The machines struck hard and fast, and before they knew what was going on, the humans were on the run. Hundreds, maybe thousands died, but the rest went underground, hiding in the shafts and tunnels that criss-crossed the ship. A different type of long night had begun.”

“Living like actual vermin, in the walls or any other hiding holes they could find, the humans fought with tooth and nail against the machines. They were losing.” Jesiah leans back in his seat and ponders. Petra leans forward, eager to hear more.

“Who knows how long they fought for? No one living now remembers. But, one day, the Godsend arrived.” Jesiah looks down at Petra as she reverently whispers, “The psychics.”

Jesiah nods. ‘Yes, the psychics. No one knows how or why the gift suddenly appeared in our people, but it gave us the edge we needed in our fight. We took back critical control points and deck by deck, we took back our ship.”

“On the last day of the war, our hero, the legendary psychic called only Grey, ripped open the bulkhead protecting the machine brain with only the powers of her mind. It’s defenses had been wiped away, but the machine had the final laugh. It attemped to deleted ALL of our historical files. Our past. Everything that we had brought with us on our journey.”

“Grey and the others with her raced to stop the machine, but they were only partially successful. Our history, the history of humankind, was scrambled. Fact and fiction, it was all combined. We saved our history, but no longer knew where or when or if the events actually happened.”

“The machine was also hiding a profound secret: it had found a habital planet.”

Jesiah went on about what happened after: the planetary landing, the exploration, the hostile encounters with the indigenous population, the folk they would call the Reapers, and the bloody civil war that happened amongst the colonists, and the tenuous stalemate that occurred. But young Petra was drifting away into sleep, warmed by the fire and a full belly. It was a dear memory.

Looking up to the sky, Petra spotted the small moon, Luna rising from the horizon. That means that it’s larger sister, Terra, would be soon behind. Her ears also pick up an unusual sound. Drums. That means Reapers. She adjusted her dufflebag and picked up her pace into town.

She needs to alert the town watch and check in on her friends. The ones she left behind when she began her training in Eden city, the capital. She hoped they were ok. Drums meant that the Reapers were preparing for war. The village of Carter was not prepared to resist, having been peaceful for years. With her new training at the psychic academy, Petra knows she can help.

She hopes her strength is enough.

The Magik of Christmas

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I low key hate Christmas.

 

The monstrous levels of commercialism. The forced notion of “Happiness” and “Peace on Earth” on what is essentially just another day as we swing around the sun. Plus, the fact that it practically starts the day after Halloween.

 

I am also painfully aware of how depression levels spike during the holidays, increasing suicide rates. My own depresssion spiked, or sunk, to a new low last year, leading to a mental health crisis that took me the entire year to recover from. It’s an ongoing process that even now, I must work daily at maintaining.

 

In the midst of all this seasonal ‘fakeness’, I found one thing that helps to stem the tide of rising depression. I volunteer for a charity. I help people as they struggle through their own holiday issues.

 

I donate my skills as a professional bus driver to operate a city transit bus as it is temporarily transformed into one of Santa Claus’ legendary reindeer and loaded with gifts, plus a bus full of other volunteers dressed as christmas elves. We even have a Santa.

 

We drive across town,  delivering gifts to families that have been nominated by people in the community. These families have been selected because of various reasons: perhaps they have suffered a loss in the family and are still grieving during the holidays, or one or both adults in the family have been laid off and now the family is struggling, on several occasions, we have visited families that have newly arrived to Canada, after making a long and difficult journey.

 

I volunteer, I say to those who ask, because it’s easy and fun. I merely drive the bus, the other do all the hard work, going into houses loaded with gifts, singing and being merry, and dealing with overly excited children. I say that I enjoy the challenge of driving my bus to locations I am rarely allowed to drive, that I enjoy the test of my skills.

 

I say these things because it hides a deeper truth.

 

During my first year as a volunteer for the charity, I signed up as a driver. When the coordinaters saw me, they immediately made an offer that I step up as a Santa Claus. I am a large man, tall and robust. It seemed a natural choice. I felt a great deal of apprehension at the offer, but looking into the eyes of my wife, I felt that the choice had already been made.

 

I underwent strenuous, vigorous training to become a Santa. It would not be out of place in a comedic montage during a comedy film, finding the right suit, mastering the laugh, learning the songs. It takes a special breed of person to be a Santa, that much is true.

 

My assignment for that first year was hospitals. Our charity sends a team of Santas plus elves and a massive amount of small, stuffed teddy bears out to all of the hospitals and long term care facilities around the city. Our job was to make sure that every patient gets a delightful stuffed bear and some quality time with Santa and his elves.

 

For me, it was an intensely difficult time. I am shy and withdrawn in public and this was akin to diving headfirst into the deep end of public scrutiny. The costume helped, as it provided me with a ‘mask’ to hide behind, and a persona as well. I could be “Jolly”, even if I wasn’t actually. I knew then what it must be like to be an actor. My hat goes off to the people of that profession.

 

But the beauty and dignity I witnessed there has stayed with me all these years later. I was privileged to see all manner of people living as best they can in difficult situations. In the dementia wards, I saw so many people who could barely remember what day, or month, or year it was, but they always recognized Santa as I came in, singing with my elves. Their faces would light up with such joy that my heart broke every time I saw it.

 

My elves and I would break off and spend time with each person in that wing. We made sure that they each came away with a teddy bear and a hug, or a firm handshake for the non-huggers. We couldn’t stay very long however, we had a lot of people to visit and only a little time to see them all.

 

One room we entered was unnaturally silent. It was a meeting room, with a long table in the middle. There sat a woman with an elderly man in a hospital gown. The man was staring blankly forward. he didn’t react as I introduced myself, nor acknowledge the teddy bear he recieved. The woman explained that his dementia had taken him to the point of catatonia, he was able to eat and could be led around, but that was the limit. But there was one way that she, his daughter, could still connect with him.

 

She calmly took out a flute case and set it in front of him and opened it for him. She also took out a matching case and set it up for herself. She then took the flute from his case and handed it to him. Still staring forward, he took the instument and with must have been muscle memory alone, placed his fingers correctly along the flute. She then took up her own flute and began playing a few notes.

 

At first, there was no response. She began again, and this time, he started to play along! His eyes were dull and lifeless, but his playing was strong and sure. Their music echoed through the halls and several elves were drawn to the room. We watched and were witness to a daughter connecting to her father and it was the most beautful thing we had ever seen.

 

She did this several times, starting a song, then he would join in. It was wonderful, amazing. I think we were all weeping by the end. Two intruments together, making beautiful music. A rare treasure. We were all busy giving gifts, but we recieved a momentous gift ourselves.

 

This reason alone is why I no longer volunteer to be a Santa Claus and only offer to drive the bus. I am not strong enough. My heart cannot stand to bear witness to such beauty again, it would break.

 

Many years later, as my mother spent her last few years in a long term care facility, a Santa came to visit her. She was so excited! He spent some time with her, and left her a cute, cuddly teddy bear. She was so happy, she talked a length about the visit.

 

I still have a teddy bear from my time as a Santa. I look at it from time to time, and think of the man and his daughter. I also think of my mother. I believe now in Santa Claus, thanks to this charity.

 

The Magic of Christmas charity.

 

A Start*

I’ve always been shy.

I’ve always had a hard time fitting in, especially as a child. As an adult, I have learned that I don’t need to fit in. Self-acceptance has been one of the most difficult facets of my journey.

As a child though, it was much worse. My shyness held me back. I couldn’t open up to people, and it only got worse around the people that I actually liked. As a result, I had very few friends. The other kids didn’t know what to make of me. I was wierd. Different. I was picked on and at times, bullied. But mostly, I was left alone.

One year, grade 5 if I can recall correctly ( and I so rarely do about my childhood, repression as a defence mechanism was I tool I used regularly, it seems ), I made a friend. A classmate was randomly assigned to me for a class project. We connected as we worked together. We did what the youths of my era did, we played outside, we talked, we laughed. To my eternal regret, I can no longer remember his name.

One day, the teacher stepped out of the classroom for a washroom break. I seized the opprtunity and turned around to ask my friend a question. Then, it happened.

The entire class turned on us and began to shout:

“fag!”

“Fag!”

“FAG!”

It became a chant, everyone in time yelling it again and again. I was a child, I had no idea what it meant. I only ever heard it used as a derogative. As a bad word.

My friend began to cry, then fled the room.

I sat there and endured. The life I had led had conditioned me to sit and take the abuse. I remember my hands balling into white knuckled fists on the desk.

My teacher finally returned and quieted the class. Then, he found my friend and brought him back to class. Everything returned to normal.

At the end of the day, my friend quickly packed his bag and left the school. He didn’t say a word to me. The next morning, before class began, I found him. I wanted to make sure he was ok. He was my friend.

He turned to me and said, “I’m sorry Ellis, I can’t be your friend anymore. I don’t want to be called that name ever again.” He then walked into class and never spoke to me again. He was my friend.

I spent the rest of that year, and the year after, alone and friendless.

It was in the final year of elementary school, grade 7, that I was tasked to guide the new kid around school. He was Irish, and very brash. And loud. He loved to laugh and joke.

We became friends. He helped me to discover that I had a sense of humour, that I loved making people laugh. We spent the rest of the year as friends, then my family moved away and I never saw him again.

His name, I remember.

*A Start was a story of mine originally written as a post on Facebook. I’ve transcribed it here, with minor alterations and improvements.

A Discovery of Selves

My name is Ellis Obi-wan Hotomani.

It is a name of my own choosing.

I am clever. I am caring. I am compassionate. I am silly. I am irreverant. I am also sad a lot.

I was born in Calgary in 1974, in the old General Hospital in Bridgeland, which was demolished some time ago. I always suspected that I broke the mold when I was born there. I also suspect that I am mistaken about that.

I am an indigenous first nations person, from the Carry the Kettle first nations reserve, in Saskatchewan. I have never lived on my reserve, however. I know that it would have changed a great number of things about myself and I often wonder about that.

Both of my parents are Residential School survivors. Their experiences changed them fundamentally. Intergenerational Trauma tends to pass from one generation to the next, as the name describes. As such, I am also a survivor of that trauma.

As a child, experiencing those inherited traumas, I did not understand them. I just assumed that it was a part of life. People can survive in nearly any environment, it is a strength of our species.

I grew up under these stressors, not even aware of them, yet affected by them nonetheless. I grew up without Hope. I saw it in others as they planned for the future, but never saw it in myself. I could barely conceive of what layed beyond tomorrow, much less plan for it.

I was reckless, heedless even. I had pain that I needed to bury. Alcohol became my friend. All too soon, all I did was work and drink.

I was lonely as well. I was painfully shy, afraid to reach out to someone, equally afraid of what might happen if my affections were returned. I was determined to be unloved.

But I was also clever. I always wanted to understand things, even if I never turned that towards myself. I indirectly learned about myself through several college courses studying native history, which would come in handy later.

My self-loathing was on the rise. I was running towards a dark end, and I knew it. I had no hope. But change happened.

I discovered role-playing games.

Tabletop rpgs. Sitting at a table with a group of friends, working together, solving problems and having fun. All without drinking. I suddenly found a group of people to socialize with without alcohol. I am now a gamer, loud and proud.

More importanly, I discovered Hope. I discovered that I could effect change in my life with nothing more than will and determination. It was lifechanging.

I wanted to learn more about myself and my people. I knew so little about them. I was culturally disconnected. It is an unusual concept. How does one not know where one is from? How many people can say that they know nothing about their people or where they are from?

This is what the residential schools intended. To create an entire group of people with no idea where they are from, where they belong. To my shame, I am a success story.

I try now to learn. I have spoken to elders. I try to connect. I am from two worlds, and to this day, feel that I belong to neither. I have tried to heal, to move past my trauma, and be a better person. I struggle daily against my depression, using medication and psychological training to help me.

I write to express myself and document my journey. I am happier now then I have been in my entire life. I have love, and am now loved in turn.