dewline: Exclamation: "Hear, Hear!" (salut)
I've noted this before: in 2002, on Christmas Day, my father died of metastasized renal cell cancer. Some forty years earlier, a cousin of mine was born on Christmas Day.

The day has been a mixed blessing for my extended family across the decades, and I wait and wonder what twists the occasion will bring this time.

And so...here is us again. Those of us still here, anyway.

It's been a wild year, running the full range of emotion from joy to despair.

I wish you the best possible greetings of the Season, by whatever Name(s) you choose to honour it. I wish you peace, hope, wisdom, freedom, justice, and love. If you do not find them, may they find you and may it bring joy to you when they do.


dewline: Text: "Empathy in Silence" (empathy-2)
Been thinking of this without really paying much formal attention to it this past couple of years...

http://spacing.ca/toronto/2023/05/04/space-for-grief-a-public-space-model-for-community-connection-and-healing/
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
I've noted this in years past: in 2002, on Christmas Day, my father died of metastasized renal cell cancer. Some forty years earlier, a cousin of mine was born on Christmas Day.

The day has been a mixed blessing for my extended family across the decades, and I wait and wonder what twists the occasion will bring this time.

And so...here is us again. Those of us still here, anyway.

It's been a wild year, running the full range of emotion from joy to despair.

I wish you the best possible greetings of the Season, by whatever Name(s) you choose to honour it. I wish you peace, hope, wisdom, freedom, justice, and love. If you do not find them, may they find you and may it bring joy to you when they do.

The Tree
dewline: Art Against Bigotry and Fascism (artists vs fascism)
I've lost the Roma Barber Shop on Elgin Street, a place I've gotten haircuts at since moving to Ottawa in 1985. I found that out yesterday when I went over from Perfect Books to reassure the Costanza brothers that I hadn't forgotten them. The shop windows were already papered over.

I'm about to lose the Nutrition Company at Gloucester Centre unless the Husseinis can find a buyer before end of March. Bateson House, the furniture shop at Place d'Orléans Mall, is having their closing sale.

One of my nieces and nephews survived COVID-19, with help from the vaccines. Other friendly acquaintances have died of COVID before any vaccine could be delivered to them. Still others have died of the side effects of the Pandemic combining with other medical issues that they were either already dealing with or unaware that they had to deal with.

I'm not about to give up democracy to the fascists.
dewline: Quotation: "I grieve with thee" (Grief)
Naomi's funeral was held this morning.

I attended via Zoom, like some two dozen other friends and relatives. The Pandemic in Progress was certainly part of why. The travel time to and from the cemetery was also a factor. Ottawa is a very large city, so local public transit's current limitations meant a two-hour-in-each-direction travel time between where I currently live and the cemetery.

Anyway...the service was short, and I have a sense of her family and other friends being robbed of precious things by the Pandemic here too. [personal profile] siderea has discussed such things at some length in recent weeks and months: the loss of ritual, of community, stolen away by the need to protect one another. So have others, be they friends, family, or strangers to me, across the world. The rituals of shiva in particular, in this funeral's context, came to mind.

It's not the tradition I was raised with, but I don't much care about that. Unearned pain has been suffered here by too many already. And in order to move past my resentment, to master it and cast it out, I must first admit that it is here. In my heart.

And I miss my friend. One more among several, already gone.

Thank you, Naomi, for bringing what you could and what you did to my life.
dewline: Text: "Empathy in Silence" (empathy-2)
I grieve with you. I am angered with you.

Five years

Dec. 29th, 2007 08:31 pm
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
Since that Christmas morning.

I still miss my Dad.

Profile

dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

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