"Multi-Grain, Not White"....February 28, 2000

"Multi-Grain, Not White"....February 28, 2000

Mid Evening...

...and I languidly let go of this precursory Spring day. Oh how I appreciatively soaked in the day's record breaking high and with it, the looming, beckoning cloud cover, enveloping fog, and the symphonic trickle and drip of runoff coming from the ground below me and the rooftops above me. It is the kind of day that is highly misleading, allowing us to forget for a time that the worst winter month is yet ahead of us. While January and February are usually bitter cold, it is a predictable, expected, pattern that we are prepared to cuddle through until the deep freeze finally snaps. March, however, can bring a diverse, ever changing set of weather patterns from freezing, sunny days to mild, wet, stormy days that bring snow, freezing rain, and rain all in the span of a couple hours.

In retrospect, it was also a befitting day to learn of unexpected death, a community's grief, and my own rare, aphonic insensitivity.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

My workday began as it normally does - rushed. I rushed to bathe, I rushed to dress, I rushed through my morning coffee and smoke, only to rush out the door forgetting my day planner, causing me to rush in to retrieve it, rush out the door again forgetting my gas money, causing me to rush into retrieve that, rush out the door forgetting my travel mug and smokes, causing me to rush in to grab them then rush to the car. I then rushed to drive to my first client of the morning, a single mother of one that I check in on every weekday morning to ensure that she is getting through her morning routine more smoothly than I. Her mornings are normally no better than mine, albeit antithetical given the fact that I usually have to wake her up. Haste is not even a word in her vocabulary; I'd bet money on it. As much as I could benefit from backing up the train a bit, she could make great strides by adding just a couple of chunks of coal to the fire.

This morning was no different than any other morning for her, either. I arrived to her house in the First Nations Community to find her half asleep on the couch, seemingly with no intention of moving so much as a limb any time soon. Her son, she said, was still in bed asleep and not going to school today. Status quo, it seemed initially.

This morning, however, she had good reason. A family member, a young man barely twenty years old, dropped dead Saturday of causes unknown to her. I was deeply saddened both for her and by the tragedy itself, and in leaving her to grieve, offered to do anything for her I could. All she had to do was call.

While I longed to be able to return to bed and satiate my fuzzy, groggy, early morning head, my day had to continue. And continue it did, with tutoring behaviourally challenged children all morning and afternoon at another of the three First Nations Communities in this area. It was a long day, and while I usually am able to break midway through, I was unable to do so today in light of a meeting that had already been rescheduled twice due to my illnesses and ill-fated car.

I was therefore tired and a bit cranky when I arrived back to the other First Nation Community earlier this evening to see another client, also in grief over losing a family member, the same family member that had been lost to my first client today.

This time I was able to discern that the young man died of an overdose. That will be the official cause of death, anyway, for I have yet to see a coroner attribute a sudden death to oppression.

I did not know that the two clients had familial connections. Driving away tired and miffed that I had wasted time going out there, I thought to myself that the lost youth was probably related to the whole damn community.

I am rarely an insensitive prick, but alas, I think my sardonicism was perfected lifetimes ago. And while my harshness was solely internal, I am still very much ashamed at even thinking it. But then something dawned on me, and while it does not take away from my personal humiliation, I am able to turn it into an insight. And insights, even personal ones, are meant to be shared.

In a manner that beautifully transcends mere biology, that young man was a son of his community. The entire community was his family in spirit, kind, oppression, and the desire for emancipation, and therefore, the entire community grieves. His death is a fresh reminder to the old and a lesson to the young of generations of similar loss that boasts immortality, brought on by the pain of segregation and seemingly moot yearning for self government. I find their example of communal grief for this man who was lost even before his death phenomenal and inspiring; in my white man's world, he would be just another drug addict no longer around to milk the resources of hard working tax payers, where communal grief is constructed by and reserved for those of celebrity status.

When working with my clients, regardless of their circumstances, I attempt earnestly to place myself in their shoes, to see their life through their eyes, and then know what I can do to make things better for them. However, on the rare occasion like this evening, this white man forgets to put socks on before wearing another's shoes.

I ask the spirits that be for their forgiveness, I say prayers of penance for my insensitivity, and above all, I pray that the spirit of that lost young man has finally found home.......

....Blessed Be...