a post one year in the making
Edit: I wrote this as an anniversary post back in September about a good friend's passing. I never finished it for posting, as I couldn't seem to see the point of all the detail. However, looking at it now, it seems to be a good overview of my feelings about his loss, as well as an accounting of our camping trip back in 1999.
The point I eventually wanted to make about the hiking story was that Braz lived with pain all of his life, and thus he was perfectly suited to experience the accidental injury on our third day. Initially, I Iooked backed at his experience as a superheroic feat. But it wasn't: he was just moving through pain like he always did; the way life had prepared him.
------
Do you ever have the feeling that a friend is capable of emerging into your day, unannounced, and always welcome, no matter what your mood?
What if that friend no longer exists?
Could there be an individual where existence is not mandatory to be part of another's life? I constantly have the feeling that he is still around the corner, and happenstance will bring us together again. He's not really gone; it's just that the universe has not provided us the opportunity to connect today. And that's okay, because there's still all kinds of ways that we'll bump into each other at any given time. I feel some guilt about this, because I think that I'm not properly grieving his absence from my life and the lives of others. If he's randomly available, why be sad?
So I've lived the past year thinking about him as if he were still alive. My thoughts have always progressed from being happy about the memories, the times we shared, the relationship we had, to being sad about how little time we spend with each other now, and being angry about some of his past behaviour. This anger started to mount to higher degrees...I would ask myself, why would you do such things? Don't you know that you can easily hurt people by doing these things? It's one of those aspects of human behaviour that if you don't have contact with another person for a long time, it's easy to dwell on negative memories, and let dark emotions fester. When you spend time with that person, those negative memories are shuttered away, since your need of connection is satisfied, and you again become grounded in the reality of your relationship.
With him not present, but still present in essence, it was easy to let my anger build. It came to a point where, a couple of months ago, I found myself raging inside about the inconsistency of his beliefs and his actions. I was really down on him; beating up on him on some weird point of ethical behaviour. I remember that it was early morning, and after a sleepless night I was preparing to go to work. However, as it happens when I'm suffering from sleep deprivation, I can start having conversations between myself and a dissociative voice from some small corner of my mind. And so it was then that a tiny voice started to heckle me from on top of my mental bleachers:
"Calm the fuck down, man. He's dead."
"What the hell are you going on about? He's dead."
And with those burning words, the grieving starts. Or at least it was the acceptance that I had been grieving all along; an acceptance that he was really gone.
Throughout the past year, snippets of memory would filter back in the form of creating a treatise about my experience with him. Only recently, this body of thoughts coalesced into a meaningful narrative. Finally, I have my eulogy for my friend.
A EULOGY FOR BRAZ KING
At the beginning of September, 1999, we went for a week long camping expedition in Killarney Provincial Park. The plan was to follow the beautiful series of trails that loop around the circumference of the rugged north Ontario park. The 100 kilometer expedition is commonly called "The Loop" by Killarney backcountry veterans, and would require several nights, good organization, packing skills, and substantial woodcraft knowledge, not to mention a fitness level that would allow a person to traverse the multiple ridges that straddle the park while humping a sixty pound pack.
The crew: myself, Adrienne, her boyfriend Mike, Braz, and his wife Barb. Together, the five of us had gone on a dozen hiking or canoeing trips over the previous seven years, and we felt we had the knowledge and strength to perform well on The Loop. After discussing and planning the expedition for eighteen months, we finally embarked from the trail head, encouraged by perfect late summer weather.
There's a part of the trail that follows a creek, and then after crossing it, the trail doubles back on itself on the other side to steadily climb a ridge. We were going to be coming upon this backcountry artifact on our third day, and I felt that I could find a way to ford the creek much sooner than what the established trail offered. Successfully scouting this ford would cut two kilometers from that day's hike, and any shortcut was welcomed by the crew after our second day, with it's climb of the Silhouette-La Clouche ridge trail near Lake Topaz.
So during the morning I went ahead, bushwhacked through the forest, and searched for a way to ford the creek. I found a new beaver dam that would do the trick, crossed over it, and found the trail on the opposite side. Elated by what I discovered, I went back to reconnoiter with the others. The first that I encountered was Braz and Barb. I led them to the beaver dam, and knowing that could navigate through unmarked forest, gave instructions on how to get back to the trail once they crossed over the creek. I doubled back again to wait for Adrienne and Mike, and then led them through the forest, across the dam, and back to the trail. Braz and Barb were nowhere to be seen, and we determined that they hiked ahead. So I pressed on, leaving Adj and Mike behind, looking to catch up with the others.
I found then in a gully of the ridge we were climbing. Barb was rummaging through her pack, and Braz appeared to be resting, his hands on his right knee. As I arrived, Barb told me that Braz had an accident and had injured himself. Braz called me over and told me that after I left them at the beaver dam, they had lost their way and he decided to climb a small hill of granite to get his bearings. He then slipped on some scree and struck his knee with the full weight of the pack on him. I asked him how bad it was, and he removed his hands from his injury. I nearly fainted.
I then went through an adrenaline fueled stream of problem solving. An interior monologue that sounded like this: "Okay so we have to get him back immediately how do we do it we can't carry him so we have to build something like a travois and either drag or carry him back but who can make this and who will carry his gear...." On and on, until Braz called out to me to tell me that they were going to go ahead and hike to the next campsite. While taking this statement in, Barb asked me to go to the next campsite, drop my gear, and come back for Braz's pack. It would be a hike of fifteen kilometers in total. There comes times when a person asks you to do something that is challenging but important, and you feel that it is just as vitally important to do it. So without question, I immediately put on my pack and started up the ridge.
On the way, I'm thinking: this is crazy. Shouldn't we be heading back towards civilization, not further away from it? Why are we letting an injured man hike through even more of the most rugged terrain that Ontario has to offer? After I reached the campsite, I dropped my pack and went back for Braz's, I met him and Barb as they made their way down the trail. Braz was obviously in pain, but smiling and making jokes. I passed them by and returned to the gully to pick up Braz's gear. There I met Adrienne and Mike. I informed them of what had happened to Braz, and Adrienne shot back: "That man is so stubborn sometimes!"
I returned to the campsite, delivered Braz's pack, and collapsed. I never felt so exhausted, but felt that I needed to be there for Braz. Braz on the other hand was taking everything in stride. There was no discussion of a medical emergency, just the plan for the next day.
And so it went for the next four days. Although the crew was sharing Braz's gear to lighten his load, he still insisted on wearing a pack, and climb four more ridges, using nothing more than a walking stick. On top of this, we were facing serious water issues due to it being a very dry summer. On top of this, we were encountering bears almost on a daily basis. There were emotional breakdowns on our fourth, fifth and sixth days.
It sounds like a trip to hell and back. But in truth, looking back at it, it was one of the most enriching experiences of our lives.
The point I eventually wanted to make about the hiking story was that Braz lived with pain all of his life, and thus he was perfectly suited to experience the accidental injury on our third day. Initially, I Iooked backed at his experience as a superheroic feat. But it wasn't: he was just moving through pain like he always did; the way life had prepared him.
------
Do you ever have the feeling that a friend is capable of emerging into your day, unannounced, and always welcome, no matter what your mood?
What if that friend no longer exists?
Could there be an individual where existence is not mandatory to be part of another's life? I constantly have the feeling that he is still around the corner, and happenstance will bring us together again. He's not really gone; it's just that the universe has not provided us the opportunity to connect today. And that's okay, because there's still all kinds of ways that we'll bump into each other at any given time. I feel some guilt about this, because I think that I'm not properly grieving his absence from my life and the lives of others. If he's randomly available, why be sad?
So I've lived the past year thinking about him as if he were still alive. My thoughts have always progressed from being happy about the memories, the times we shared, the relationship we had, to being sad about how little time we spend with each other now, and being angry about some of his past behaviour. This anger started to mount to higher degrees...I would ask myself, why would you do such things? Don't you know that you can easily hurt people by doing these things? It's one of those aspects of human behaviour that if you don't have contact with another person for a long time, it's easy to dwell on negative memories, and let dark emotions fester. When you spend time with that person, those negative memories are shuttered away, since your need of connection is satisfied, and you again become grounded in the reality of your relationship.
With him not present, but still present in essence, it was easy to let my anger build. It came to a point where, a couple of months ago, I found myself raging inside about the inconsistency of his beliefs and his actions. I was really down on him; beating up on him on some weird point of ethical behaviour. I remember that it was early morning, and after a sleepless night I was preparing to go to work. However, as it happens when I'm suffering from sleep deprivation, I can start having conversations between myself and a dissociative voice from some small corner of my mind. And so it was then that a tiny voice started to heckle me from on top of my mental bleachers:
"Calm the fuck down, man. He's dead."
"What the hell are you going on about? He's dead."
And with those burning words, the grieving starts. Or at least it was the acceptance that I had been grieving all along; an acceptance that he was really gone.
Throughout the past year, snippets of memory would filter back in the form of creating a treatise about my experience with him. Only recently, this body of thoughts coalesced into a meaningful narrative. Finally, I have my eulogy for my friend.
A EULOGY FOR BRAZ KING
At the beginning of September, 1999, we went for a week long camping expedition in Killarney Provincial Park. The plan was to follow the beautiful series of trails that loop around the circumference of the rugged north Ontario park. The 100 kilometer expedition is commonly called "The Loop" by Killarney backcountry veterans, and would require several nights, good organization, packing skills, and substantial woodcraft knowledge, not to mention a fitness level that would allow a person to traverse the multiple ridges that straddle the park while humping a sixty pound pack.
The crew: myself, Adrienne, her boyfriend Mike, Braz, and his wife Barb. Together, the five of us had gone on a dozen hiking or canoeing trips over the previous seven years, and we felt we had the knowledge and strength to perform well on The Loop. After discussing and planning the expedition for eighteen months, we finally embarked from the trail head, encouraged by perfect late summer weather.
There's a part of the trail that follows a creek, and then after crossing it, the trail doubles back on itself on the other side to steadily climb a ridge. We were going to be coming upon this backcountry artifact on our third day, and I felt that I could find a way to ford the creek much sooner than what the established trail offered. Successfully scouting this ford would cut two kilometers from that day's hike, and any shortcut was welcomed by the crew after our second day, with it's climb of the Silhouette-La Clouche ridge trail near Lake Topaz.
So during the morning I went ahead, bushwhacked through the forest, and searched for a way to ford the creek. I found a new beaver dam that would do the trick, crossed over it, and found the trail on the opposite side. Elated by what I discovered, I went back to reconnoiter with the others. The first that I encountered was Braz and Barb. I led them to the beaver dam, and knowing that could navigate through unmarked forest, gave instructions on how to get back to the trail once they crossed over the creek. I doubled back again to wait for Adrienne and Mike, and then led them through the forest, across the dam, and back to the trail. Braz and Barb were nowhere to be seen, and we determined that they hiked ahead. So I pressed on, leaving Adj and Mike behind, looking to catch up with the others.
I found then in a gully of the ridge we were climbing. Barb was rummaging through her pack, and Braz appeared to be resting, his hands on his right knee. As I arrived, Barb told me that Braz had an accident and had injured himself. Braz called me over and told me that after I left them at the beaver dam, they had lost their way and he decided to climb a small hill of granite to get his bearings. He then slipped on some scree and struck his knee with the full weight of the pack on him. I asked him how bad it was, and he removed his hands from his injury. I nearly fainted.
I then went through an adrenaline fueled stream of problem solving. An interior monologue that sounded like this: "Okay so we have to get him back immediately how do we do it we can't carry him so we have to build something like a travois and either drag or carry him back but who can make this and who will carry his gear...." On and on, until Braz called out to me to tell me that they were going to go ahead and hike to the next campsite. While taking this statement in, Barb asked me to go to the next campsite, drop my gear, and come back for Braz's pack. It would be a hike of fifteen kilometers in total. There comes times when a person asks you to do something that is challenging but important, and you feel that it is just as vitally important to do it. So without question, I immediately put on my pack and started up the ridge.
On the way, I'm thinking: this is crazy. Shouldn't we be heading back towards civilization, not further away from it? Why are we letting an injured man hike through even more of the most rugged terrain that Ontario has to offer? After I reached the campsite, I dropped my pack and went back for Braz's, I met him and Barb as they made their way down the trail. Braz was obviously in pain, but smiling and making jokes. I passed them by and returned to the gully to pick up Braz's gear. There I met Adrienne and Mike. I informed them of what had happened to Braz, and Adrienne shot back: "That man is so stubborn sometimes!"
I returned to the campsite, delivered Braz's pack, and collapsed. I never felt so exhausted, but felt that I needed to be there for Braz. Braz on the other hand was taking everything in stride. There was no discussion of a medical emergency, just the plan for the next day.
And so it went for the next four days. Although the crew was sharing Braz's gear to lighten his load, he still insisted on wearing a pack, and climb four more ridges, using nothing more than a walking stick. On top of this, we were facing serious water issues due to it being a very dry summer. On top of this, we were encountering bears almost on a daily basis. There were emotional breakdowns on our fourth, fifth and sixth days.
It sounds like a trip to hell and back. But in truth, looking back at it, it was one of the most enriching experiences of our lives.