"I am a pilgrim, and a stranger, while traveling through this wearisome land..."
Time passing.People passing. the first funeral I ever attended was in grade seven.My paternal grandfather left this world, probably too soon, for want of taking care of himself. Thomas Graham followed in the early 1980's, a man well aged, nearly one hundred. His wife, Alta Graham, my maternal grandmother followed in 1987. Her life spanned the twentieth century, and I though I'd never see her fade.But she did, of pancreatic cancer. I wanted to go home for the funeral, but did not.
In the mid eighties, a co-worker, Charmaine, called "Charlie" was taken while driving a cab at night. Stabbed fifteen times. In her casket she looked sallow and melted, and we followed a long procession of taxis to the graveyard where some small amount of ashes were place in a slot in the ground.So small! Steven Bascom passed in 2003, of natural causes. He was sickly, but what is natural at the age of forty two? In 2005 John passed of a ruptured abdominal aorta. Aged forty six. I didn't get the news for months.He was a room mate and a best friend, but I only heard from him from time to time after I moved to Calgary.
The two policemen were gone, and it was a long way to that red cellphone,somewhere in my room, in the house I lived in, up on Calgary's north hill. Wind blew small wisps of snow through the tall yellow grasses out back, and an insidious frosty draft leaked in the edges of my closed window.
Time passing.People passing. the first funeral I ever attended was in grade seven.My paternal grandfather left this world, probably too soon, for want of taking care of himself. Thomas Graham followed in the early 1980's, a man well aged, nearly one hundred. His wife, Alta Graham, my maternal grandmother followed in 1987. Her life spanned the twentieth century, and I though I'd never see her fade.But she did, of pancreatic cancer. I wanted to go home for the funeral, but did not.
In the mid eighties, a co-worker, Charmaine, called "Charlie" was taken while driving a cab at night. Stabbed fifteen times. In her casket she looked sallow and melted, and we followed a long procession of taxis to the graveyard where some small amount of ashes were place in a slot in the ground.So small! Steven Bascom passed in 2003, of natural causes. He was sickly, but what is natural at the age of forty two? In 2005 John passed of a ruptured abdominal aorta. Aged forty six. I didn't get the news for months.He was a room mate and a best friend, but I only heard from him from time to time after I moved to Calgary.
The two policemen were gone, and it was a long way to that red cellphone,somewhere in my room, in the house I lived in, up on Calgary's north hill. Wind blew small wisps of snow through the tall yellow grasses out back, and an insidious frosty draft leaked in the edges of my closed window.
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