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In Memoriam
" The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
(from IN MEMORIAM A.H.H., Tennyson)
This season prompts me to ask the question, What is the meaning of our existence? Dylan Thomas says not to go gently into that good night... to rage, rage against the dying of the light. Robert Frost contemplates the cold woods, dark and deep. While I sleep one cold December night, a close friend, one I roamed with, skied with, and traded philosophies and laughter with, dropped like a stone from the Bloor Viaduct, a favoured Toronto suicide bridge that rivals the Golden Gate. He disappears. He is unrecognizable. He is unidentified for six months and we all worry and speculate and hope secretly that he has managed to disappear to Tahiti or some other far distant climate. After those agonizing months the authorities put it all together. Days later the sister of a friend, who is financially successful in life saves up her medication and fatally and deliberately binges on it
Meanwhile Andrea, a neighbour's daughter, (in the pictures above), ascends a mountain, and hangs out above the clouds with Outward Bound. I pinch myself when I think of my dead friend and thank the dark cold starry sky that I am happy, adventurous, and alive with thoughts of new things to learn, discover and grow into every day.
But the question of existence, the "to be or not to be" of Hamlet's famous soliloquy still haunts me. How am I so different from my friend? We both have friends; we both have connections and education; we both have drives and ambitions, are athletically fit; people love us. Yet now we don't exist on the same plain any more.
I look into who I am and realize that for each of us, the meaning of existence lies not in the stars but in how we perceive or create our own identities. The Andrea, on top of the mountain, for that moment is her identity and in her memory later is an ingredient in that identity. My daughter teaching skiing on the mountain or kayaking in the sea, myself writing, and being the eclectic ever-ready rabbit with everything I do, and each of us in all our activity create our own identity ingredients. It is the combination of these ingredients that define us. No one thing should ever define anyone, certainly not solely a person's employment, a person's romantic relationship or any one single accomplishment or failure.
Place shouldn't define us either, although it makes up parts of who we are. For me there exists a blonde child knee deep in the grass of Richmond Park, England, a young boy riding a stuffed donkey at Brighton Beach, or on an ocean liner watching whales and icebergs in the Strait of Belle Isle, Newfoundland on his arrival to Canada, the years in Toronto, and cottage country, the "On the Road" Jack Kerouac adventures across Canada, USA and Mexico, falling in love with spiritual rather than spatial places from Rathtrevor Park, Vancouver Island to Mendecino, California, or Oxaca, Mexico.
My friend sent me postcards from every ski resort and holiday. He traveled so much and had so much to live for. He simply chose not to look closely at all the positive ingredients that comprised his identity; he simply chose not to be and I miss him.
David P. Fraser
David likes to balance his life among a variety of activities in the areas of writing, education and sports. When he is not
formally working as an educator, he is either writing and researching or involved in one of the
following sports: alpine skiing, ski teaching as a full time professional ski instructor at Mt. Washington,
BC http://www.mtwashington.bc.ca/winter/default.cfm , windsurfing, tennis, golf, cycling, hiking.
In addition he likes to garden, listen to the blues, and search for his way through Taoism. He has
built his second water garden which has become his new daily sanctuary. His is learning and refining
his Spanish fluency and will travel back to Central and South America in the near future. He
lives among the flora and fauna of the British Columbia West Coast.
David is the editor of Ascent Magazine - Aspirations for Artists (established 1997)
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