I Have Observed Much Sadness

[My friend, Marcel, and his beloved Paprikas, two weeks before he took his own life.]

(Today I tried out a new form I have noticed a couple of the poets using, where you alternate prose with a few lines of poetry. I quite liked it. Let me know what you think.)

I Have Observed Much Sadness.......



I wheeled my cleaning cart along the hospital corridor, stopped it just outside his room. There was a Warning: Bio Hazard/Restricted sign on his door. Peeking in, I saw that he was weeping. “Can I help you?” I asked him, entering, no gloves, no mask, no gown. Just my wish to help a suffering human being. “I’m cold,” he said, “and the nurse refuses to enter my room because I have AIDS.” “I’ll get you a blanket right away,” I tell him. “Will one be enough, or should I bring two?” “Two, please.” I bring the blankets, I put them on top of him. “There you go,” I smile. I empty his wastebasket, clean his sink. I quietly leave. He is still weeping. He has just been diagnosed, and the prognosis is grim. His entire world has blown apart. I am angry that a professional has added insult to his injury, out of her own fear and prejudice. Neither of us will get AIDS from handing him a blanket, giving him a smile, a word of human kindness, some comfort. Next day, when I come by to clean, I am relieved and happy to see that the other nurse is on. She is sitting beside his bed, talking and smiling and helping him to feel like a human being a person can relate to, about whom one can care. I leave the cleaning for later, not to interrupt them.


We are all born beautiful, innocent and whole,
and then life happens.
All our lives, during this earthly incarnation,
we are returning
to the radiance of our innate perfection.


He was a gentle soul, effeminate and tortured by his mood swings, by the utterly unsatisfactory life he had lived, having had a loving partner only once, in college days, followed by decades of loneliness. He was a good man, whose career got interrupted by chronic illness. While he was fighting the insurance company, who continued to decline his claim, he was gay-bashed. The police expressed no interest in laying charges, though he identified his attacker. His attacker continued to stalk and terrorize him in his own neighbourhood. When the insurance company made a final rejection of his claim, he gave up. He said “I cannot work, and I will not beg.” He said his spirit was simply not up to crawling to welfare to gain the pittance they would give him, not enough to even pay his rent. He gave himself one last month, made his plans and one night, with finality, left this world. He was my friend since high school days. He had a sad life, but he was witty, brilliant, with a radiance that just got beaten down. He just could not hang on.


We are all born beautiful, innocent and whole,
and then life happens.
All our lives, during this earthly incarnation,
we are returning
to the radiance of our innate perfection.


I was driving the main road one morning, when a young First Nations man, son of one of my co-workers, staggered across the road in front of me. He was drunk – beyond drunk, deep in his addictions – and his expression was a mask of the purest agony I have ever seen on a human face. No hiding, no defences, the torture he felt just being alive stunned me with the impossibility of surviving it, for a human mortal. And, before too long, this young man, with all of the future before him, a tomorrow where life might have taken him to a place of peace and even joy, hung himself from the pole in his closet, where his mother, my friend, found him next morning. I will never forget her keening wail, from the innermost depths of her being, as she processed that in workshop with the staff. “I miss him,” she said, and those words said it all.


We are all born beautiful, innocent and whole,
and then life happens.
All our lives, during this earthly incarnation,
we are returning
to the radiance of our innate perfection.


A young woman who has suffered years of the stigma of mental illness, and who has achieved dignity and self-worth despite the professionals who have labelled and thus disposed of her in the “appropriate” slot, (from which there can never be Progress), is concerned about her teenage son, who appears depressed, possibly anorexic. Though reaching out has never brought her any help, still she reaches out to Child/Teen Mental Health. She states her concerns. She says “I am asking for your help.” The person on the other end of the phone tells her, “You take him to emergency right now. If you don’t take him, I will charge you with child abuse.” “But wait,” the young woman says, “Of course I will take him. I called you – for help – remember?” The woman calls back every fifteen minutes until she gets to emergency. At emergency, they tell her “Nothing can be done about this here. Go home.” She decides, for not the first time, or the fifteenth, she is on her own and there is no help at the other end of the phone. One cannot trust the “helpers”.


We are all born beautiful, innocent and whole,
and then life happens.
All our lives, during this earthly incarnation,
we are returning
to the radiance of our innate perfection.


I am cleaning (it seems I am always cleaning) at the house of two  elderly people, very kind and lovely, their conversation full of “thank you”’s and “sweetie”’s. The man is barely getting around on his walker. The woman has just had back surgery. Three times a day, or oftener, “Home Support” arrives to “help” the man. This seems to basically equate to bringing lunch from the fridge to the table. The woman, who also can barely hobble around, seems to spend far too much time upright for someone after surgery, because “things have to get done” and the Home “Support” people apparently have a limited job description. She has bought a new bed and I have prepared the room for its delivery. “Will the home support people make the bed up for you when it arrives?” I ask, before I depart. Because otherwise I will drive back across town to make it for her. “I hope so,” she responds – hopefully. When I come the following week, I ask her how is the bed. “The bed is great!” “Did they make it up for you when it arrived?” I ask – hopefully. “No,” she says. “It isn’t in their job description because they come for him, not me.” I ask myself: but could one not, as a human being, make the bed out of compassion for a frail little lady who has just had back surgery??????????


We are all born beautiful, innocent and whole,
and then life happens.
All our lives, during this earthly incarnation,
we are returning
to the radiance of our innate perfection.

At least, I have to believe this. But some days it gets harder.