• Home
  • About

Marcela: Unfiltered

~ living out loud…

Marcela: Unfiltered

Monthly Archives: July 2021

Image

Good bye my friend…

31 Saturday Jul 2021

 

My precious Claireabelle:

I have put this off for days; ‘this,’ meaning saying goodbye to you in some meaningful way. Intellectually I know that putting it off does not make your death any less real, any less true, but emotionally, it has kept me safe from the bottomless black pit of grief I fear falling prey to. So I apologize to you, to your family, others who loved you so fiercely, as fiercely as I do, as fiercely as I always will, for taking so long to say a goodbye I still struggle to wrap my brain around. I have been hiding in my job, hiding on the trail, hiding in my own pain.

But everywhere I go there you are, as you have been for so many years since we met. At times more distant than others, but always there, in my heart. For you were that rarest of creatures (in my world) who like me, just like me, knows the despair we have known, have felt so lost, so misunderstood, so forsaken, for so many years, and we ‘got’ each other, right from the get go.

And even after a decade long silence between us, because life, it felt more like 10 minutes since we last talked, since we last cried together, since we last cursed, since we last danced, since we last laughed together and at one another, it felt like 10 minutes, not 10 years. That kind of connection can only survive and thrive in an environment of absolute honesty, absolute trust, absolute kin-ship, absolute loyalty, and absolute love between humans, absolute: meaning no matter what. We had that, even when you didn’t like my straight-up words, neither sugar coated, nor brutal, just honest, always stated with and from love, and always driven by the fear of this very reality, losing you, permanently.

But I mustn’t fall down the black hole, for it was not only ‘the pain,’ our experiences of abuse and other vileness that connected us, it was the free-spirited wild, the beautifully crazy, the wicked funny, the sharply intellectual, the intensely sensitive (always shrouded in a self-protective shield of ‘I don’t give a fuck’), that created this most precious of bonds that we had. That bond will always be there, and as your beautiful daughter said recently, I too, ‘will never stop fighting for you.’

For what has occurred, this mind-numbingly tragic event, is a direct result of pain, not one of intent, and most certainly not one of failure, on anyone’s part, including yours. I have a good idea of what you yearned for in this life, and I know how determined you were to get it. I also have an inkling of how far down in the bottomless pit of pain you landed, how deeply you felt, believed, to have let others down. I know how low, how non-existent your self-esteem was, your feelings of unworthiness for the support you received in recent months, over the last several years.

I am acutely aware of the line we cross, when the war we wage with ourselves (because that, is where the true battle lies), turns everything into a toxic quagmire of shame and self-loathing, a pain that seems quell-able only with more pain killers; that Plexiglas shield of substances and behaviours that I have come to understand over the years, as more than the convenient, judge-y, pathological label of ‘addiction.’ I have come to understand this quick-sand swamp as a set of responses to trauma, to pain, to a lack of self-worth, self-acceptance. I have come to understand it as a set of reactions, decisions and choices we have made, that others made during times in our lives when we were unable to defend ourselves, decisions and choices we made as adults when choice A and choice B appeared to be the only two available and they both equally sucked. Decisions and choices that often served others and harmed self, decisions and choices that felt like the only survival tactics we had in our arsenal of weapons in this war. Decisions and choices that in the long run, stop serving us in any useful way, no longer kill the pain, and harm others, harm the people we love most, the people who love us most, and there we come full circle.

The cycle is only breakable by breaking it, and my heart bleeds for you, for now you will not have the opportunity of knowing that freedom. That freedom does not mean a life free of pain, because we do not live in a benign world, we live in a world fraught with injustice and systems and structures which doom people, the most vulnerable people, people like you were, like I used to be, still am, just in a different way today, to failure. A world in which bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people, and ‘fair,’ is a place I go to ride a Ferris Wheel.

The freedom I speak of is one of mastering self, nothing else; because ultimately self, our response to any given situation in life, as our friend Collie recently brought to our attention, mindset, our response, is the only thing in the entirety of our known Universe, that we ever, have any real control over. I wanted this freedom for you so very badly that I can taste the foul and bitter taste of its loss to you on my tongue, and it is all I can do to keep myself in check, for I am not just sad and gutted, I am furious.

But I know how futile, unproductive, and harmful that fury can be… we talked about it, along with so many other important things, on July 10th, at 11:28 a.m. It was a long and at times difficult conversation, as real conversations, about real things, between real friends often are. And remembering that conversation since learning that you are gone, remembering how both of us pushed through the hard parts, because love and trust, having finished it, having left things, as we always have, at a place of honesty and our respective truths, a place of deep and unconditional love for one another, a place of friendship, brings me some measure of solace.

And then I went away for a desperately needed reprieve from work, from most civilization, technology, and from health and other unwelcome realities of my own, came back with the intent of responding to your most recent messages once back on dry land, and before I could catch my breath, the message from your child, and that phone call, the gut-wrenching news we all fear most, when it comes to the people we love so fiercely.

I bought a wildly coloured pair of tights yesterday, because they literally reminded me of (y)our inner fire, and as soon as the weather cools a bit, I will don them, power the shit outta that one trail, the one I so wanted to share with you next Spring, because it is wild and glorious, and covered in Bluebells…

Everywhere I go there you are my beautiful ClaireBear.  We loved (and hated) so many of the same things. I will never look at another fiery sky, another cool cloud, another Bluebell, without yearning to hear your voice, your laugh… without feeling the part of my heart that you will always occupy. This world, your childrens’ worlds, your family’s worlds, your friends’ worlds, my world, lost one of its brightest stars the day you left, but your star-dust has settled into my heart, just in a different way than when you were here, and there it will stay, until the day my own star-light burns fully out.

Always and forever, your mama M.,

~Marcela.

July 31, 2021.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)

Posted by ~MyLa | Filed under Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Image

Tomáš Mrnka – October 24, 1935 – July 07, 1971

07 Wednesday Jul 2021

 

50 years… how has it been 50 years…?

Dear dad:

I think about you every day, miss you every second.

Whenever I have cause to go to Vancouver I look for the places we lived, and remember the early days of our life as immigrants, how excruciatingly hard you and my mother worked to build a life, from nothing, absolutely nothing, in a country and culture so foreign to us it may have been another planet… but it was exciting, and your energy, your never give-up was, is to this day, palpable, and it lives on inside me.

When I lived in Switzerland and started going back to the old country, I sought out Nerudová 1, every.single.time, and remembered the old coal storage downstairs, what you hid there, in preparation for our escape… When I went back there with mama and my boy in 2014, tread upon some of the same cobblestones in Karlovy Vary that we had all tread upon at some other point in time, I drank up mama’s stories of where the two of you had spent time together, regaled my son, one of the grandchildren you never met, with my own recollections of the first 7 years of my life there, and my recollections of you… and I cried like the small child I once was there, when we visited Božý Dar, our old ski cabin, and vague memories of being on those ski hills, on your back, in a rucksack, and then on my own tiny skis, came to life brightly, and as it does in these moments, time stood still…

When I went back to Stewart a few years ago I walked until my feet bled, until I found our old townhouse… and the nearer I knew I was, the more intensely I felt your presence, and I remembered the 20 foot snow banks, and that we had walked this road together, and desperately I tried to make out your voice, failed, for it had been so many years… decrepit, rotting, moldy, the carport caved in by decades of big Northern BC snow, and overgrown by the vegetation that takes its environment back when we abandon it, but also seemingly untouched, it was all still there, frozen in time…

Walking through the front door was the single greatest moment of surreal of the entirety of my years, and no drug on earth would match this high, the emotional crash of it, rolled into one intensely profound experience… so intense profound, because while I cannot buy into the spirit world, you were there, because I was there, because we had all been there, at another time.

I walked into the small square of a kitchen, and I remembered you shaking up the resourceful man’s milkshake, for you were nothing, if not resourceful, for my big brother and me, in a mason jar – canned milk and strawberry jam… I walked into the living room and saw the giant tree through the streaky, fungus-covered window panes, that tree our Collie Sheba chased a bear up into… and I as I made my way up into our bedrooms, where the lamps you had so skillfully MacGyvered for us once hung, I remembered your words, but still, could not conjure up your voice as you told us to put the sheets on our beds… when I walked upon the molding carpet, the same one we had all walked upon all those years ago, I heard your footsteps, coming home from the mine that took your life.

I could not bring myself to walk the rotting stairs down to the basement, where you kept your rifle, the one my mother was tempted to use when we were told you were dead. For that news was and remains the single most impactful event in our respective lives. The mine, the people associated with it, took your life, and with it, my mother’s joy, and my brother’s and my childhoods, in one fell swoop. And while I am aware that it is an exercise in futility, I cannot help but wonder, often, what life would have been like for all of us, had you lived beyond 36 fast and furious years, to see a birthday past that one, to see this day, what would have been your 85th year.

Your rebel lives on inside me, and maybe even some wisdom, which only years can bring, I see more of that in my brother, and I like to think that you would have been like him, at this age, and so in this way, and so many others, you live on inside him. Your rebel, your energy, your wild, your survivor, your wise-man, and sometimes your impulsive adventurer, they all live on inside me and my brother, in a thousand different ways.

And 50 years today, 50 years… changes nothing… because still, I think about you every day, miss you every second.
Love, your Macek.

October 24, 2020 (re-posted July 07, 2021)

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)

Posted by ~MyLa | Filed under Life Lessons & Stories, My World(s)

≈ Leave a comment

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • September 2022
  • July 2022
  • February 2022
  • September 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013

Categories

  • 30 Days 30 Poems
  • Commentaries: On what matters to me
  • In the Service of Other Humans
  • Life Lessons & Stories
  • My World(s)
  • Poetry
  • Rants & Other Musings: Unfiltered-Raw
  • Tales out of School
  • The 'L' Word
  • The Other 'L' Word
  • Unfettered

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Recent Posts

  • (Still) Intense
  • Coming Soon…
  • The Untold Story of My (M)other Hero
  • What I know, the only thing I know for sure…
  • Was there a different, more unifying solution?
  • Gag Me With the Decapitated Head of a Martyr… or Two… The Origins of Valentine’s Day…
  • ‘Petrie,’ and other Saturday Musings…
  • Good bye my friend…
  • Tomáš Mrnka – October 24, 1935 – July 07, 1971
  • Mindset / Personality: Fixed? Not in my world…

Archives

  • September 2022
  • July 2022
  • February 2022
  • September 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013

Follow Us

  • Facebook

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Follow Marcela: Unfiltered on WordPress.com

Start a Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Marcela: Unfiltered
    • Join 118 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Marcela: Unfiltered
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...