To Gigi

I have several other items in my head right now that need attention: bills; exams to give, create and mark; trips home to plan (tickets are an easy click away); family dramas (better for another piece); other concerns… I wish I could focus on something else right now. I wish that life made some sort of sense so that this would not hurt the way it does. But that is the problem with hope and that eternal spring… Life often provides you with nothing but cold reality in the form of news that takes the wind out of your sails and crushes your heart.

I had just had dinner, written up some notes for a class that went rather well today, and entered another journal entry. My plan was to take a hot shower, finish up a piece on another musical moment from my past, and then prepare for tomorrow’s class with a fairly new contract. And then, I made the mistake of going onto a social media feed and discovering that I have lost an old friend…

Gigi…

Yeah, that was her name. Some friends may laugh at it – they did back in the day – but she was one of the finest people I ever knew. We had not been in each other’s orbit since high school, but I did stay in touch with her online. She had a family, friends, and a deep love for my hometown team (the Hamilton Tiger-Cats – redundant name, yes, but home is home). And now she is gone. The story I read is that she was hit by a driver as she was driving home with a friend. There is no word on whether the other driver was drunk or simply distracted on his phone (have seen enough of the latter here to be unimpressed by the excuses these people make). And I want this night to be over.

I did not feel this way when my godparents passed, at least not for my godmother (her illness was long and painful and we knew that she did not have much time left). That pain was real, but it was a pain that we could see heading our way. I could not have seen what the world had in store for a young lady from my past. Gigi Bourque was a girl I felt lifted my spirits when I was in her presence. She was well ahead of me on questions of musical taste (she introduced me to the Smiths when we traded records: “Strangeways, Here We Come” for something I had that I can no longer recollect). She was much kinder to me than she had any right to be (I was awkward and alone as what we now call a “visible minority”). She chose to stay near my hometown. I chose to move on. And I now realize that I have never really left things behind. I now feel like that awkward kid back in the day, this time with his own place, Leonard Cohen singing about a famous blue raincoat in the background (she would have approved), and a glass of rum next to me as I type this out (the drink is not nearly strong enough to hold back the tears).

I will provide links here for those of you interested in what she was like, and if you want to donate to support her family, but for the first time in a long time, I really do not care about what the audience for my work feels about one of my pieces. I just needed to type this more than anything else I had planned to work on tonight. I have lost an old friend, a key tie to my past, and a spirit that I never thought would leave us like this.

Goodbye, Gigi. We are still trying to understand a life without you.

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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