I wanted to write about all the great things that happened in this day, the eve of my vacation time. I wanted to keep the great feeling I had after an exhausting day of payroll for so many companies that was improved by an invitation to the office for a bevie after work to celebrate tax season officially being over. I wanted to keep smiling after the strata board meeting in my yard followed by jello shooters my boss sent home with me. I wanted to just be grateful that my daughter’s trip to emergency and a cat scan showed nothing horribly wrong. I wanted to make lists and pack and be excited that I had managed to arrange a client’s paperwork to be brought to Lac La Hache from Salt Spring where I am going to pick up a table from my dear friend Jackie and that Jake’s missing bed slats will be brought there by me to connect with him in Vancouver. It all seemed to be a perfect day…
and then I received horrible news about friends on Salt Spring Island. This is a community I lived in for 15 years. The place where both my son and i grew up in many ways. My heart still thinks of it as home. I don’t know all the details and I don’t want to spread tales until they are public, official news. I don’t want this to be about me, but I am sitting here, triggered (God I hate that word but it is the easiest way to explain it) by the events that unfolded there this evening. What I have learned reminds me of the murder suicide in my family. I lost my cousin Kelly when her husband Roger out of fear of losing her killed her and then himself. That was the wild fire summer of 2017. I wonder how similar the Covid Spring of 2020 is to many. Evacuation, isolation, fear of loss and the unknown. Some minds just snap. The final action does not undo the love for the person who clearly loses their mind even for a split second.
My heart is heavy, my tears are for all my community and I wish we could be together and hug and grieve.
I am Salt Spring xoxo
triumphgal 