Neighbour

I was visiting Guelph recently when I received a phone call from one of my roommates telling me that one of our neighbours had passed away. I had seen him be taken out of his home and placed in an ambulance. I knew that he hadn't been doing well, but I hadn't thought he was in such bad condition.

I was going to write a big memorial post for him when I got back, speaking to his involvement in my life, the people he had known and who cared for him, how life had robbed him, and the cruel irony of his fate.

But as soon as I stepped into my neighbourhood, I hear someone scream at me.

"He's not dead!"

It was his best friend. As I looked him straight in the eyes and his serious demeanor, I thought maybe he was having a bit of denial. I was contemplating a speech urging him back to reality, like "He is alive in our hearts and our minds, he lives in our memories, and he may still be with us spiritually, but his physical influence has left this earth."

But instead I kind of stood dumbly, long enough that he could say "No, seriously, I just got off the phone with him."

I got into my home, and before I could see anyone, I heard my roommate shout from upstairs "He's not dead!"

It was just a rumor that ran around the neighborhood. I saw the guy who was supposedly dead yesterday, first time since he came back from the hospital. First thing he say when he see me, he shouts "I am the walking dead!" He's had to deal with a lot of people reacting strongly to his survival, it seems.

I planted my Venus Flytraps. They're funny. I had to put this disk in the base of a container and add two cups of water, which was much more than the disk, and so it melted into this murky, mud-like mixture. Then I added some pebbles, then I placed the seeds (tiny, tiny things, size of grains of sand) onto the mixture, but I'm not to bury them, then I placed a top piece over the base of the container, to bottle in the moisture. Now I'm supposed to leave  it in indirect sunlight for weeks without caring for them.

It's not a gardeners instinct to leave seeds on the surface of the earth, to place something to block out air, to make sure they do not get much sunlight, and to neglect watering them. Growing them in the mud and not feeding them further is such an odd combination of over- and under-hydration. I feel wrong all the way through the process.