AuDN4T

This is the second time this year I’ve visited relatives graves. Third time I’ve walked into a cemetery and reflected.

In Ukrainian and Polish culture you see people come in on this day to visit their loved ones and light up the graves with candles. It’s not as intense here in Oakville, Ontario but seeing footage from Poland, it is quite the sight to see. We did see some graves illuminated with many candles today. Traditions might be lost over time.

You look at the people laid to rest – you wonder about their life stories. I don’t like the idea that saying a one liner about their life truly explains who they are – I like the analogy that we’re all like onions with many layers to us, very multidimensional.

You see people who have lived long lives and people whose lives have been cut short.

We visit my great aunt and uncle – those were hard deaths to overcome – a heart attack and a COVID-era-ish deaths.

My mom’s friend – who was also a nurse is laid to rest at this cemetery. Super bright positive woman. She had to endure a toxic relationship where her partner would drink and had a side piece. This environment created a difficult space for her kids; coming from a space like that I can understand the feelings growing up in this. One started to act out and ended up in the foster care system because she didn’t know how to manage this all. (I do not want to generalize the situation but I have had university classmates and friends in my adulthood have their ex partners attempt to turn their kids against them). She decided to move out to Alberta, start a fresh life. We thought she was ok – she was happy. And then something happened – we don’t even know the full story from her workplace – something about a toxic workplace. One evening we got a call from her older daughter that she’s gone. A call that you don’t ever expect. It was hard to comprehend since this was a woman who was always happy. Super positive, always smiling. And gone, just like that. Being at her funeral, we ran into one of her colleagues from another hospital who struggled as much as we did. She gave my mom her number to chat in the future to process this all. I’m not sure if my mom ended up reaching out – sometimes it’s fear or busy-ness of life to actually stop and reach out to those people. I wonder about her daughters. If they’re in a safe environment.

I think about my classmate’s father who died tragically, walking out of the moving car he was in and I wonder about the trauma my classmate and his family went through with the alcoholism and tragic death. Did they end up getting mental health support to navigate through this?

I think about my friend’s mom who passed away way too early from a terrible disease – worse than MS – Multiple System Atrophy. You hear stories around her father’s drinking issues and how he’d physically throw her mom down to the ground even after the fact that she’s been already diagnosed with this disease. Even as a healthy person, she did not deserve that. She was a very artistic lady who did ballet. I only found out about the ballet part during the funeral. But she just exuded artistry when you met her.

I can’t be the only one who has had this many friends who grew up in DV environments or parents who were alcoholics or seen so many suicides, can I? Or am I and my friends an exception? We don’t speak about mental health much. Bell and it’s useless one day of “Let’s Talk” Day doesn’t really get conversations going. Are people too scared to talk about these topics?

I think about the bandura community in North American and it’s got some painful deaths many of us haven’t come to terms with.

In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth you had the szlachta (nobility), the jewish population and the serfs. The nobility made up something like 8-10% of the population. The jewish population by law couldn’t be serfs (some weird laws were in place), instead managed businesses for the nobility and could leave towns. The serfs were tied to the land, couldn’t leave. Serfs could have been Ukrainian, Polish and Lithuanian. Being a serf, you feel kicked down working hard on the land and getting you nowhere. What happens when you create a system of being kicked down? People cope with alcohol. Who served alcohol and was the face of these businesses? Unfortunately the jewish population. They also didn’t have any sort of protections and could have been tormented by the nobility for whatever dumb charges they thought brought up. They created a system of us vs them so they could remain in power.

We can transpose this into North America with organizations, our governments and people with power. Who profits from our pain? Who profits from everything we do? Healthcare? Gasoline? Food? Housing?

Tell people they cannot have easily accessible post secondary education – and so they perpetuate the cycle of poverty and systemic racism. Why is it that European countries have free post-secondary education and yet here there are some very corrupt practices undergoing especially with private colleges?

Make alcohol more easily accessible? People cope more.

Make Service Canada impossible to navigate when going through autistic burnout? It’s ok Patty Hajdu got her $400k pay cheque, she doesn’t care to get away from archaic systems.

Who creates these laws? Who creates these policies? Why do we put up with this trash and political dynastic families who are disconnected from the real world?