Was a long day but not much occurred too much to speak of but we miss you more than words convey. I can't believe how young I was. I can't believe how much I didn't understand. How much I would lose and never know. I mean I did know and understand but I couldn't articulate that in the face of death at thirteen. Do you know how the years go on and people and time just go on and on? That's what I didn't really understand. Not that I was thinking of the future. It's sometimes difficult to remember the details and intricateness. I thought it would come back to me eventually but my mind was just finding ways to survive not be crashed onto the shore. Not be broken and washed up as a carcass of loss. Though it's difficult to not relate to that now. The world is filled to the brim of endless tragedy and loss. You have your personal and you must bear witness to all that exists outside your slice of the universe that you can't control. The unhoused being driven into the abyss. The Palestinians being annihilated while the world tepidly raises their shoulders and then claps for those who say they are in service of supremacy of a nation state. The most morally bankrupt to choose a conception of land, nation, country, a controlling governing body to surveillance/penalize/dictate over a person or people. Yet that is much of the world. You would get that. I think a lot of the conservations we never got to have. Those I can miss the most. I have been so stressed and lost in a sense of being stuck in an aquarium at night that never closes and I never find the exit out nor remember the entranceway. I am just in the stream of conscious and what I admire the most of life are the things I cannot touch.
I'm writing this in advanced because things here are too sad, frustrating, and chaotic and my mental health threshold has been tested in a way it hasn't been in years and in a way that even differs from before. A new plain. A new territory. A new zone.
That it's happened this month and dates of all times is like being thrown into volcano. I'd like you here but know it would have tested you also and you had a lot of fragilities because of how much you loved us and mom. There is so much I wish I could know about your life and who you were that only others can tell and they are no longer here. When people pass their memories and archives of all those known has also erased.
I've been trying to sort things but the past few years is constant consistent concrete roadblocks that if you even you tried to get past the content of them you couldn’t without great risk and also great commitment are needed right now and material provisions needed are not here at this time. What is it to be loved? I’ve recently been reflecting on that from a message I received. I don’t think the way this world is set up societally that many people know how to really show love or care it in way that is consistent and meaningful. And those with consistencies seem to be only luck of fate if they are around.
I read this quote from a film still recently “Whatever you think your life is going to be, know it’s not going to be anything like that.” 20th Century Women with Greta Gerwig, haven't seen it. At a certain time being younger but healthier psychologically I wouldn't have thought that yet at the same it would have frightened me to read it, it would have stayed haunted and lodged inside because there is so much truth to it isn’t it? Even if it’s obvious doesn’t one not want it to be? And even if you haven’t had everything in your life be an avalanche, isn’t is just so disappointing? Even in the best of circumstances of one’s life isn’t it so disappointing? I’ve been quite haunted the past few years and now even more. How could this be all there is? And then I look at what happened to you and I realize it’s always been here knowing that.
Sorry this isn’t much of a reflection on your day of passing. I don’t hope for an afterlife in one aspect and it would be tormenting to see things and people you cannot but I also want one where you are ok. Where somewhere you can hear us and only feel love and no disappointment or sadness that we meet or we come back to you in some form. I don’t mean a heaven. I don’t know exactly what and I don’t need any religious zealots telling me otherwise. I just hope you’re ok. Even if you can’t hear me, that’s ok too, you’re at rest. One day we will all be at rest as well. Hopefully not those who have wielded so much pain in their immense status and power those people do not deserve their rest yet. Anyway I have to go right now and visit the woman we all love, one you have loved from afar still after all this time.
Love,
Little Bear (would you hate if I got that as a tattoo one day I think you would, you hated tattoos but I still think of it every now and then anyway)
August 4th, 2023
27 years. I'm a writer now like you also, while still retaining my photography. I wish you could see it, maybe in an alternate view you can. I'm figuring out other things materially, personally, maneuvering as well, maybe its best you only see that when I feel more secure.
It's been an insane few years politically and world wide catastrophe, more than the usual, but par for the course of human history. Doesn't seem to be letting up in my lifetime.
Not many can truly grasp and experience and understand the cusp of rationality and insanity and lesser survive it. There was never anything to forgive. Yet for the others, nothing besides the fantasy of malice. It's not constant and violently churning but I don't mind that it won't let up in my lifetime.
I hate the lack of compassion and community in this country and fear getting this new plague we are still in, angry at being socially coerced to unmask. I know you never would have done or succumbed to the inconsiderate, incompetence, compliance and ignorance that infests here. In another life for all of us I imagine it would have been Scotland, Wales or bust. Though not many places are really safe it feels in a consistent sense and that likely won't change in my lifetime and many other's lifetimes.
Adulthood and going into my first year of what one considers middle age is interesting to observe most adults still keep the vulnerability and fear and maturity from their teens. It's all over the place especially with this social media and digital world now. Fascinating. Though it's dystopia label and diagnosis is overused and yet not inaccurate but not the whole picture. You taught me well to never accept one true narrative, and as I continue I can see many angles and how complex and multilayered things and people are no matter a baseline of the ignorance and banality that they continually pivot to. It feels like mass denial one side and accelerationists on the other, not there aren't others who reject either, like me. It's bad and frightening though and I'm glad you don't have to witness that. However to diagnose pessimism and apathy does disgust me, though it can feel satisfying momentarily but it feels dishonest and a cope out. Because it is. And I refuse to give in, the fascists and powerful never do so why should I? Not that I am brave, though not a coward I feel, but no one can really know that test till you're face to face and would one recognize the test? Is it large or a series of small ones? I guess if one fails, they don't have to worry it is an indefinite occurrence.
It's strange how life is unreconcilable and unresolvable but we keep going. It's ok you didn't. This isn't a gotcha or admonishment what cruelty that would be, certainly no daughter you had raised, that I still retain the best of what you gave and provided, and grown from what were your weaknesses and fragilities which I know you yourself would have shed eventually because that's what I knew. Someone continually channeling, searching, picking apart, observing, growing excited for change and knowledge. I wish I could say I have met an abundance or a handful of people like you but I haven't. You're like mom one of kind. People love to say that about their loved ones and I believe they feel it but I believe it is a true rarity. I admit it's wonderful and sad but nobody is perfect because how else would we adapt and change and reflect to be who we hope to? Self awareness combined with the same level of observance of others is not a curse, for me at least, I think you'll enjoy my novel it's full of that sort of thing. And I feel I have to thank you indefinitely for that.
💕
Little Bear
.jpg)
