This is not a new feeling; a lot of people have felt this emotion. Still, you never expect it to feel as if a boa constrictor has replaced your rib cage. Its long body coiling around your heart and lungs, squeezing tighter and tighter. Ruby red blood oozing from crushed organs like juice from a dark plum. According to Wikipedia, roughly 150,000 people die every day across the globe. When you say it like that, one simply furrows their eyebrows and whistles something along the lines of, “Jeez, that’s a big number.” When suddenly they recall the six billion others still kicking around, combined with the fact that no one they knew personally was among the 150,000 today and feel considerably better. Though, one might spend the rest of the day feeling significantly less important than they normally do. An unsettling feeling grows like a heavy cloud looming overhead when exposed to how fragile and finite life really is, disturbed by your own mortality.

You can’t help it, no one can help it. Death is as much a part of life as it is the exact opposite of living. Each time someone dies, you’re thrown into memories as vicious as rapids, torn to pieces on jagged rocks hidden beneath ruthless whitecaps.

I feel black and blue. It hasn’t been long enough since the last time my mind was dragged through a gutter. It’s as if I haven’t seen the sun in months, bruises appear strikingly dark and
ugly against the anemic complexion of my skin. My bones feel brittle, like there hasn’t been
enough time to rebuild from previous damage. How on earth do I return to a fight I’m still
recovering from?

To grieve is to feel your body deflate, like wind disappearing from a sail at the choked, fragmented words spoken through the phone at an odd hour of the night.

The first person who ever knew me was my auntie. I was the fifth grandchild out of twelve. Growing up, I was too young to hang around half my cousins and old enough to babysit
the others. I was constantly disoriented in my wolf pack of a family. I never felt entirely understood or heard as a child, but I could walk down the road and auntie would listen. I knew,
without a shadow of doubt, she was always there to talk and listen to. I looked up to her—this strong Ojibwe woman. She could speak our language—ancient words tumbled melodically from
her lips with an ease no longer common among even the strongest native communities. As a
young woman, she was stripped of her First Nations rights and status for going to a nursing
school off reserve and marrying a white man. She fought for her status back and won in the 90’s.
She became a teacher, dedicating her adult life to the language she loved and its survival. She
read every book under the sun and translated Shakespeare for fun. She is the source of my love
for literature. She taught me how to drive. I knew if I could be half the person auntie was, I’d be
better than most.

She died when I was sixteen. It was March. I was in the midst of realizing you, in fact, did not have to listen to your parents, when life as I knew it became a distorted mirror of everything I thought would never happen.

Lake Simcoe was thawing—previously perfect ice-fishing conditions ruined by rising winds and humidity. The thick ice that covered the entire bay was broken up into large frozen continents, smashing into each other like angry rams until one broke into smaller pieces, slipping under hypothermic black waves that roll and swell. All before hailing the surrounding expanse with sheets of freezing lake water.

I watch the seasonal apocalypse take place from the zippered closed, plastic window of an airboat. If you lived on the island you called it, “the scoot.” Shoulder to shoulder with the thirteen others perched on low benches, younger people and gentlemen sit, legs crossed, on the
floor. A baby in construction grade earmuffs sleeps peacefully in her grandmothers’ arms,
despite the jerky motions of the scoot falling through the thin ice and bobbing up and down
severely, before heaving forwards and sliding across a thick piece and crashing through again.
We look like a can of Ojibwe sardines rolling across broken glass. The stark grey clouds blew
quickly across a mute, sickly sky. The deafening scream of the scoot’s giant fan makes it impossible to think as it propels us across the unforgiving lake, back towards the desolate island.

Jesus, I was bleak. It was as if everything was covered in a black, grimy film that could not be scrubbed off, only smeared deeper into my brain.

Even through the cloudy pond water that sloshes around inside my skull, I remember I
was in a rush to leave the last time I saw my aunt.
“Bye, auntie,” she took my hand in her silky, paper-thin fingers. I let my eyes drift from her weary, sunken face to the lonely pine tree outside the tall windows. I offered her a smile I
knew she didn’t believe and carefully hugged her delicate frame, felt her shuddering breath. My
mouth felt full of cotton, “I’ll see you later.” I remember squeezing her warm hand as I said I had to go to work.

Watching the life leave someone I couldn’t live without made me very uncomfortable.
Seeing the strongest, most intelligent woman I know lose herself made me extremely despondent. I remember I had ten minutes to get two minutes up the road. I had started to fear facing my auntie, facing reality. I remember telling myself I’d go see her when she’s feeling better, like having fifty pounds strapped to each foot.

I remember I was high at my friend’s house watching Ace Ventura when she died in her
home. Alone. After months of – fucking bullshit. Hospitals and falling.

I can’t remember why I went over. Is memory loss a side effect of all-consuming guilt?
Probably.

We’ve made it to shore, the small marina is empty and grey. There’s too much ice for the ferry to break through so it sits motionless and deserted. A single tin boat is frozen in place along one of the two wooden docks that make up the ice-covered harbor. The screaming fan stops as the scoot skids to a halt on the abandoned shoreline. I hop down onto the frozen mud and nod goodbye to the others piling out onto the beach, making their way to the makeshift parking lot as well. The back of my knees feel hollow as I trudge forward. Reaching the vehicle, I push the key into the locked door of the black, two-door truck. I drive with the radio off. No one will leave me alone for long at the house, so I appreciate the five minutes of deafening silence—occasionally interrupted by small sputtering sounds from the quiet engine. I bite down on the inside of my cheek, the brick sitting on my chest feels heavier the closer I get to her little house.

My house. Oh God. She asked me that once, if I wanted it. If I would take care of it. I was
fourteen. I remember thinking that I already took care of her house. I remember the strange
weight that pressed down on my body the more I thought about it.

I had said, “Yeah.” While turning to face her from my spot on the sofa, opposite of her twenty-year-old, beige recliner, “Can we go get ice-cream?”
“Will you look after my house, Hannah?”
“Yeah auntie, I will.”

She left it to me. I haven’t gone in the house since the day she died. Georgina Island is a charmingly chaotic place to live. Auntie’s two story, two-bedroom home always felt quieter and
nicer to me. The little sheltered cement porch we sat on as the sun went down—just the two of us
drinking tea with honey, watching cars go by and chatting about each driver in passing because on a reserve, you know everybody. It was always warm inside, as one dragged their bare feet over the soft, shaggy taupe rug. The scent of laundry detergent and soap mixed with the sage, tobacco and thick braids of sweet grass in each room and left the air tasting sweet. On the white fridge door there was a magnetic picture of Elvis that would fall off onto the checkered kitchen floor if you closed the fridge too hard. I can’t count the nights spent in the living room, examining every whim and dilemma I’d ever had. Unless Coronation Street was on.

My grip tightens, sharp knuckles turn white against the black steering wheel. I don’t know if I’ll ever go inside again. I feel every organ in my body drop to the soles of my feet at the thought of the spring-door slamming behind me, her smell gone.

The sun is cut in half by the silver horizon. It casts long, pointy shadows over the frozen lake and across the road in front of me, leaving strips of white-gold between each plot of darkness. It was the kind of shimmering evening you’d take a picture of—wanting to capture the rare, ethereal moment granted by the universe. It was like this coming back from the funeral, too. I remember hating the sun for setting without her, being mad the water sparkled. I remember I wore mascara. I remember having black tear tracks staining my face before I had stepped inside the church. I remember the staticky, white noise that started blaring in my ear drums the moment I had woken up, rolling over my friend’s sleeping form to read the lit-up screen of my phone:
Auntie died?
I remember the moment sound returned to me. I was staring at the casket in front of me, thinking it was so small.
She was gone. That was it.

I grip the thin steering wheel like an anchor and glance at the silver ring glinting on my middle finger, a single turquoise rock stares back. I feel it pulse against my clammy fingers. I was wandering the empty halls like a ghost, listening to my older relatives decide how to start sorting her things downstairs. I had impulsively snatched it off her dresser as if it would keep her
here. As if it would keep her close to me.

I’m passing the dark, hollow house. I keep my eyes on the road in an attempt to ignore the utter vacancy that has encompassed what was once my only refuge. I keep my eyes straight ahead, almost managing not to look, to not let my irises wander to the big, empty windows. So, I
almost miss it.

I feel my heart lurch forwards and slam into my ribs. Out of the corner of my eye, standing there, hands leaned forward on the railing as if she was looking closely at the front lawn at the single, ancient pine tree. On the porch, in her faded yellow rain coat that had a fuzzy blue inside. Behind rectangular reading glasses perched on her weathered, brown face, with shining, russet colored eyes that crinkled at the corners. She was smiling, she was right there.

I’m telling myself she’s not there even as my foot is pressing down on the shrieking breaks. Reversing, I turn my head towards the shaded block of cement, dark green paint peeling backwards and coming off the porch in strips. Auntie wasn’t there. I mean, she was, I guess. She
would always be. Just, not there.

I shakily breathe through my nose and slump back in the seat. The sun has sunk below the trees and taken the remaining light with it. A street light flickers to life further up the road. I feel my eyes sting and I blink rapidly.

150,000 people die every day, so about two times that number are mourning every day. Dealing with the feelings of utter hopelessness, the feeling I’ve only felt a handful of times in my short life. The simple need for love and family is a brutal necessity of the human condition. Our basic biology demands community and consequently demands loss. Demands you to feel it. The crushing weight that encompasses you, bringing unescapable feelings of total helplessness and
implacable guilt.

I lost someone I love, but people stay with you as long as you let them. I recognize this notion and desperately cling to it. Life is going to drag you through the mud whether you want it to or not, whether you expect it or not. The only thing you can do is decide what parts of it are worth hanging onto, or letting go for that matter. It can be something as simple as a ring, worn first out of guilty remorse, that now brings precious reassurance. A reminder I’m allowed to recall the past, to feel the sadness and blackness settle in my heart – but also to let go of what cannot change, to look upon the present with hope and the future without resisting it.

That’s the silver-lining—it’s all you can do. You want them here with you so even if they aren’t, they still are. Maybe not in the way you want, but you take what you can get—in the lessons that stay with you and in the habits that were theirs first. A spirit is free and a memory is yours.