UAE

student Union Joint Kent). Bruyneel -Editer-in-Chief

Heather E. Christie Graphic Design

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Sarah K Murphy

Editorial 10: The Fog

Vancouver this Christmas, was covered in a dense fog that only seemed to lift as the 767 cut through the sky. It’s funny how the weather can influence your memory. (Like all | remember about my pal’s funeral was that my shirt was stuck to my back during the eulogy and | remember | thought the reason we were all crazy was the heat). These eyes of mine, they do funny things to me, sometimes. Like right now, the maple tree across the yard from me is in full bloom with ruby red leaves and engine bonnet blue wisps of clean, fresh summer air ruffling its base. But now, it is as it is, naked and really only a sad reminder that everything is born to die, as if any more proof was needed. But that might be the cold and the fact that | am hungry.

When | am at home, and hungry, sometimes | go to the Terry Fox memorial outside BC Place. Not to the memorial really, but to the pizza stand near it where the slices are cheap and have real mushrooms. It has become kind of a tradition. | take the Sky Train from New West and get off at Stadium, grab a couple of slices and sit at the Memorial and think about my capac- ity for hope, and for wonder. Usually | leave only semi-inspired, more in need of a bathroom than a pen, but this time it

was different. Underneath the statue | recog-

nized Fox’s brother, Daryl, holding a child’s

hand and pointing to the near-God that was

his older brother. | approached him furtively

and told him how much | loved the place that

honored his brother. He spoke softly and

quickly about what it meant to him. | remem-

bered the “Life & Times” | had seen on Fox

and what a large role Daryl had played in keeping the Marathon of Hope going during

its darker days. The child climbed over the

statue and smiled at me as children do when

they encounter friendly strangers. When they

left | realized that this statue was almost

nothing to me except an excellent place to eat

pizza and think about my home town. Then it

occurred to me that | have a place like Daryl

does. A place at UPEI that honors my dead

brother Steve. It is there, just below the AVC

that a small plaque sits honoring the life of Steven Wylie Taylor, who died two summers ago. He was my roommate and friend and yet | have never been to his monument. Monuments after all should be dignity and legacy, not stone and iron, but it is hard to make a statue out of dignity. | am sure there are hundreds of people who go to monuments and feel an over- whelming sense of closure, but, man, | am not one of them. Maybe it’s there and | am simply taking it for granted. | have never gone, save the opening day probably because | don’t have any children, and because there is no pizza worth savoring in PEI.

As the plane picked up speed and hit its cruising altitude, | thought about hope and pizza, and fallen brothers, and the way children smile at strang- ers, who seem friendly. And as | sat scowling at the fuck in front of me | who put his seat back during the meal, and cursing the tired witless aca- demic hacks whose every word is a lie they actually believe, | thought about how the fog always seems to lift that second before you give up, and how precious that moment is, and how | usually take it for granted.

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