Sid

How long must one be dead before they’re considered an ancestor? This is the question I’ve been sitting with since yesterday.

I’m one of those fools who I picks up their phone before my eyes are fully open to get that first hit of dopamine. Before I empty my bladder, or take my medicine. I know I’ve been Pavlov’d like a good little dog, yet still I am voluntarily enslaved by the small light box prison all the same.

It’s never a good thing when you’ve missed 7 calls from a family member you rarely speak to. Schrödinger’s funeral. If I don’t call him back, I don’t know who has died. But if I don’t know, I can’t rationalize how much grief I’m allowed to feel until I do. At first I think he’s calling to tell me stepfather is dead, but then I realize that I am the one listed as his next of kin. The one who will have to make the calls when the time comes.

Without preamble, Rick says it’s Sid. After a perfect day with my aunt, he collapsed in the bedroom of their RV and died of a heart attack. Writing that sentence feels like a betrayal. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but you all have your own visual imagery of what a Sid looks like, what kinds of people go RVing for six months to escape a Winnipeg winter. In order for you to understand why it’s a tragedy, I have find some way for you to feel just how my aunt and uncle have romanced one another for forty years. To try to describe Sid’s incredible ability to love and show love. I know my strengths and I know I’m just not that good of a writer.

A program has been running in my head in the background for months now. Time and space, distance, perception, real limitations vs limiting beliefs. Underneath all of the class assignments I’m working through, the research to read and write, teaching my students, setting up an exhibition, managing my family - under all of it, I’m wrestling with these huge questions and thoughts about the inner workings of our universe.

I’d like to ask other Arabs if they also feel a physical compulsion to kneel and bow. I grew up as far away from Islam as one can be, but there’s this force in me that craves the ritualistic motion of Islamic prayer. Perhaps it’s built into my DNA, like my preference for all things lemon and garlic - a kind of standard Lebanese encoding software. When times of grief arise, I sit in the dark with a small candle, light palo santo, and engage in an intuitive sequence of movement dictated by my body and my unconscious mind. Overcome with the urge to kneel and press my forehead to the floor, I feel it leave an impression. I want this temporary mark to mean something. For grief to mean something. So feeling can mean anything beyond ‘inconvenient’ during exam time.

Cupping my hands together, I press them to my forehead and I reach out across time and space for Sid. Envisioning his solid strength, the warmth of his embrace and the joy of his laughter. He was so fucking funny all of the fucking time. He knew suffering and yet he chose to be a good man when he didn’t have a good man to model himself from. He built himself into a great man because that’s who he is. Who he was.

Tendrils of smoke catch the light and curl around my head. Calling forth the collection of memories and experiences I have with him, I envision them becoming a pillar, and I place him on it. I am the culmination of those who came before me - their struggles, wins, mistakes - their choices or lack of choices. I give my ancestors grace for their shortcomings and gratitude for their gifts. Maybe they’re supposed to be blood kin who passed long ago, but I choose my own path, choose my own family, and I have chosen to make Sid one of my ancestors. An uncle by marriage two provinces away, who I see maybe once a year if I’m lucky. It might not make any sense, but then, death doesn’t really make sense anyway. Not to the heart.

So here I am, reaching across time and space, through the veils and around the practical to-do’s. Welcoming Sid, honouring him with my forehead pressed to the ground. My newest ancestor.