Remembering that I’m going to be dead at some point is usually something I don’t plan. I don’t have an appointment set in my calendar that pops up with a 20-year-away reminder: MEETING: DEATH. “Oh, shoot, right. I have to do that eventually. Good thing I put it in my calendar. Almost forgot!” It doesn’t cross my mind much, but when it does it’s in weird semi-sadistic ways. For instance, I was walking along (not on) a very rush hour-ish road one night and saw this guy in a black leather jacket jay-sprint, not walk, across four lanes of traffic right in front of a roaring bus, and I just went into my head and visualized him getting hit and dragged two blocks, his jacket being the only thing that remained intact. Whoah, bad brain. But then I thought, “hmm, I could have been that guy and BANG, gone. Or even while I’m walking the ensuing tangled mess of crashing and flipping cars would hurl the back end of someone’s sedan at me.” All of these little death-to-me scenarios that sometimes entertain my mind always have one result: I’m poundcake.

I won’t lie, I’ve cried over the thought that I will be “no more” at some point. I’ve cried many times as a kid, too young to know that it’s the typical ‘glass that’s half full or half empty’ situation. I guess, I never think about death being like an exciting surprise I get to open one morning when I’m scratched off the big man’s list.

When I was with my grandmother as she passed away, I surprisingly witnessed it as an amazing experience. My mom and I watched her move from a total bed-ridden state – her mind already gone, she was simply a body slowly letting go – to sitting up in bed marveling at someone in the corner of her room, her eyes twinkling with so much life, the way they did when we gave her a crystal ornament each birthday decades ago. It was grandpa there. It had to have been. It’s what she’d been waiting 30 years for. We had brought in an old timey CD to play for her those nights, and the beat to Bing Crosby’s voice had her feet, which she had had no control over, tapping away like they did when she used to show my sister and I her “moves.” She held a teddy bear and we held her. She was never happier.

Death and I are really tight now, homeys from way back. He and I cross paths in the cemeteries I explore with friends, but we respect each other. I don’t mess with him and he doesn’t mess with me. I already gave him shit for the whole cancer thing and he took off, so I think we’re good for awhile. And really, if he shows up I’ll be fine. My grandmother put her trust in him.

But, today it wasn’t my mortality I was realizing – I realized my immortality.

What! How does that work?

I was on the Skytrain heading to see my dad before he drives down south where the sun is visible and I was thinking to myself “Hey, I’m really happy right now.” It was a little me-party I was having in my head, really feeling it for the genuine and complete moment it was, just pure “nice”. It was a pretty good day I’d had. Earlier, I had partook in a luxury watch store’s media party with my friend, Jenn, was given a big bag of swag (my first swag ever, if you don’t count birthday goodie bags), on my way to the train station I leaped to open a door for a woman with a stroller carrying twins, and then I chatted with an elderly woman who told me she had gone all her life without seeing twins until that day – to which I had this really strong feeling of empathy for her in that moment. She’s going to tell so many people.

I was sitting with my swag bag on the Skytrain and looking at the streets and buildings of people flipping by as I passed on a bridge, caught my smile in the window with my silly Cowichan “tea cozy” hat pulled low over my eyebrows, and said, “hmm, my mind is prompting me for the obligatory ‘worry about an earthquake striking while I’m up here speeding along, hurtling me into the water where I could die at least 52 different ways’”. A silly fear, but a fear I deal with. Yet, today something new is coming through the worrying mind murkiness.

I epiphanied that if I die, there’s no way this inner monologue is going to switch off. It’s just too damn… there. My body’s gonna go for sure, totally gone, but thinking about everything tonight, I know I’m going to have this forever, the ability to humour myself by the people I encounter and the things I see, and better yet, the things I make up. It was a moment where I felt I could be locked up in solitary confinement and I’d be okay. I have enough really pleasant memories, astounding situations, I feel the love others have of me, and hey, I can make better movies that Spielberg can, and these are far more advanced than 3D.

There’s an episode of BBC’s Planet Earth that showed the floor of a jungle. Ferns would shoot up, cutting the light off to the vegetation on the floor. It would be overtaken by another fern, and its plant matter would be reused into the soil. This worked on every scale with every species in that jungle. Everything leaves behind some residue when it apparently ends, nothing on this planet just completely zaps right out of existence. No, Death does not own Star Trek weapons. So, the essence of this moment for me is that, if a 747 were to drop on my head or my Skytrain splashes down into a megashark’s jaws, my body will definitely be mash potatoed, but this thinking and feeling that I hold with me all day every day since I was born, I’m going to have that forever.

I’ve been with myself for 30 years and have just now realized that I’m in it for the longest haul of all time and I’m very happy with that. I had always felt robbed that I wouldn’t get to see what happens on this planet a thousand years from now. But maybe this is a good thing, that when my body dies I’m not anchored to just exploring Earth, I can Wall-E all over the universe, still making better movies than Spielberg, even if he’s up there with me. Thank God for imagination.

Julia and I have called it quits. That’s what I’ve been telling friends. It’s all for lack of a better term. A deep-seeded part of me refuses the term “break up” because it describes a violent, permanent destruction. I’m trying to come up with something, but perhaps what has happened to Julia and I doesn’t need a name or label.

In typical Julia/James twins fashion, we both separately decided that things had changed and the inevitable had come and had both thought the other didn’t know what was coming. I was in Vancouver now and enjoying this new world I’d thrown myself into. Though I had a rocky patch early August, I’ve been set to make this my new home. I was missing Julia, but found myself making realizations about her and what I have and haven’t been getting from our now long distance relationship – or as friends called it, an LDR. Like the label itself, long distance can be cold.

So, at some point in August, I had emotionally detached and was trying to strategize when to break it to her.

Should I call her now? Too soon. She’s packing, James, come on. That’d be mean, she’s in a fragile state!

Okay, so then I can’t do it early September cuz she’ll be moving in. Correct.

The end of September? She should have her roots down enough. Good idea.

So, it was set, and I obviously hadn’t learned from my last relationship that the only best time to break up is right away and not to drag it out.

I came to Victoria to see her and her play, Atticdwellers, at the Fringe. (If you didn’t see it, you missed a dark and beautiful show.) I kind of winced when I signed a card for her with “Love”, but I do still love her in the way best friends share. Hanging out together was a little stiff, but I just summed that up as me disconnecting and letting the Relationship James walls come down a bit. Perhaps I was getting a little hip hop on her, and she doesn’t like that.

So, we walked her dog to a nearby park. I’ve nicknamed it Bomb Park now because it was the park that she dropped the bomb that she was going to Toronto and wanted to do it alone to claim her due independence. It’s also the park that the seesaw pic in my header graphic up top was shot at. Very ironic.

I sat at the bottom of the slide and she sat on the grass facing me. She was wringing her hands and finally said shakily…

James, things aren’t working for me.

Yeah, things aren’t working for me either.

The most mutual parting ever.

We ended up talking for a couple hours. We talked about how funny it was, and especially how much of a relief it was. She was understandably a mess, thinking for a time that when she dropped the bomb I, totally oblivious, would be hurt so bad that it would affect my bipolar and send me to the hospital. I was relieved she was relieved, since I knew from experience how tormenting it is to be the one who breaks up with someone who doesn’t see it coming.

I have never known such a mature and caring girl. We both agree to remain best of friends and co-editors, sharing our new journey with each other. Pals. And we can do that. I would love for her to get the most out of Toronto on her own, but I also would love to see her find happiness with whomever comes her way, as she feels the same for me.

From the soil, a rose sprouts and blooms. No one can deny its beauty, and it’s rare that a rose can grow to be something that leaves an impression on people so deeply as this one did. When sun, water and the other nourishing elements don’t reach it, the season changes and it dies. But, the rose has roots and the roots spread to the rest of the garden.

Julia and I have had the best last year and seven months of our lives. Our first summer lives in our memories as the best we’ve ever had. She has raised the bar high for whatever next girl graces my life as she told me I have raised the bar for her next suitors.

I don’t really know how to end this. We both feel a glorious feeling of freedom to take this world by its horns, but there is sadness, and with it a feeling that something is gone in me; her smile, her touch. This phase is always the hardest because you cry over the good memories as your mind ignores the reasons you decided to end things in the first place. There are reminders everywhere. I write this with the pen she gave me in Tofino last summer.

For now, I still wear my Irish Claddagh ring that was my first Christmas gift from her, a sign of a love so deep. It now faces out, the traditional sign that I’m looking for my next true love. And when people say, Who gave it to you? I will always say, My great friend.

(Update: The Claddagh ring was replaced by my grandfather’s a few days after writing this. I don’t need to wear a sign that says I’m single. I also don’t need a physical object to remind me that I have a deep and honest friendship with someone. If I wore a piece of jewelry for each of my friends I’d be more valuable than a Faberge Egg, and a thousand times stronger.)