Category: Deaths & Obits

Roberta Edith Rivett 1935-2025

mOm died October 2. We’re all very sad and messed up about it but we’re also trying hard to stay cheerful and kind to each other, and it’s that effort that makes the days of grief that pass that much easier.

I want to publicly praise and bless cousin Alex for her help at this time. She loved my mOm as much as I do and her help and care of her family delineates why she’s among the best of humans.

Roberta was a private person, like her husband, so I won’t say too much about her. But she was loved by a lot of people, for her intelligence, kindness, humour, patience and generosity.

We must love each other while we can.

Dave in March, Zach in May, pOp in August, and now mOm. It’s been a meatgrinder of a year, 2025, and it ain’t over yet.

David Joseph Dowker has passed away

He died the evening of March 24 at North York General Hospital, subsequent to a fall over Christmas. I was able to speak to him on St. Patrick’s Day; the hospital had him call me, but he was so obtunded I could barely understand him. I have written a blistering letter to the ‘patient experience’ people at North York General, but I will never send it. He was predeceased by his partner of many decades, Jo Volk, in 2017.

I am calm about it because I know in my heart I did everything I could to help him during the last months of his life; I’m now trying to get his cat adopted and I’ve notified some people who wouldn’t have found out about it otherwise.

He knew I loved him.

My duty now is to the living. I will help his sister as much as I can from a distance, but I know that’s what Dave would want me to do.

Leo and Linda here on Monday

So that’s sorted; they’ll go see the fOlks afterward.

I think I am going to compose a rant, a long, excitable and childish rant about parasociality.

I tried something new at IHOP- the breakfast biscuits are nice, but quite salty.

Esther the Wonder Pig has died of natural causes, surrounded by her human dad and family friends, aged 11, at Campbellville, Ontario. She will be missed. Her shop is here.

New Song – Looting Corpses with You

Looting Corpses with you

(with a Latin beat, (alas I could not determine which one, but I will eventually) sung by a single voice with guitar, trumpet and percussion accompaniment, and descriptively it’s the ‘Dah dit dit dit Dah dit dit dit’ rhythm, whatever the hell that is)

This song is, quite obviously, dedicated to the memory of John Caspell.

 

The moon is high and bright
It sheds a ghostly blight
Upon a battlefield
With chilling points of light
The little things we like to do
Will make us ever close and true
Oh how I bless the moon
For I will soon
go looting corpses with you.

Their boys put up a fight
You know it don’t seem right
But we survived the fray
And now sneak out at night
The CO will find fools to scold
until he sees that shiny gold
Oh how I bless the moon
For I will soon
go looting corpses with you.

RIP Creede this one’s for you

It’s two in the morning, I just wrote and orchestrated an entire song in my head, and I’m crying so hard my snerking can be heard in the next county.

 

Herewith ‘The Parting Gift’ a bluegrass song for Creede Lambard

Opens with banjo and the bass sneaks in, other instruments following, everyone’s playing and singing together on ‘and now the train is boarding’ to maximize harmonies and audio density

Your voice gone from the room
Your song is a recording
Not much to lift the gloom
And now the train is boarding

bass really booms, all the other instruments wire weave; the voices on top are angry and desperate

I’m glad, I’m glad
that the batteries are dead
the times we had
always better in always better in my head

Instrumental break, starting with the bass, then to mandolin, then to octave mandolin, then to banjo, then a polyphonic explosion as they all try to outshout each other.

Much sparser accompaniment and vocal arrangement, with the voices taking turns.

I lost my final home
Soon after you had left us
And now I’m doomed to roam
With the dark songs that you gave us
Only my voice I lift
My mandolin is gone
It is your parting gift
I remember you in song

Much longer and more subdued instrumental break, everybody calming down and being sad and politely taking turns.

I’m glad, I’m glad
that the batteries are dead
the times we had
always better in always better in my head

 

 

for banjo, mandolin, octave mandolin, upright bass and at least four voices, all tenors and altos but if there’s a true ‘black hole’ bass voice I’ll allow it.

Ukraine update

Putin and Xi have finished their meeting and sadly, China’s ‘suggestions’ for ‘peace’ are basically Russian eating Ukraine and shitting out grain shipments and rooting around for Black Sea oil while jacking off to dreams of Romanov imperial splendour, opulence and supremacy.

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Statistics agency: Ukraine‘s GDP down 31.4% in 4th quarter of 2022. Ukraine‘s GDP fell by 31.4% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to a 30.8% drop in the third quarter, according to the State Statistics Service.

464 children – have been killed by Russia in Ukraine.

934 – injured to varying degrees of severity.

150,000 – were kidnapped and moved to Russia. – Source unknown but it matches everything else I’ve seen.

PLEASE NOTE 11000 CHILDREN HAVE DIED IN THE YEMEN CONFLICT. (In other words brown children are getting killed too; it’s just that Ukraine was twice the land of my foremothers and I feel a connection.) I wasn’t able to figure out which proportion of the 52000 civilians killed in the Tigray conflict (Eritrea) have been children. And of course there’s more than one way to run a genocide; China sterilizing Uyghur women at the rate of 250/100000 <—- insanely high for a country with a PLUMMETING BIRTH RATE, and budgeting enough money to sterilize one third of the women of Uyghur origin in a single municipality in a single year is also horrific. It’s easier to prevent kids than waste them I guess. Source, Vox.

Maxim Tucker reports:

In some battles, like Vuhledar and Bakhmut, the Russians have a 1:1 ratio of killed to wounded, Nato says. Ukraine’s medevac procedures have helped it achieve 1:9, KIA to WIA according to statistics it shared with Nato. Half of those rescued will be able to return to active duty.

Jesus Christ on a rubber crutch, I’m glad I’m not a Russian medic. This is Putin treating his troops with the ultimate disrespect. Medevac must be a joke to them. Ukraine at least treats every combatant as precious and the difference in how their commanders treat them must be VERY OBVIOUS to the guys taking fire.

Wagner Group is apparently having to release half of the soldiers they have left because they fulfilled their contracts and managed to survive the meat-grinder. So on top of everything else, Russia’s going to have another call up, and they’ll probably be sending reform school teens and the worst scum of the Russian prison system. Good thing the first thing you hear from the Ukrainians is how to surrender without getting killed…

Alex and the guitar

His dad bought him a half-sized guitar and mentioned I could help him put new strings on it. While the strings were off I polished the guitar. Alex put four out of the six strings on and took to it like a duck to water, massively enjoying using the guitar tool for all of its uses. Handy little thing. Then I tuned it, warned him it wouldn’t stay in tune and then we fixed the guitar bag. The bag had two broken zipper pulls so I handmade replacements out of leather thongs I got during my “spend money on steampunkish things” days and a steampunk style heart and a gear (Alex picked what he wanted out of the pile and picked the thong colour so it’s to his specifications). Now all the pulls work and the guitar is back in the bag. It will go home so the folks can admire all the work he did, but come back here to live when he next comes over.

We made our walk to Timmy Ho’s but I almost didn’t make it – walking so close to taking my BP meds leaves me pretty wrung out. However I managed to rejoin my party after about ten minutes of lying down once we got home. I could hear Jeff and Alex talking and laughing, which is just so homey…..

My digestion right now is completely shot. I need to not drink coffee when I’m marginal, That Much I KNow for sURe.

In a second I’ll run back downstairs and fire up Peggle on the xBox. That game is almost twenty years old, amazing. It’s on the same disc as Plants Vs Zombies and Zuma.

Everyone have a good day, y’all, and if you’re feeling poorly remember you can always call me and I’ll say ‘there there’ to absolutely no effect, but I will say it.

Special love today for Sue G., who keeps crossing my thoughtways, Derry, who will be missed by our family as long as one of us remembers her, and Susie H, who was an awesome mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and whose kindness and skill is ever a beacon of memory.

RIP Tom Verlaine

He passed a couple of days ago.

I once went into a record store in Toronto not knowing who he was but I’d heard him at Dave’s place and I was asking if they knew who sang a song with the lyrics, “Tonight the air has teeth,” and right now I’m listening to “Breaking in My Heart,” and weeping helplessly because I know.

I called Mike yesterday. He wasn’t able to drop by and did not want a visit, but we checked in and all our peeps are safe.

Another near miss (asteroid.)

 

a snail for pOp

photo credit Mary Harrsch of Pompeian bronze lamp decorated with a snail
cred Mary Harrsch

Got out for a walk yesterday – it wasn’t much but it broke the monotony. I went north and Jeff went south because he wanted a longer walk in the nicer park at the other end of the street. What a foolishly lucky pair we are to have someplace pleasant to walk so close.

Energy levels are bobbing about but I’m still doing better.

Suzanne comes today.

14320 words.

Lovely phone calls with both Mike and Keith yesterday. Talked to Mike about the stuff he left here after the meal since fo sho he didn’t mean to and it turned out of course he’d been looking for them. Keith cooked a meal for Peggy and famille at her place and that made me very happy to hear. Paul’s test was accomplished SO FAST that Keith says they were in and out of Burnaby Hospital in 20 minutes. I ain’t heard of such a thing in a lifetime of stooging around hospitals. Frankly amazed.

Jeff Beck has passed at 78 of bacterial meningitis. And if you want proof God checked out, Henry Kissinger is still alive (he’s 99 and I can only imagine how that monster smirked when he realized he’d outlived Elizabeth.)

sadly no mochi

I lookit evvywhere in the freezer aisles, no go. I imagine if it was in a more Chinese neighbourhood it would be different. Do I REALLY want to go to T n T? er no. I’ll keep my eyes peeled when I’m out though.

Jeff and I are still enjoying the leftovers from our SUMPTUOUS REPAST™. He really wishes he’d been in better shape for the main event, but leftovers rule!

Jeri Lynn broke a rib coughing. Story of our lives these days. Jeffrey her husband is being very helpful (it’s his default setting; he’s one of the dearest and kindest of men, not that anykind else would be worthy of her, lol.)

Very much looking forward to the new season of Miss Scarlett and the Duke. Yes, it’s Victorian copaganda, but we do so love the principals, and mOm enjoys making a recommendation for a show to us once in a way.

I stole Jeff’s Oodie after I gave mine to mOm and I’m practically living in it; if I’m wearing it I don’t need the heater on in my room at night.

Thinking with longing of my friends and family today; Dave in his east facing eyrie at Bathurst and Sheppard, the jasmine and the sandalwood. Peggy in her sprawling house filled with family and TOoo MucH sTUff. All the Dunnett folk across the country and elsewhere, madly sending greetings on the chat line. All the Statpower folks. I could have seen Jerome and didn’t. I’m not exactly phobic about public spaces but I ‘git anxious’ that’s for sure. Mike in his west facing eyrie along Kingsway. No sunbathing in December on his balcony, that’s for sure. Alexis ensconced in the family eyrie in the West End. Feeding hummingbirds; tracking our insaniam producendo weather. Jarmo and Susanna and Ninja the kitty, grieving still and always, since Ville (may his name be remembered) passed over the holidays. Tammy – it wasn’t enough, what I saw of her. Glenn – how I would enjoy just sitting and drinking coffee with you somewhere, to roll all this madness and sadness around and try to get a grip on it. Rob P, who told me YEARS ago to watch Farscape. Sue and Marylke and Katie S. and Ivy and Madelyn. Talks and shows and canoe trips and their deep listening. M&D and Ontie Mary. Missing Jim. I barely saw him these last five years, but I can’t think about his death without an inner wail that comes from my toes.

I should call Jan. There are a lot of shoulds. Too many.

This is my heart’s longing, that you all be well and facing 2023 with the love and equanimity we will all need. It’s gonna be rough folks and we need to be helpful and soft to counteract it all.

clean house

Feeling calm and rested. Suzanne’s car is toast so she paid for a cab here and I back – it all worked out.

mOm and Suzanne exchanged phone greetings via me, which was awesome.

One of Suzanne’s youngest son’s friends overdosed in jail this past week. This makes three people who have died of toxic drugs, known to our family, in the last two years.

I was going to have insomnia, so at 10 pm I took a Robax and slept until a little before 4. Done with my brain exercises. Time to face the day and run the dishwasher.

I want to cuddle Ryker and Alex but I am patient.