I first met Michael at Port Credit Secondary school in my grade 10 class. MrAlex Fraser’s home room, 210 on the second floor of the new wing .Micheal and I became friends because we instantly had a like minded in our exploration of and play with language. From puns to jokes double entendre we played tennis with with language. I was a foster child under the care of the CAS and living with the Thomson family who eventually adopted me. Michael’s story in many ways paralleled mine. He was also under the watchful care of the CAS and had a foster family in Lorne Park Estates. We were both Crown Wards. A couple of interruptions aside, Michael did well in high school . He was much beloved of Mis Rita Collip who taught Latin and an eight o’clock school Greek class where we both studied . I remember too he was the romantic Heartthrob of all PCSS when he played the lead in the Drama Club’s play, Stage Door. Needless to say I do not intent to give you a whole chronology of Michael’s life. Enough to say we have always been friends. I was his best man and he mine. I remember well the hot September day when Michael married Julia and from that point to this day our lives and our families have been further interconnected. In Memorium Michael Smith on His Passing October 13th, 2014 Because I could not stop for Death— He kindly stopped for me— The carriage held but just Ourselves— And Immortality. Emily Dickinson Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused. Hamlet Act 5, scene 4 Michael, Friend The slate is blank, if memory there be none. W hat are we but the sum of memory . Allow me to put together these sundry jots and pieces which have their claim upon my memory of my friend Michael. For Michael the hand that wrote his life was so very much his own . Truth to tell there is no easy precis of him. He made his life the ever present tutor, And taught the world as classroom Life a grab bag of experiences from which to extricate the meaning. And revel in the joy .... the thrill and fun just knowing. Oh memories of Michael Be not insubstantial , To the lens of mind‘s eye bring again the beacons and cloud capped towers which brought his weather maven out to forage among cycles, cataracts and huricanoes. “And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o the world! Crack natures moulds, an germens spill at once.” Oh, how our Lear smitten Michael was in a storm. Michael would not leave a stone upon a stone, but he would have out of hiding its storied past. Like convicts - Michael, Oh breaker of rocks. Engage again in us your wonder. I want to walk upon the beach and trace out its storied past with him, I want to hear him tell the tale of trees, with all the secrets that knowledge brings. I want to hear him call up the music that ,contrived by genius, and moves us yet again, ... And why. Oh memory unlock the words at play and love of of language, “Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.” And and hear again that discourse upon his collected rockery. If the rock of ages cleft for anyone, it cleft for Michael, with trilobites,brachiopods and secrets of depths mesozoic. Oh allow tears your Michael’s passing , Let them be crystalline or amber to hold the banked recollection of our dear friend beyond this instant. Let them refract the many facets of a life lived in all the colours of the splintered rainbow. And show the sad, sad horizon, which Michael bravely saw, And like Ulysses sailed bravely onward. Could we but fuse all memory into one, Let us say it took some pluck to live Michael’s final episode, To say with Hamlet, ”the readiness is all”. To cast off from shore of Georgian Bay into the wine dark deep, Sky and lake waters one single deep blue melded horizon, The starry,starry night piercing the dark overhead of a cloudless sky, And one long final breath gliding silently into the vast design of things. And from the deep the cry of the loon now laments his passing. Memory is all the comfort we have left, It is for us the repository of the soul . Oh hold to the memory of our dear friend Michael, Speak his name and relive our sojourn with him. Again reanimate those times with his boundless curiosity, And people them with those in life he loved. And always this at the end, And this is the hardest part - “First chill, then stupor, ....and then the letting go.” Good nigh sweet prince, And flights of angles sing thee to thy rest. Requiescat in pace, Michael, Rest in peace, dear friend. Kenneth Thomson October 19th, 2014
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:28:53 +0000
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