Donimo, I was never part of your inner circle, but one day while I was visiting Ruth Harding — who lived beside Uschi then I think, in those ancient attic rooms of white-and-turquoise peeling paint up on the Drive — we somehow met and shared a laugh or two. My memories are blurred now, but they are always set in the gold of the sun in magic hour and the vivid green of trees with new growth. My femme chuckle then was no doubt nervous, as I kept saying Domino by mistake, and because as your beloved Sarah says, you were DAMN handsome and full of style, always. And of course later I saw you out at events here and there and at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. That was before I got diagnosed with chronic complex diseases myself, but it taught me a little about how much damn perseverance, rest, communication and humour, even if bleak or dry, we need for what we’ve been dealt in such an ableist and inaccessible world as this. I promise the memory of you to continue on with disability justice education, access solutions, sharing peer wisdom and just holding all of us who have been, are, and will be disabled on this earth and by our built environments deep in my political heart. I will do this queerly, in solidarity with everyone who brings all they have to living and dying, including the constant weight of pain. You mattered for all that you brought, just as you were, to so many. You mattered. You still do. I promise the memory of you to keep learning while I’m of the living earth: how to pay attention to the little things as well as the big, the quiet as well as the loud, the details as well the big picture and the moments within the days that make the seasons into years. To know that time really can slow down yet fly past. To believe disabled people when we say and show who we are and what we need (or don’t); to reject the binaries, including the ‘us over here’ and the ‘them over there’; to welcome the compassion and reject the pity. To love. To know when it’s time to stay and when it’s time to go.
Big, warm, safely distanced hugs to all who loved Donimo …