“The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination.”—Maya Angelou
It’s three years today since my friend – my family – Donimo passed. In the weeks leading up to her death she tasked me with finding words about beauty and nature. Closer to her leaving she asked for meditations on spirituality and death. I think she must have known that these words would be a gift for us after she passed – they certainly have been for me. D had ME/CFS, POTS and fibromyalgia and after years of increasingly insufferable pain, she chose a medically assisted death on April 21, 2020. She did not want to go, but she left on her own terms, beside Lynn Creek, surrounded by her chosen family. I’ll never forget the feel of her hand as she crossed over, the fierce blue of her eyes reflecting the sky, *becoming* the sky.
Donimo was intuitive and generously direct. She took zero bullshit and was protective of her people. She defended me from myself several times and this helped me grow as a person. We became friends when her partner Sarah and I became close in 2008 and we connected right away as artists. D worked with macro photography, silk screen printing, graphic design, sculpture and mixed media. The photos shown here were taken by her in the year and days before her death.
Donimo was also a brilliant activist. In 1990, she co-organized the Queers in Arts Artisans Market for the Gay Games in Vancouver. The Games board censored the Market by not allowing them to use the word “queer” in their name. D organized against the decision:
“…if we can be really nice. If we can look like the posters that they’ve got around town. If we can be really white and really thin and really conservative and really able-bodied, and really nice, then the outside world will accept us and we’ll slide in. For us…that’s not what this is all about. This is our party. And this is for us to say hey yeah, this is what springs from the gay and lesbian creative imagination…. language is a really powerful tool… (a)nd the more we can expand our language and be brave enough to use it, the more power we have.”—Donimo
Thank you, D, for the strength and beauty you brought to our community. I love you.
