TheReturnTheSon

The Son Always Rises In The East

Four Thirty in the morning :

Standing looking across the street at my small but comfortable apartment on Gloucester Street in Toronto. I had just finished packing the car with everything that I thought I should keep. My 1974 Volkswagen Rabbit was stuffed to the brim, and the roof rack was full, too. A quick look over to the building next door finds me thinking about Kevin Symonds who had just passed away. Another one taken away in the prime of his youth; it was just a few months earlier that my boss and friend Stephen Baggs had fallen the same way.

Kevin and I met at The Turret Club, he was a quiet navy boy. We never hung around in the same circles but we got along in a standoffish way and it wasn't until his last few months in Toronto that we actually got to know one another better as friends. One weekend I was heading up to my sister's place up north of Orillia and I decided to ask Kevin if he wanted to come along and we could stop and visit my Dad and then go up to my sisters and then it would only be another hundred miles or so to his parents in North Bay. Kevin got along with my Dad immediately as they were both former navy.

On subsequent trips my Dad asked "Where's Kevin?" and my response was, "I don't know!" made me think that Dad thought that Kevin was my lover/boyfriend but nothing was ever said about my sexuality .... not to me anyways. The same thing happened with Stephen when I took him up north to get him out of town and out of his apartment; I had told Stephen that we prolly won't stay too long that Dad and I don't talk that much. Five hours later and on our way back to the Big Smoke Stephen quipped "Won't stay too long eh!!" Kevin's parent's were so glad to see him and we stayed the night heading back the next afternoon.

Stephen owned and operated the heating and air conditioning company that I worked for; I had met him through ChrisShepherd and he immediately decided that he liked me as a friend. When Stephen bought the company he decided that I knew more about things "business wise" and asked me to build the shop and set it up for him. I knew very little about heating let alone air conditioning but I was determined to learn. After Stephen died, things were not quite the same in shop and I tried turning back to my renovations work but something from the east kept calling, and finding myself wandering aimless day to day I decided it was time to go home.

Driving east on the 401 a bright red horizon appears like a giant celestial choir calling. The highway was clear sailing at this hour and I felt alone and calm and all was right with the world. The Nova Scotia Son was going home.