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Proceeds will be donated to the Gord Downie Fund for Brain Cancer Research at Sunnybrook in Toronto.
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about
October 4 2018 marks ten years from the night my mom, Josée Gadbois, passed away at Southlake Hospital in 2008. She was 49. It followed a vicious two-year battle against Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) which is a cancer as ugly as it is unknown. GBM is a ruthless brain disease responsible for the loss of so many, including Gord Downie who fought for 16 months before his death in October 2017.
We are overrun with words of cancer’s impact every day. But among its many ugly faces, GBM is quiet. The research and public awareness behind brain cancers are drastically underfunded and under-publicized despite being among the most aggressive and incurable.
That’s why I’d like to shift what focus I can to GBM, if only for a moment. Its lasting impact on me is such that my clearest childhood memories are of her milestones, and learning how to express that has made sense of years of questions.
I remember being home alone in 2006, staring at our dragon tree with Dad over the phone saying she’d pulled over on her way to work. She was hospitalized after her first seizure and I was just excited to order pizza on a school night. I remember her joke that followed months later about looking like our video game characters—but the gauze around her head represented the miracle surgery that added two years to her life. Toward the end, I remember showing Dad the cards we’d prepared for her room in palliative care. We were told politely to remove "Get Well Soon” from them, but I didn't understand why.
It feels necessary to express how growing into adulthood means recognizing these moments over time. It colours in what used to be the inverse relationship between the clarity of memories and the time that separates us from them. At the heart of it, it’s about how these two things together can shed new light on old thoughts.
Though there is so much left to be understood about cancer, it should never keep us from better understanding ourselves.
I can’t thank the following people enough for their help in pulling this song out from the dark: Alex Laurie, Colton Eddy, Derek Hoffman, Morgan Tessier, and The Kents.
Free Download / Pay What You Can with all proceeds toward the Gord Downie Brain Cancer Research Fund at Sunnybrook Hospital.
Thank you so much for listening.
With love to Mom and all families impacted by cancer.
lyrics
here she sleeps
a little more tired and anxiously
in this calico hotel
as far as I can tell she'll never leave
here all my friends
arrive as postcards and other gifts
so rest your head on my stomach
and I'll think how nice it's been to know you
only I took the first opportunity
to deny seeing you like this troubles me
take the sun
cut it in two
trade light for the fall warmth hinting at you
alive and just gone to stay
at the bench by the lake
home is a room with no walls
I am tucked in a bedbug bite sheet of ice
oh, the sun is coming
well I’d go anywhere bright
and we’d sit
talk this over again
I couldn’t hear you calling me
to come and help you up
from the floor
yeah all this tile
it came unstuck
so I reached out my hand
to take the stone from the sand
in a flash saw all the ants collapse into chaos
this colony cut with the roof off
try and snap me out of it
can we sit and talk this over again?
credits
released October 4, 2018
Mixing & Mastering — Derek Hoffman
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