These Wounds of Loss – Poems of Kwame Dawes in Memory of Rod Oram (1950-2024)

On the Island of Iona, March 19th, 2024. A memorial mandala for Rod Oram (1950-2024)

from IRIE ITES

…………………………………………………….
I consider the vertigo of my days.

as if I am still mourning my sister’s death, the deepest
absence that will not relent. When I said :”All is changed,

my self, known and loved, is gone, ‘ I was opening  my heart’s
hunger to the persistence of these wounds of loss.

I sway with the calm of one awaiting the news
of the end of things; it is now a matter of moments,

every sun-dazzled day a miraculous gift, the brawta
of a man’s life: the extras, the unearned mercies, the gifts.

………………………………………………………………………………….

Kwame Dawes from Sturge Town, Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 2023

I am so grateful to Ghanaian poet and Recovering Words guest poetry blogger Tryphena Yeboah for her interview with Ghanaian Jamaican poet Kwame Dawes on his latest book of poetry Sturge Town. So many lyrical explorations of loss and sorrow in many of those poems.  These doorways for me to walk into the grief of yet another huge loss of a friend in my life. Rod Oram, gone to soon at age 73. He was sure he would make 100. And I believed him. He was that kind of a man, seemingly unperishable spirit.

Journalist and climate change specialist, Rod Oram (1950-2024)

And the poem excerpt above, how it captures as deep sense of disorientation, a loss of a previous self-sense from wounds of loss. In my case, too many recent deaths of friends. But how it also carries amidst the paralyzing sorrow a reminder that each sub-dazzled day a miraculous gift, the brawta/ of a man’s life: the extras, the unearned mercies, the gifts.

In September I lost my first romantic beloved and life-long friend, Kathy; in October my Calgary business world soul-brother Ian and in January deep-soul companion Ross. And, now. after a horrific bicycle crash, beloved colleague from my journalism days back in Toronto, who became a life-long friend, Rod Oram.

These words from his death notice sum up so much of this man, a man of immeasurable integrity and equanimity: Active for justice, lover of kindness, who walked humbly with his God. We won’t do enough until we care enough and we won’t care enough until we have a spiritual relationship with the planet and its people.

Rod, a former journalist with The Globe and Mail, Financial Post, Financial Times of London, Auckland Herald and for many years a celebrated free-lance print and radio columnist based in Auckland, N.Z. well known for his devoted attention to, and research on, climate change. His view of it as a frightening real near and present danger.

In one of his last columns in early March for the NZ-based online news and current affairs journal Newsroom, Rod wrote:

 In Earth time and terms, we humans pack the punch of a massive nuclear explosion or a big asteroid hit.

In the past 70 years – a split second in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year life to date – our eight-fold increase in our greenhouse gas emissions has triggered lightning-fast changes in the planet’s climate and the rest of nature, our life support system.

Sure, we took the past couple of centuries to grow the population and build the energy, economic and technology systems that have triggered that eruption of emissions since 1950. Yet, even those few hundred years were but a blip in Earth time.

But we have done enough, fast enough, to cause profound changes in the five, inter-linked Earth systems: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, cryosphere and geosphere.

Moreover, the speed of change of all five systems is accelerating, and the changes are feeding on each other in a reinforcing cycle.

Quite simply, nature is now changing far faster than we humans are – and that’s on a human time scale, not a planetary one.

Across all five Earth systems, nature is moving far faster than we modelled or are responding to. Examples are forest fires, biodiversity loss, ice loss, and, above all, ocean heating.

Outside of his passion for his wife Lynn and daughter Celeste and his family of origin, one of Rod’s other great passions was long distance cycling. Countless group cycling adventures from the top to bottom of NZ and many other NZ cycling adventures. His most ambitious cycle adventure was last year – Azerbaijan to Istanbul. It was to be followed by a further adventure from Istanbul to Manchester, UK. Now, to be forever uncompleted.

And so it is a terrible irony that Rod had a heart attack while riding near his Auckland home that led to a catastrophic crash that resulted in his death a few days later. I have often joked with my children that it is best to die in the saddle. This not what I would have wished for Rod. Believe me.

In 2019 Rod took me on a car trip around NZ’s South Island. Included in our baggage was his portable bike-in-a-suitcase! This was to keep up with his training for a major long-distance group cycle in NZ. Our routine: I would drop him off and drive on thirty to forty kilometers or more and wait for him to catch up! This wonderful man was disciplined and determined. And up for any good adventure.

What an adventure Rod and I hatched when one of us was invited to write a story in the lste 1970’s about a new inovation for business – live video conferencing from telephone company studios. Wow, this dates us. My then wife Catherine was a photographer so I invited her to the studio in Calgary. Rod under some pretense invited his wife Lynn to the studio in Toronto.  In the meantime both Rod and I had prepared dinners in coolers and shipped them to each studio. With a click of a switch the video conference began and there we were the four of us! And we ate our meals together along with some wine. Over the years we did a few of these “Surprise Spouse Suppers” and somehow managed to surprise our spouses each time.

In a gut-wrenching case of synchronicity (meaningful coincidence) I learned of Rod’s crash from his beloved wife Lynn the first night I was on the island of Iona for a writing retreat with poet and podcaster Padraig O Tuama. It was 30 years ago this summer that Rod and I co-piloted a 16 passenger van from London to Fionnphort, across from Iona, on the island of Mull. So strange that it would be back on Iona I would hear of his crash, and later, his death. That’s why it seemed so important to make the memorial mandala for him pictured above.

And these words from Kwame Dawes’s poem POST-ELEGY so speak to this moment:

So, here I am, mouth moving, building a shrine
for tomorrow, the tongues we all must speak,
someday soon. It helps to know this in the silence
that returns, and the warmth that evelpoes me.
It is true what Oriogun said, that what I long
for is the gift of caring for the dying,
and now the grace of caring for the dead.

A fierce grace, this caring for the dead. Bless you, love you, Rod.

 

6 Comments

  1. Carol Bower Foote
    Posted March 25, 2024 at 12:26 pm | Permalink

    “we won’t care enough until we have a spiritual relationship with the planet and its people.”
    Oh, I SO believe this! I am saddened to hear of your litany of loss over the last year, Richard. Especially difficult are the tragic losses that come unexpectedly, irrationally, and seemingly before their time. My heart extends to you.
    May you be blessed with a balance of joy in knowing your good fortune to have these people in your lift. –Carol

  2. Richard Osler
    Posted March 26, 2024 at 1:16 am | Permalink

    I was so moved to see this right after, or so it seemed, I wrote this post! Blessings to you dear Carol/

  3. Carol Bower Foote
    Posted March 25, 2024 at 12:27 pm | Permalink

    “we won’t care enough until we have a spiritual relationship with the planet and its people.”
    Oh, I SO believe this! I am saddened to hear of your litany of loss over the last year, Richard. Especially difficult are the tragic losses that come unexpectedly, irrationally, and seemingly before their time. My heart extends to you.
    May you be blessed with a balance of joy in knowing your good fortune to have these people in your life. –Carol

  4. Richard Osler
    Posted March 26, 2024 at 1:13 am | Permalink

    And the blessing of you. That amazing trip you took, knowing none of us, to come up and write poems with us at Honeymoon Bay all those years ago!

  5. Liz McNally
    Posted March 25, 2024 at 7:27 pm | Permalink

    Richard, what a moving tribute to your dear friend.
    This loss so keenly felt and yet in all the synchronicities it appears Rod is even now guiding you through.
    Wrapping you in love, Liz ❤️🙏🏻❤️

  6. Richard Osler
    Posted March 26, 2024 at 1:12 am | Permalink

    Blessings back to you Liz. So glad I was able to werite this!

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