Finality

The first six weeks of 2026 were quiet—silent, even. Then, all at once, everything outside of the book picked up. I had multiple appointments—scans, X-rays, ultrasounds, a mammogram, an echo—bloodwork and whatever else you could imagine, all packed into the last two weeks of February, along with an out-of-place kneecap.

Then more chaos crept in at home, and in a moment of weakness, I said to my son, “If things don’t improve—I’m going to walk out that door, head south… all the way south—and you’ll probably never see me again.”

I wasn’t joking. The struggle is real, and the thought was there—in my head. The past three years have been beyond challenging. What’s kept me going—what keeps me going—is the knowing that this—the struggle, the suffering—is eventually going to come to an end. I could feel it. I could see it. But sometimes, man, when you’re eyeballs-deep in the funk—it’s hard to see the way out.

The next day, I got a text message from my daughter informing me that her godmother—my homegirl—had passed away. She lay there in the morgue, unidentified, for two days. After reading that, I immediately felt sick, and I started to cry.

Trent came into my room and said, “What’s going on?” Because this cry—that is now a part of me—sounds completely different.

I told him what was up and tried to sit with it.

Leisa and I had been estranged for some time. I mean, I wrote about our entire friendship in the pages of my book. There came a point in our friendship when we went down two very separate paths. We didn’t see each other—but we never stopped loving each other. That was never going to happen.

The last time we spoke was just before the pandemic. She called me up randomly one evening, and we talked for hours like everything was normal—like we hadn’t skipped a beat. Like no time had passed.

Without hesitation, I reactivated my account on Facebook—an account I had abandoned six years ago after I swore I would never put a finger on that platform again. But there I was—back on Facebook— looking for answers. I needed to reach her son—my godson—her sister, and her brother. I needed to know what happened.

The feeling I had the day before—about walking straight into the lake—had completely left my mind and my body—like it was never mine to begin with. I felt the void of never hearing her voice or seeing her face again—it fucking hurt, in a way I can’t explain. The significance of life washed over me. I apologized to my son.

I realized she’s all throughout my book, and she died just as I finished my story. But the book hadn’t been published yet. It was in the hands of the format guy, and I knew I still had time to honour her the way she should have been—and I did.

All of those appointments—breasts, kidneys, heart, knee, and blood—when do you ever see a two-week lineup like that, jam-packed with tests? Some people wait months—years—for some of those.

It felt like a checklist to me—and that’s exactly how I treated it. I walked into every appointment knowing that all was going to check out just fine, one by one, as I went down the list—and it did.

The alignment of everything that took place in my life during February and March is unexplainable. That little, heavy list right there—that was just the tip.

This song was playing one day, and what went through my head when I heard it—Never Knew Love Like This Before—well, I have never known grief like this before. Grief is an emotion new to me.

Sure, I cried when things were sad. I cried—a lot—but I never felt the way I do, or the way I have this past year. There’s been a lot of grieving. Grieving the girl who once protected me—who lived inside me, who is no longer there—and that grieving took months—a year.

I grieved friendships that no longer exist—people not meant for where I’m going next.

Then I was grieving my girl, and it was by far the hardest. I cried off and on for seven days straight, and the difference between that grieving and whatever it was I was doing before—this grieving is without dissociation.

When my other friend passed from stage four cancer—two years ago now—there was so much going on in my life when she got sick. With me having to have open-heart surgery at the same time, I wasn’t even able to process what was happening with her—how could I? When I was struggling to take care of myself and process what the fuck was happening to myself.

Was I sad? Absolutely. But it wasn’t the same—and that’s not because I didn’t love her. It’s because I hadn’t crossed that threshold yet. I wasn’t where I am today.

I was in Nova Scotia on what felt like my last trip there. I mean, I can’t predict the future, but it felt pretty fucking final. She was the reason for my first trip there—1992—and the reason for the last—2026. I had no idea when or where my next trip was going to be, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be that.

I had never done anything like that before. I jumped on a flight to go say goodbye to her—not hi. I wasn’t going to hang out with her. We weren’t going to hug and laugh our asses off—I was going to see her inside a coffin and say goodbye to my friend forever.

How does somebody even do that? I kept asking myself.

It wasn’t something thought out—I just moved like I was on autopilot, and when I look back now—that’s exactly how it felt. I know that feeling well—a feeling you only recognize after the fact.

There was nobody like Leisa. Nobody. I do put her on a pedestal because of what she did for me—carrying me from my teen years into womanhood. Her influence on me was many things.

I just recently realized that she was only one year older than me. Let me tell you—when I was seventeen, she was eighteen, and it felt like she was twenty-eight. She was grown. Shit, when I met her at fifteen, she was wearing stilettos, carrying a 2-4 of beer on each hip, looking like she just walked out of a music video.

There was nobody like her. Nobody could fucking pull off the shit she did. Nobody. A legend.

While I was in Nova Scotia at her wake, I foolishly hopped on Facebook. I don’t know why—I guess because it was there, which is partially why I got rid of it in the first place—looking at shit just because it’s there.

At the top of the page, I saw that my good friend’s dad had passed—a man I had known for thirty-four years. Another legend.

I came home from one funeral—straight into another.

Before Leisa’s death, there was a tragic accident—resulting in the death of my friend’s daughter’s father. Just tragic.

Death, death, death. Finality.

Finality for me—with old faces and old places.

Moving through crowds and strange faces—faces I’ve never seen before and faces I hoped I’d never see again. I walked through it anyway. After being isolated since the beginning of 2026, I walked straight through all of it like it was nothing.

It wasn’t nothing.

When I got home from Nova Scotia mid-day, I walked through the door all bitchy, dumped my bags, took my coat off, went into my room, and screamed. I lay on my bed, telling myself, just sleep—when you wake up, it’ll be like it was before I got that text from Kayla.

I slept for four hours—fucking exhausted, mentally and physically. Up and down, all over the place, with an out-of-place kneecap to boot.

I was disoriented for days—napping for hours at a time. Napping? Naps have eluded me for years. My body—my central nervous system—shutting down to reset, to recalibrate.

Only today do I feel myself returning to the baseline I fought for.

Never ask yourself what else could go wrong. I did—and shit just kept coming.

With the completion of my book, a new season, and the launch approaching, I am looking forward to what’s new.

I have been hollowed out—excavated—over the past three years, this era of my life has come to an end.

I hold a lot of empty space—space that is only available for what’s new.

Old faces, old relationships that no longer add anything positive to my life don’t get access to me—or the space I fought to create.

Finality.