When I reflect back on that horrific day, when I heard the sad news of my dear friend Marge passing away due to the heat wave in the summer of 2021, I am filled with grief and guilt.
I was at my daughter Melanie’s place with three of my sisters helping to make my granddaughter Maya’s graduation button blanket. I was a beautiful yet scorching hot day and we were having a blast, as usual: family fun, laughter and basically just spending quality time prepping for Maya’s big day. Yahoo graduation!
So to tell you all a bit about my longtime friendship with Marge... we used to be neighbours and became instant friends. I totally love and miss her so much and can’t even begin to express my feelings of sadness, grief and undeniable guilt. All it would have taken was a quick phone call to check on her well-being that summer, and believe me, I meant to do this pretty well for at least a week prior to getting the terrible and shocking news of my dear and beautiful elderly friend’s fate.
She succumbed to the record-high temperatures in her own home.
Afterward, my imagination ran wild and I was inundated with a mountain of guilt, regret, sadness and anger — to name just a few of my feelings at the time.
Marge: thank you from the bottom of my heart for our vast array of wonderful memories that we made while being next-door neighbours. We met in July 2006, but it was like I had known you forever and a day, almost from day one. Your honesty, sense of humour, kindness, wit and charm will always be imprinted on my heart and in my memory bank. Our date nights, breakfasts and lunch or brunch were a regular treat, as we all know as women we so need to treat ourselves. We’ve obviously earned that as mothers, grandmothers and sisters in recovery.
We both had similar pasts and this bonded us like no other as we both had phenomenal stories to share about the difference between sobriety and staying on the dark road.
I want to remember Marge for our friendship and the memories that I’ll forever cherish. My message to everyone out there is that no friendship should end up like mine did, with this heartbreaking fatality. I don’t want to be riddled with guilt over this as it’s already taken a lot out of me mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally.
I talk to Marge many times, laugh about mega-wonderful excursions, coffee breaks, telephone chats, dreams or just everyday conversations that best friends inevitably share.
I don’t want this to be a sad story as we are all destined to pass away eventually. It’s just a reminder of how a simple phone call would have eased a lot of my angst and despair. RIP my dear and beautiful friend for life. I’ll be forever grateful for our unforgettable, unique, fun and wonderful friendship.
Yvonne Mark (Nisga’a-Gitxsan) is a Megaphone vendor and member of The Shift peer newsroom. She has taken part in many creative writing and journalism workshops through Megaphone, and was featured in the 2021 Voices of the Street podcast. She is an outspoken advocate for the Downtown Eastside.
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Amy Romer, works as a mentor for Megaphone's peer newsroom called The Shift in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The Shift is made up of a diverse group of individuals with lived experience of poverty, who are reporting from the DTES instead of being reported on.
