Driving hometown streets, remembering those who passed early

With respect to my dear (but not old and boring friend, as she said) whom I just saw, I drive hometown streets. The air is sticky-humid August air. I consider those who lived here, in this paper-mill-and-hockey bordertown, populace of about 46,000, who were about my age and have passed on early in the past five years.

There’s Helen, of course, best friend of the dear friend I just saw. Helen passed away this February from a form of vulvar cancer.

There's  Leah W. (sister of my childhood best friend, and, like him, a devout Jehovah's Witness); J.P. Craig (brain cancer); Robert D. (suicide, unexpected,  in Ottawa); Chris R. (freakish motorcycle accident in San Francisco); Guy T. (freak bicycle accident in Kuwait; Guy worked for the oil refineries); Scott  M. (hypothermia and, ultimately, drowning, in a fishing accident, off the B.C. coast); Ian D. (heart attack, in the living room of the house he grew up in); Keith M. (car accident, in B.C.); and Bobby K. (brain cancer, in Toronto; he was not so much a friend as an antagonist, but who wishes brain cancer on an enemy?). 

And, of course, in all this, I remember Hugh DeCourcy, mentor and friend, who had a heart murmur. He died of a heart attack in Vancouver, on Sept. 3, 1996.

What to do with these heavy remembrances? Drive on, down Water Street, that old St. Lawrence River to my left, shimmering, as always, in the summer dark. A three-quarter moon shines through the billowy clouds. I take the curve past where the international bridge stood overhead from 1958 until last year, and head up the hill, past the empty acreage where the Domtar paper mill stood for about 137 years, uphill along Second Street, flanked by the one-storey wartime homes, deeper west, into my old neighbourhood. Things are utterly familiar. I could nearly walk this way with my eyes closed.

Things change. People leave. All I know is that I drive onward, fortunate enough to be alive and heavy with the burden of sadness and remembrance.