Tag Archives: Death

A Celebration of Life for Nina Discombe and Eduardo Kular

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A Celebration of Life for Nina Discombe and Eduardo Kular will be held on Monday, February 24, beginning with coffee served at 10 a.m. in the Oasis Cloud Café and followed by a community healing/guided meditation from 10:30-10:45 in the garden. The guided meditation is for those in the community who wish to focus on how to cope with grief and loss of dear friends who were killed violently. Beginning at 11 a.m. will be readings from Nina’s work and personal sharing of memories of both Nina and Eduardo. You are invited to participate in this celebration with your own special memories of Nina and Eduardo.

The location is the Oasis Cloud at Calle San Luis #330, Riberas del Pilar.

Directions from Ajijic: Take the Carretera toward Chapala. Turn right on San Diego, which is the first street after Mirasol, and then take the first left on San Luis. The Oasis Cloud is one and a half blocks down San Luis on the right at #330.

Directions from Chapala: Take the Carretera toward Ajijic. Turn left on San Mateo, which is next to the 7 Eleven, and then take the first right onto San Luis. The Oasis Cloud is one and a half blocks down San Luis on your left at #330.

Those who wish to bring flowers, photos or special objects for the altar are encouraged to do so shortly before 10 a.m. We are asking friends who want to contribute cookies, scones or pastries for the coffee hour to contact Patricia Hemingway at (patriciahemigway@gmail.com) to tell her what you are bringing and the quantity. Please bring them before 10 a.m., or arrange to give them to Patricia ahead of time. Patricia is also looking for a few coffee makers to use for making the coffee and hot water for tea. She will need the coffee makers by Sunday, the 23rd. (You can take them home with you after the ceremony.)

If you would like to share a memory or anecdote about Nina or Eduardo or have any questions, please contact Judy Dykstra-Brown at (jubob2@hotmail.com). If you are unable to attend the event and wish us to present your thoughts, we would be glad to.

We have no idea how many people will attend this event. The Oasis Cloud has 50 chairs, but if you want to assure seating for yourself, it is best to bring a folding chair. It might also be smart to carpool as parking is limited.

Letting the Media Replace the Heart

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I wrote this on Facebook in response to a friend who thanked me for telling what she called the “true story”:  “I’ve posted some untrue info as well, but then the next day it turned “true” again. We all want to know and yet after awhile it becomes an obsession and we get so caught up in the soundbites that we forget what they are really about. Guess this is our world in microcosm. We need to remember that it all started because we lost two friends. I know there are those much closer to Edward and Nina than I was. I knew her for many years and was in three different writing groups with her where I heard her read her writing, which is sometimes the best way to get to know someone. Edward contacted me to ask if I’d like him to read and comment on my grief book before it went to the printer even though we were just friendly acquaintances. I think it would have been hard for someone even closer to do what I’ve been doing. No one else did and that’s why I have. Somehow, I got caught up in the middle. At any rate, for all of their even closer friends, I hope the hype stops and we turn to more comforting matters. As soon as I have official word from the venue, I’ll post information about the memorial. If you want to do true tribute to Nina, buy her book. That would have made her so happy.”  You can find her book, “The Leprous Veil of Love” on Amazon. She also has stories in a women’s anthology “Agave Marias” which is available in Mexico and online with secondhand book dealers. (This information was requested by someone who read this blog.)

More News on the “Capture”, Nina and Edward

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I heard a few hours ago that the second brother had in fact not yet been captured.  This was told me by the lawyer hired by Nina’s family and told to her by the Attorney General of the state of Jalisco.  The announcement of the capture seemed so official, but looks like this case is going to twist and turn.

Nina Discombe and Edward Kular’s Deaths

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I am so relieved to report that one of the men responsible for my friends’ death has been apprehended and is in jail.  They are presently in pursuit of his brother, who reportedly assisted in the robbery and murder. The American Consul has assured us that our region of Lake Chapala is not on the “Do Not Travel” list and that they consider this to be an isolated incident and not of danger to travelers and residents.  The chief of police assured us that this was a robbery, not a revenge killing, and that Nina and Edward’s deaths were swift and that they did not suffer unduly. The robbers were unaware of their presence in the house and when they discovered their presence, they killed them out of fear of being recognized and caught. We are all so sad about the death of our friends but also anxious that people not panic over this horrible act which echoes so many other violent actions in the world. The poem that I published in my last blog seems to be all the more true at this point.  Nina was a happy person who loved Mexico.  She would be the last to want people to live in fear.  I saw Edward a few days before his death and we had a discussion about his family’s fears about his return to Mexico, given his health issues.  One of the last comments that passed between us was our agreement that it does no good to live in fear–that we must live the lives we want to live for as long as we can.  Edward lived up to this declaration.

Upon the Violent Death of a Friend

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Upon the Violent Death of a Friend

 

Bar every window.

Avoid the Dark.

The dart is coming.

You’re on the mark.

Chain up your gateways.

Bar the door.

Whatever evil finds you,

There is always more.

In your life’s highway,

avoid the skids.

Don’t talk to strangers.

Lock up your kids.

Darkness advances

by ticks and tocks.

Take no chances.

Recheck the locks.

 

Don’t take airplanes

or cars or ships.

Keep what’s private

behind your lips.

Buy a gun and

keep it cocked.

If you knew who’s watching,

you would be shocked.

Lock your bedroom

when you retire.

Life’s a minefield.

Don’t trip the wire.

Wrap your kids in

cotton wool.

Don’t dare  send them

out to school.

Mind the playgrounds.

Avoid the street.

Television

is more discrete.

Train your dogs to

attack and kill

whomever enters

against your will.

Limit friends to

a very few.

New ones just might

target you.

Build your walls up

both high and wide.

Then just fester

alone, inside.

 

 

 

 

Time Temporal (Final Day––Day 30––Of NaPoWriMo)

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The prompt on this last day of National Poetry Month is to find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite. I chose Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare.

Time Temporal

by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Shall I contrast thee to a winter’s night?
Thou art less lovely and more tempestuous.
No wind disturbs November’s empty stalks,
Oe’r which the winter hath too long a power.
Sometimes the too-cold moon lies sheathed in clouds.
And rarely does its pitted face shine forth.
Yet light from dark may rise. We’re proof of that,
Spurred on by fate or providence’s  plan.
But thy short winter soon shall pass away,
Restore to thee the homeliness of death.
Nor shall that birth that brought you forth to light
Still claim thee when time curtains you with night.
As men lose breath and eyes  give up their sight,
So dies this poem, and you echo its plight.

Sonnet 18

by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Yellow (Day 28 of NaPoWriMo)

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Day 28 The prompt today was to write a poem about a color.

Yellow

You were so red, so white.
So much of you was blue.
Yellow is what I missed in you—
that brilliant optimism—
that power of the sun.
There was that black in you
that cancelled it out.
You were the artist who understood color the most.
That color created by the union of yellow and black, you knew.

Your white hair, confined in a pony tail
or streaming down your back
in your wild man look
prompted strangers to ask
if you were a shaman,
or declare you to be one.

That red that flamed out from your work,
subtly put there even in places where it had no
logical purpose for being.
That red tried to make things right.

All of us who knew you
knew the blue.
It was the background color of all of your days.
It was the blanket in which we wrapped ourselves at night,
trying to be close,
but always always divided
by blue.

For fifteen years,
I believed that one day I’d bring you to yellow.
There were splashes of it, surely,
throughout our lives together.
You on the stage, reading your heart,
me in the audience, recognizing
all the colors from within you—even yellow.

Finding the pictures you had taken of me
at the art show, looking at your work—
those pictures taken even before we ever met.
I discovered, after you’d passed,
that you had recognized
me even then, when I thought
I was the only one
angling for a meeting—
sure of my need to know those secret parts of you
that I will never know
now that you have given yourself
to the black
or blue
or red
or even to the white.

Whatever your ever after
has delivered you to.

A new life later,
I am suffused
by my own canvas
of memories of you—
every other pigment
splashed against
a vivid background
of yellow.