Eva Cassidy: Its not your fault, your voice breaks open my wounds.

I was sitting in a little coffee shop on Davie Street in Vancouver in around 2004.  It was a JJ Bean shop on the corner of Howe and Davie, it's not there now. The young barista was playing some music and this beautiful voice played on.   The Coffee shop is a good memory for me. I asked the young man about who was singing on his play list.  He told me it was Eva Cassidy.  What album is that I asked. He told me she didn't have an album, he just made a number of songs from the internet and made it into a cd. The songs and the coffee house and the young handsome man are a good memory for me. I used to go and have tea in there with my boy, Donovan. Donovan stayed with me in the bachelor apartment on Howe Street off Davie. (Side note I subbed the apartment off Jody Wilson, the now Federal Minister of Justice.) My last memories of my son are mixed with regret and sadness. He was struggling in Vancouver with addictions. He went back to Manitoba in January of 2005. His Granny, my Mom died of Cancer in March and he killed himself in August. He hanged himself in the closet of his mother's apartment in Winnipeg. It was a bad time.

When I go to some places both in Vancouver and in Winnipeg there a couple of business places that remember me and my son. The JJ Bean barista asked me "where is your son"? It was difficult question to answer. Same with the hair dresser at Dimples on Sargent Avenue in Winnipeg, he had asked me about my son. I told him.  It wasn't too long after my Son's death when I lost my mind. I barely lasted six months until a complete breakdown. Still a struggle every single day. Most times I pretend and pretend to be happy, but inside my heart and my mind I am sinking to a darker and darker place where one day I will not be able to climb out of. For now I try hard to just be. I think many of us are trying to do more than just exist.

So Eva Cassidy a beautiful voice which had been ignored and then discovered after her death is a voice that reminds me of my Boy.

Its not her fault her singing breaks open my wounds each time I hear her.

Steve.