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Patricia STEPHENSON Obituary
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Memories and Condolences
for Patricia STEPHENSON
2 Entries
Paul Dilse
September 29, 2023
Today, September 29, would have been Pat's birthday. Her gruelling ordeal with cancer, complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ended before we could mark this day.
I met Pat, a tenant representative at her apartment building, in 2008. After defeating the proposal to demolish the heritage-designated Talbot Apartments in Leaside, we remained friends with shared interests in architecture, art, gardens and poetry.
In June this year, we exchanged poems we liked by Patrick Lane -- "Hummingbirds" and "The Bare Plum of Winter Rain." Here's another I've found in remembrance of my friend. Peace be with you, Pat.
"God Walks Burning Through Me
When I sleep the birds come to the garden
with their gifts of seeds. Out of ice
last year's leaves of grass lift into night.
All my songs have been one song.
The palm of my hand and the sole of my foot
remember everything I have forgotten.
The old lantern by the pond has always been there.
Now is the time to light it."
Patrick Lane, The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane (Harbour Publishing, 2011), pp. 500-501.
Heather Suttie
August 27, 2023
To Patricia´s family and loved ones, please accept my heartfelt condolences.
After 20 years, Patricia has been on my mind consistently for the last six weeks. Perhaps this is why.
Patricia was wonderful; kind, caring and observant, and with the most delightfully quiet and insightful sense of humour. Her thoughtful comments and questions would often cause me to review a decision or direction, which was an enormous gift offered in friendship. She was a treasured friend and colleague for three short years, but her impact on me - and dare I say, others - was profound and continues to this day.
She once told me about a trip she took to Switzerland, and that she had couriered a duvet to herself having fallen in love with it while there. She said, "It´s worth going to Switzerland just to sleep." I hope Patricia has now found rest and that her spirit is sleeping easily, perhaps even in Switzerland.
Peace and blessings,
Heather Suttie
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