Mental Pilgrimage

I would like to share with you my desire to go on a pilgrimage of sorts. I want to revisit some places of significance that I have either not been to in years or have never been but have importance to my idea of who I am today.

I would like to visit my place of birth, Women's College Hospital in downtown Toronto. I once had a dream that I went there, and later on we drove past it and it was exactly as I pictured it. There are a bunch of places I'd like to visit in Toronto but the one that I have the most interest is in seeing my grandmother's old building in Rexdale, Ont. It was a place where I spent a lot of time feeling loved by my family, being spoiled by my grandmother, and where I felt peace. Every morning I'd wake up early and she'd be in kitchen making coffee or frying chapatis for breakfast. I would give her a kiss and she'd tell me how happy she was to have me there. I never liked leaving there. Part of it was that life at home didn't have that aspect of feeling protected from harm or feeling the love of one's grandmother present at all times. She was someone I could turn to with any problem. When my illness first showed up, I felt better at that apartment even with my "nothing's real" paranoia happening. I never wanted to leave because especially in this case, going home meant returning to the demons that plagued even my young self.

I dream of this place often. Some nights I dream that I live in that apartment looking after it like a shrine to my ancestors. Sometimes my grandmother and grandfather are there in my dream giving me the kind of love that I received from them as a child.

I would like to place flowers on the graves of my grandmother, Hilda Dias, grandfather Matthew Dias, great grandmother and great uncle and aunt. They are all in the same place which is good because the cemetery is very large and easy for someone like me to get lost. Now that I know how to get to my grandfather's place on my own, I would have tea with my Step-grandmother and then I would place a poppy on the grave of my grandfather Lt Col. Harold March Steckley.

I want to go to Milton, the town I lived in for the first years of my life before moving to London. I would just like to walk around town and see what's still there. See the old house. The house was an old farmhouse and the backyard was like a kind of heaven to my childhood mind. There was a Strawberry bush there and in the summer I would pick them and lay on my back watching the clouds float by. I can still remember the smell of bonfires and mowed lawn. I remember walking up the hill toward the escarpment with my dad. I remember climbing the apple tree in our backyard, picking an apple and giving it to my grandfather who cut it up with his knife and gave me pieces. It is a fond memory of a strong man I never really got to know as he died when I was 7.

I think one of the reasons I hold on to memories has a lot to do with how important the past is to my understanding of myself. Genealogy is almost spiritual for me. Knowing where I've come from helps me to figure out who I am and where I am going.

A place that I feel an attraction to is Bobcaygeon. The song by the Tragically Hip epitomizes the Canadian summer of camping and cottaging. But Bobcaygeon has significance to my connection with the grandmother I never knew. She and my step-grandfather had a cottage there. I feel like I've been there. I feel like I knew her. My other grandmother told me that she must have been present with me when I was young or that she is a kind of guardian angel to me. I'm inclined to believe her


Eventually I want to go to Goa where my ancestors are from. My dad nearly put me off with his reasons for not going (hygiene, corruption, and poverty mostly) but I still one day want to see it.

Even though I probably won't actually go on this pilgrimage it was worth writing about it