Gwyn we will miss you
Tom Hillen
This is the last mail I send to Gwyn on Jan 18
Dear Gwyn
I don't know if you are still checking your e-mail adrress. I also do not know if you are even still alive (a failing liver because of stage X cancer seems to me like you have days, rather than weeks or months ahead of you). I also suppose that with your knowledge of drugs, drinks and barbiturates there is really no need for you to be in too much pain for too long a time.
I drove by the New Seabreeze yesterday. I saw some cars but not the familiar Merc. The sign said closed, but inside some frantic activity was going on. Looks like your successors are busy taking over. Nature dislikes voids, and the hotelier business in Corozal won't miss you much or long (sic transit gloria mundi).
You can call me sentimental or stupid (you did do this before). To me however Belize without you is an emptier place; in fact the world will be an empire place without Gwyn Lawrence.
After driving over to the New Seabreeze, I took the ferry road and drove over to Cerros sands. Nothing much has happened to the house in the last 3 months and with the house not being closed up, the salty air is doing what salty air does to buildings, starting to degrade the structure fast. Isn't it ironic/symbolic, the rot spraiding from the within.
After that I started to drive over to Orange Walk. In San Estevan I drove past the cimetary, and deicided to stop. In the middle of this cimetary stands a gigantic tree (A Spanish Cedar tree of the kind that can only grow in the tropics). In 2012 on the dia de los muertos I drove past the same cimetary at sunset, I saw a procession go in and decided to stop. A priest said mass under that huge tree, after that the people spread all over the cimetary and went to the graves putting candles beside the grave and remembering their beloved ones with food, drinks, songs and stories.
My dad had died less than one month before, and less than 6 months earlier the daughter of my best friend Anouk had committed suïcide @ 17 by trowing herself in front of a train. Yet that night in San Estevan, the Universe made sense to me. The flesh goes to the flies, the genome goes to the offspring and the person gets remembered. Mexicans do that much better than we do in Europe.
Yesterday night in Orange Walk, I bought a bottle of Gin and the right amount of Tonic and got properly wasted, in memory of tree many times we lost ourselves in G&T's in the past
For all that it is worth, know Gwyn that you will be remembered. Every time I will drive past the cimetary of San Estevan, every time I will see that big Spanish Cedar tree, I will think of you (and of my dad and of Anouk).
Take care and I hope you will die well in a good mental and physical place.
