In many ways, Emru helped initiate me into Canadian life. He asked me to be a contributor to Frames Per Second Magazine, and gave me the opportunity to get to know Canada through the Toronto International Film Festival. (I later volunteered for the same organization.) On his errand, I visited the offices of the NFB, and saw the same Norman MacLaren shorts that many Canadian children see at school. He inadvertently exposed me to a slice of Canadian culture.
Of course, he did even more for a huge amount of people. He and his sister brought the need for minority registrants to the OneMatch bone marrow and stem cell registry home to Canadians in the arts and technology sector, especially residents of Montreal. He helped explain anime fandom. He gave a lot of people their start at FPS. He was a writer, a husband, and father.
You know how you’re supposed to eat a lot of food and drink a ton of water before you give blood? Turns out, you’re really supposed to do those things. Otherwise, you might have a moment of complete and epic FAIL after donating, and have to prevail upon the graces of some poor guy who doesn’t even believe in altruism when you collapse to the floor in an unconscious heap.
Signs You’re About to Faint:
You feel completely fine.
Fine enough to get up and move.
That swarm of dazzling blue light? That’s just your naturally-low blood pressure. (92/64, baby!)
You can totally make it back to the chair.
Judging by my bruises, I fell on my knees, then my face. My jaw, specifically. (The same spot where I split my chin open in first grade! Old habits never die.) No one saw me fall. I imagine that someone turned a corner and stumbled over me, because I remember slowly coming to and thinking: “Wow, my bed is really hard this morning.” (Of course it was! It was the floor!) Then people were rolling me onto a cot and covering me in icepacks and asking me what day it was. (I had a moment of horrified doubt when the doctor smiled gently at me and said: “Oh, it’s Halloween, is it?”)
A few phone calls and some waiting later, and I’m being steered down the street by Peter “I Smell A Lawsuit!” Watts in search of pizza and maybe a nap. (“You take care of this girl!” the nurse admonished.) Which is how I got to watch the first two episodes of this show:
Which I quite liked, and was even able to stay awake for, having elected not to go to the emergency room, despite Mr. “Let Me Check Your Pupils!” Watts’ offers to the contrary. (Note: the follow-up nurse who called me today wants me to get my head checked. Literally.)
For all the unexpected scares, however, yesterday’s truly strange moment happened when the girl sitting next to me learned I’m a registered donor with the OneMatch bone marrow and stem cell registry and said: “So, wait, you’d really give your stem cells to a complete stranger?”
Why yes, I would. If it’s good enough for vampires, then it’s good enough for me.
There’s a moment in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels after the caper is finished when Vinnie Jones’ character bids farewell to the four main characters and says simply: “It’s been emotional.”
Which rather sums up how I’ve been feeling, lately.
My friend Emru Townsend, co-editor of Frames Per Second Magazine, recently had a bone marrow transplant to help treat a pernicious form of leukemia. However, despite the full engraftment of his new stem cells, Emru is now facing a possible case of Graft vs. Host Disease. His hematologists give him between a few months and a single year to live.
Emru helped initiate me into Canadian life. He gave me a contributor position at FPS, which led to my covering the Toronto International Film Festival, and meeting even more people. He helped me build this website, by referring me to my current host and teaching me about FireFTP. He’s a husband and father, a freelance writer, a tech blogger and anime fan. This year at Anime North, I pressed his picture into the hands of almost every minority attendee I could find, because people of Caribbean descent are under-represented globally in bone marrow registries. And don’t even get me started on the labours his sister Tamu has taken on: the woman is a machine whose single-minded resolve to educate others and save lives has brought both comfort and knowledge to those far beyond the circle of her family and community. Both Tamu and Emru are the kind of people who awaken compassion, energy, and inspiration in others. That is their strength. Their dignity and grace at this time has been nothing less than stellar.
Emru is why Mr. Ashby and I are part of the OneMatch bone marrow donor registry. Emru is why I’m donating blood tomorrow. Because there is always more to give. There is always more to do. The story doesn’t end with dying, which is why I’m also a registered organ donor.
We can always be useful. Even when we’re alone in our apartments crying our eyes out.
...is a science fiction writer, grad student, おたく, and immigrant. She has lived on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Seattle, and Toronto, where she is now a member of the Cecil Street Irregulars and a contributor to both Tor.com and WorldChanging Canada. Her fiction has been published in Tesseracts, FLURB, and Nature.
