‘He brightened the room up’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/07/2020 (2063 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The air is thick on the east bank of the Red River, where the heat mingles with tendrils of smoke from the fire that crackles on the shore. It has burned at the edge of Ernie O’Dowda Park since not long after Darius Bezecki went into the water, its light vowed to flicker until fate brought him back home.

On Sunday afternoon, it happened. A fisherman found the nine-year-old’s body in the river, four kilometres north of the Perimeter Highway, where a police dive team soon recovered him.

At 4:30 p.m. Monday, 72 hours since Darius was taken by the water, the community gathered to let his spirit go.

In the water, a Winnipeg police river patrol boat bobs quietly in the middle of the river; on land, women in ceremonial skirts slip past people wearing Bear Clan T-shirts and Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service members in uniform.

Some came to pay respects; others to grieve, and remember.

In the shade of a nearby tree, a woman weeps into a man’s shoulder. The rhythm of her sobs rises and falls with the beat of the drums, with the song women are singing in Darius’s honour. Around them, a few dozen people stand mostly quiet, except for the smallest children who, too young to understand, tumble happily in the grass.

That’s okay, though. There’s a healing sort of music to children’s laughter. It marks a prayer of its own.

It’s hard to write about vigils, poised where they are at the junction between what is news and what is sacred. It’s harder still when they’re held for one so young, when the space around words about them is thick with everything they might have grown up to do, and everything they should have had time to become.

Darius was the middle child of his family. He was a “cheerful young boy,” great-aunt Celena Genaille said. He loved being outdoors, being with his grandparents and playing with his siblings — which is what he was doing Friday afternoon when he went into the water.

“He brightened the room up,” grand-uncle Lester Clarke said, trembling with grief as he spoke to reporters. “‘Cause he’d come out with a big smile, a hug. Just an awesome kid.”

Steps away, near the fire, mourners placed flowers, and teddy bears, and candles. A stuffed eagle gazes over the water, which looks deceptively gentle , flowing lazily around clutches of weedy green plants. In the searing July heat, it’s easy to see how tempting it would be for a child to dip a toe in the cool current, or to plunge in.

“He made a wrong choice, got too close,” Clarke said. “I just hope, if anybody ever sees kids playing by the water, (they) may not be yours, but it’s a community that raises kids. Doesn’t matter what colour, what race… stop, get them away from the shore.

“That’s the biggest thing, so that nobody else has to go through what the family has gone through.”

Above all, Clarke and Genaille wanted to thank everyone who helped. The police dive service who kept the family informed about everything they were doing; the volunteers from Bear Clan and the Evelyn Memorial Search Team, who gave so much support; the fisherman who found Darius; the public who embraced them.

“It was overwhelming, we appreciated it,” Clarke said of the support.

The afternoon is growing long. The beat of the last song flies away on the wind, and then there’s only the crystalline chirping of birds, and the murmur of gentle voices. As the vigil winds to a close, mourners file past Darius’s family to offer hugs and words of love; they walk reverently to the fire to toss in pinches of ceremonial tobacco.

With that, the fire will be allowed to burn out, Genaille explained, to release Darius to his journey.

For nearly three days, it crackled on the shore; but now it, too, can go to its rest. The community that lit it has come together, creating light of their own; and the one that it burned for has found his way home.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca