Jon

On this page I'll post the obituary and other information about Jon. This is the obituary posted at the Pine Hills cemetery site. We used shorter versions in the newspapers.

The last time we saw Jon, 28th December 2012. Photo by Roger M. Posted 2018-10-30

4 August 2013
This link Feldsparia takes you to Jon's blog. He posted items he found while surfing the web, and occasional rants.


Kirchmeir, Jon Josef Morgan, was born in Edmonton on January 29th, 1965, and died quietly in his sleep on March 19th, 2013. Cherished son of Wolf and Marie (Edenloff) Kirchmeir of Blind River. Beloved brother of Cassandra and Rolf Gitt of Toronto, and Niobe and Bill Sandlin of Brownsville, Texas. Affectionate uncle of Paul, Caroline, David, Morgan, Connor, and Jonathan. Since childhood Jon lived with Addison’s Disease and Hypoparathyroidism. He was a life-long learner. His life was enriched by music, especially Baroque, early music and Scott Joplin. He was interested in history, art, science, alternative history, and trivia. He played and designed games, and cooked for his friends. He read continuously, and shared this with his family friends, neighbours, and strangers. He enjoyed film and wrote thoughtful movie reviews. He took citizenship seriously by searching for truth, working for the candidate of his choice and by voting. His public library was important to him. He was always loyal to family and friends, and built caring relationships in his community, with the man who sold him his daily newspaper, and the butcher who sold him his veal sausage. To honour his memory we remind ourselves to practice kindness, seek truth, learn history, look for connections, value democracy, promote literacy, treasure music, solve puzzles, play games and be loyal. Family and Friends may call at PINE HILLS CEMETERY & VISITATION CENTRE, 625 Birchmount Rd., Scarborough (north of St. Clair Ave. E., 416-267-8229) on Saturday, March 21, 2013 from 4-5pm with a memorial service to follow at 5pm. As an expression of sympathy, donations to the Toronto Public Library would be appreciated by the family. For more information please visit www.etouch.ca

Previously posted:

27th March 2013

Grief seizes me and twists my bowels.
It grabs me by the neck and shakes me like a rat.
It darkens the sun, eclipses the moon.

O Jon, my son, my son, my son.

You were a gift we held too briefly.
You showed us joy in learning,
music, games, and friends.

Death, the impassive calculator,
saw your thread come to its end,
tapped you on the shoulder, and said, Come.

You went into the light of perfect knowledge.
We linger here in the shadows,
waiting for the time to follow you.

Live in our daily dealings with each other,
let memories of your kindness and delight
shape our minds and heal our hearts.

O Jon my son, my son, my son.

Update 26 March, 2013: My son Jon died on 19 March. He was 48 years old, but to me he was still the boy with whom I had conversations on our walk to school, about history and anything else that caught his interest.  I don't know how much of what I think I know of history I learned from him, but by now it's most of it. His choice of books for gifts was always thoughtful; he had little money to spend, and must have searched yard sales and library book sales all year long. He liked yard sales, actually, he was a great searcher-out of treasures that others didn't value. I shall miss him. Grief seizes me without warning. Obituary via etouch.ca or legacy.com. The last book he gave me was Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks. I posted review of it on February 12, 2013.

The picture we used on the cover of the memorial service bulletin. It was taken in November 2006 in Blind River, Ontario.













 
Christmas 2011. Jon loved games of all kinds. Here he is about to open a Christmas gift. Blind River.

JON
Fridge Magnet Poem by Niobe
March 20 or 21, 2013

they ask
how do we bring
my translucent caramel brother
home

like a coffee cake present or a fat baby embrace
as fresh green grass in a glass cup

did we give his work more time here
hard question
look
our life is never
naked bone for long
after all

perhaps you could think wet dirt as beach not decay
moist air
as cloud candy than smoke

did you who have almost him pictured
from fever waking
some surrounding steam from the open night window
cold hand on slow belly
his warm wordy breath
delicious game fool laugh
soft dog growl voice

then that prisoner born     broken heart beat flying
away over there
free and easy
down through a vast blue current    out and on

he said my sad sister girl
when you would miss me
ask never the less
I may yet come.

POEMS BY JON
Posted 2013-11-01

Haiku #4
Petals bloom with abandon
Crickets chirp at dusk
The world without man abides 
(2005)

Blues Skies

Goddamn the Skies
Must it all always be
The retouch colour of 47-3

Labbed up and engineered reality
From rooms mysterious and dark
With electric control of amps and watts

Let a cloud, some beauty mark, a little rain
Improve upon machine perfection
And more believable make it
A Composition beautiful and stark

Jøn Kirchmeir
Saturday, October 15, 2005

Reading List

Drunk on chocolate, coffee, whisky
I read on about unhappy times
Of Viking incursions and absorptions
Of Anglo Saxon polities but one
The careful scholarly interpretations
Of what was the life of King Arthur
If lived at all

I wandered with an unknown son of god
Though the nowhere somewhere land
Of Midwestern Middle American mid mind
Filled with half forgotten half remembered
Deities once worshiped now scratching
A living honestly or dishonestly
Serving Man or cheating him

1st stanza: The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell
     A history of King Arthur
2nd Stanza: American Gods,
(2006)

Walking With Murka
The scent of skunk upon the air
The mild suburban happiness
Of charging hard at families
Mother, father, son and daughter
Hound Murka released and unleashed
With inner doggish canine joy
At vermin bounding underground

Such is life with disappointments
Made glorious by mere attempting
I know if asked the hound and I
Would charge the gaping mouth of hell

The berserker’s desire to do
Something more than normal walks thru
Pleasant leafy avenues at dusk
But to become the beast and kill

November 8, 2007
Jøn Kirchmeir
Murka was the Kodar's dog

Posted 2013-12-28

Lime house blues

Retold stories re-imagined
    With music hall slang
Half learned from some
    Actor in an old movie
Replayed at 3 am

A dramatic experience broken by
    Station breaks and soft core come-ons
A sugar water sold with the same
    Sort of garbled syllables
Running through your mind

No Date

Prairie Sea

A seaborne journey
    Prairie crossing is
At once cutoff
    and connected to
Land, air and water
    As the wind wanders
Over hilly swells
    Forcing waves of grain
To bend obedient

Jøn Kirchmeir
April 18, 2006

August Round-Up for Luke

Up here the sometimes sweltering great beige
    In a continental seaport, where
The Port Authority has been going insane  
    From Insiderism for decades.

I wonder how it is down in the Straits and Indies
    The one time domain of chartered companies
Where pirates navigated and Navies pirated
    Now the Japanese oil artery pumps.

As Summer slackens into fall
    Awaiting a new film festival season
I begin a blog to spread my thoughts
    A pale Boingboing imitation.

Repaid my debt to society or society
    forgot to collect my massive library fines
Reading naval history of Alfred, Drake and Zheng He
    The new Philip Roth dystopic allohistory next.

Jøn Kirchmeir
26 08 2005

Heritage

Here in the new world
Tribal ties and totems have lost
Hold on descendants

Irishness has become
A century after the
Famine, emigration

An affectation
Most often seen in actors
Costume and disguise

Dragged out yearly
A pantomime heritage
An imagined past

Jøn Kirchmeir
Monday, February 27, 2006

More Pictures

Alex and Tao. Jon loved cats,
Jon at the Boom Camp, one of his favourite places in Blind River.
The Alien cushion bought in memory of Jon. Here's a converstaion Marie had with Ed Ritchie:

Remembering Jon    

A conversation at our door Thursday, March 28, 2013 when Ed Ritchie delivered the big fruit basket gift from BRDHC.

     Marie: Come in. Did you know our son?
     Ed: I met him at Chess Club. We were not in the same grade.
     I told Ed about the shock of Jon’s death. We knew he had a cold and felt tired.
Jon had asked Connor, his nephew, to get his Sat. newspaper. Rolf, his brother-in-law, brought Jon food on Sunday. We could not reach him on Monday so in the evening Rolf and Cassandra went to check up on him. He was peacefully sleeping in bed with the bedcovers neat and one arm across his chest. The autopsy found no cause of death. No trauma and no massive heart attack. It is possible a lab test will find imbalance of electrolytes. It was always difficult for his body to correct this imbalance when it occurred. The imbalance could have caused arrhythmia and a sudden heart attack.
     Marie: Jon was brave and he was optimistic and he never gave up.
     Ed: He was stubborn.
     Marie: He just sailed away. Cassandra gave me a cushion based on a design by Miro. It is called The Alien and Cassandra said she thought Jon would like it. I look at it and smile at the Alien because I think it is Jon sailing off.
     Ed: Funny you should say that. I remember Jon saying, “We all come from somewhere else and some day we will all join the Mothership”.
     Later I said to Wolf, “Maybe he was our angel, our star child.”

PHOTOS BY JON

Building on Carlson's Dock, Blind River, 1971. It's long gone, Carlson's have rebuilt or renovated most of their buildings and boats.