I miss Gio more and more as the days go by. It feels like he has been dead for years and not only 3 months — I have lost my best friend and living companion for ever. It is very lonely being the only adult in the house, making all the decisions and being a sole parent is unbearably daunting at times — esp. when the kids are arguing.

I was very drawn to the notion of being published in Cork, Ireland. The first piece I submitted to The Brobdingnagian Times was too long for the broadsheet but Giovanni Malito took the time to write a glorious rejection letter. He wrote to me as though he was corresponding with a writer. He liked the story. I was thrilled. When I wrote to thank him, I struggled to capture the proper tone and re wrote the card a few times. He replied on a Cork Arts Festival postcard. For a couple of years, Giovanni edited my work. My fan and critic, he had a lighthearted attitude towards my bad spelling and poorly presented work. Giovanni knew stuff that I did not have a clue about. He recommended magazines, wrote about the pitfalls of the Toronto writing scene and graciously trashed the editor who asked me to never send him another story.

Giovanni wrote and said that getting published takes nerve and more nerve. When I opened journals, Broken Pencil, Other Voices and Perimeter that my work appeared in, I also found his name in the list of contributors. It seemed like a good omen. Giovanni was widely published. I am not. It would be difficult to not be published in the same magazine as Giovanni. By then I was curious about this Italian/Canadian man who lived in Cork. In September 1998, he wrote to accept a short piece I submitted to TBT on the back of a breastfeeding questionnaire and I took it that he had kids. Our notes became somewhat more personal and Giovanni wrote about his wife Suzanne and their daughter Sarah. In response to my complaints about life interfering with my writing, Giovanni wrote, I don't see why you are worried about time, writing should be something to enjoy, retelling of memories or a re thinking of the past. Writing should be fun.

During the summer of 1999, Giovanni and his family visited his mother in Toronto. We met at This Ain’t The Rosedale Library. In January 2001, Giovanni wrote to say he had been very busy. Their son, Ben was born on Christmas Day. In that note, Giovanni also mentioned five chapbooks of other writers he was publishing, his non fiction writing and that he would have two, maybe three books of poetry coming out that year. Outside of the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, in the early summer of 2001, I had the pleasure of meeting Suzanne; they were in Canada for the baptism of their son. In May 2002, I was diagnosed with a carcinoma in situ. A non-invasive form of breast cancer. The treatment was a lumpectomy followed by radiation and I was giving a clean bill of health. I wrote to Giovanni but did not receive a response until July 2002. Then I read, It's been over a year now that I've got terminal cancer, (at least that's what the conventional types tell me).

Giovanni kept his diagnoses under his hat from his Canadian friends. By then I was a few months away from my treatments and was stunned to learn how sick he was. Giovanni also wrote, You and I, and others like us are being tested. We really are. I like that concept. I abjure. Try everything. Don't sit back. Good luck. Giovanni.

My God! It's incredible! Giovanni was a great man, poet and friend. On December 22nd I began the Meteor Contemporary Poetry (2) anthology with Giovanni Malito's following haiku:

 
	clear night —
	in the space of a smile 
	the meteor is gone

	AUGUST, 2003

	Steering under the Lee,
	to by-pass Cork,
	we could have called
	on a man still there, still writing.
 
	As such are invented meetings:
	the slight, who dream,
	the wise, at home
	with poems pouring off the page.
 
	From Albert Road,
	across our seas,
	his words, like Irish rivers, swell
	reverberating.

	THREE TANKA

	I walk between trees
	and sandy shore
	what am I doing here
	what am I looking for
	perhaps you are here too
 
	on a drifting log
	in the middle of the stream
	a blue heron
	only the water rippling
	words fall silent
 
	the trail is too cold
	to follow as we used to
	taking directions —
	listening to the breeze
	an echo of your voice