2026-05-21 — Oasis Inn — Kelowna, BC

It was midnight at the Oasis.

Not a metaphor.
Not some old song lyric.

Just me sitting poolside in Kelowna trying to figure out where I might sleep tomorrow night while the smell of rain, cedar, chlorine, damp pavement, cigarettes, beer, and spring air drifted through the courtyard.

The Oasis honestly isn’t a bad property.

Not five-star luxury.
Not pretending to be.

But it’s calm.

The trees are mature.
The landscaping is nice.
The pool glows electric blue at night.
The courtyards soften everything.
Even the older rooms feel cared for.

For a few nights, it stopped feeling like a motel and started feeling like temporary civilization.

And maybe that’s why leaving it hurts.

Earlier in the evening, I went back to 1165 Sutherland Avenue one final time to check my mailbox.

Canada Post mailbox 301.

Silver.
Apartment style.
Not black.
Not symbolic.
Just practical.

Or at least it was supposed to be practical.

Inside was a Service Canada review letter regarding the Canada Disability Benefit.

“No change.”

Those two words suddenly carry a very different emotional weight when you no longer know where your next secure mailing address will be.

After checking the mailbox, I finally returned the mailbox key.

Melissa and Craig were there as witnesses.
Photos taken.
Video recorded.

Five years reduced to documented key returns.

Earlier in the day, before going fully into what I now think of as “Tetris Land,” I tried to find the trailer keys because I knew once everything disappeared completely into the storage locker, those keys might end up lost in another dimension.

That was the optimistic phase.

The phase where I still thought:
“Maybe they can just match the VIN to the trailer build sheet and cut a new key.”

That led to the now legendary Quebec phone call.

Nobody in that particular corner of Quebec apparently spoke English except one woman whose clearest phrase the entire call was:

“Yes! That’s right!”

after I repeated her email address back to her phonetically.

Thank you, amateur radio.

Alpha ,bravo, charlie  to the rescue.

Because somewhere between NATO phonetics, poor cell audio, Google Translate playing through one phone speaker into another phone microphone, and my exhausted brain, we finally established the horrible truth:

The key code needed to create the replacement key was printed on the back of the lock.

Inside the trailer.

Behind the locked trailer door.

There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea.
There’s a hair on the bump on the log.

Every solution leading directly back into the problem itself.

Then came the trip to the trailer with Steve VE7DBS.

Broadcast technician.
Good guy.
Bought coffee for everybody even though I offered.
Picked up Timbits for my still-exhausted moving crew as a thank-you.

We got up to Lake Country to check the trailer.

Honestly?
The trailer looked promising.

The outside still looked decent.
No obvious leaks.
No catastrophic damage.
The tires looked surprisingly good considering how long it sat.
The idea of trailer life suddenly started feeling slightly less impossible.

Then Steve suddenly stopped.

“Look at that fat marmot eating your wiring harness.”

I laughed immediately because I thought it was a joke.

Ha ha.
Funny.

Then Steve stopped walking.

“No, I’m serious.”

And there it was.

This unbelievably cute little fat fucker sitting there chewing through what was supposed to become seed money for a new vehicle and maybe a new chapter of life.

And every time I replay that moment in my head I laugh harder.

Not because it’s funny.

Well…
because it is funny.

And devastating.

I want to put a bullet in that little fat fucker’s head.

Then you look at the tiny eyes.
The baby face.
The little paws.
The fuzzy little body.

Izzy the Marmot.

Baby talk immediately activates.

Meanwhile the little bastard is economically dismantling your future one wire at a time.

Steve then told me another marmot story from his years maintaining remote transmitter sites in the Okanagan for a communications company we probably shouldn’t name.

Apparently destructive marmots are practically an engineering subcategory out here.

And honestly?
I laughed until there were tears in my eyes.

Maybe because if I stopped laughing about the wiring harness I might actually cry.

But what stayed with me most about tonight wasn’t the marmot.

It was the courtyard.

Not courtyards.

One courtyard.

One physical shared space.

But somehow every interaction became its own parallel courtyard within it.

Different dimensions of the same universe.

There was Tina.

Creative director.
Special effects.
Working simultaneously on multiple productions.

Her job:
making it snow in the Okanagan in May for Hallmark movies.

She didn’t merely enjoy her work.

She loved it.

You could hear it immediately.

Exhausted.
Smoking.
Deep inhale from the cigarette.
Long production days.

But smiling every time she talked about creating worlds for people.

I should have gotten her card.

Then there was Coach Mickey.

I called him that jokingly.
But honestly it fit.

Seventies.
Memorial Cup weekend.
Friends from Halifax, Toronto, and everywhere in between.

One guy organized flights.
Another guy handled tournament tickets.
One guy was an actual professional-level mixologist handling drinks.
Mickey handled golf.

And somehow in the middle of all this hockey travel energy, he became my accidental midnight rehabilitation coach.

He told me about the neck injury.

How symptoms slowly developed.
How a fall while trying to close French doors finally forced the system to take him seriously enough for proper imaging and treatment.

His wife is a physiotherapist but doesn’t treat family.

Boundaries.

Professional boundaries.
Maybe emotional boundaries too.

And he kept repeating the same thing:

“One more step every day.”

First with a walker.
Then walking the little cul-de-sac.
Then farther.
Then without the walker.

Dead bugs.
Bird dogs.
Chair exercises.
Every day.
Every day.
Every day.

At first he meant physical recovery.

But sitting here now writing this, I realize he meant:
physical,
mental,
and spiritual recovery.

Because maybe survival itself is rehabilitation.

And then there was Rod.

Not his real name.

Rod on the nod.

A neighbour.

Housed.
Lived in this neighbourhood since 1967.
In ten days it’ll be his birthday.

Not some faceless “drug problem.”

A neighbour.

He told me he sometimes comes here just to rest.

And honestly?
I understood that immediately.

Tourists laughed loudly on balconies drinking beer.
Tina smoked quietly.
Coach Mickey talked recovery and resilience.
Rod drifted somewhere between exhaustion, chemistry, memory, and sleep under fluorescent light.

I checked on him one more time before heading in.

He briefly woke up enough to say goodnight to me.

Then drifted back into whatever dream he was having.

And honestly?

I felt connected to each and every one of them.

Maybe my glasses really are rose coloured.

Maybe I should check them in the daylight.

But tonight, at least from where I sat, the world did not feel hostile.

It felt interconnected.

Midnight at the Oasis.

And we were all existing inside our own parallel courtyards while somehow still sharing the same one.