Sunday Morning Comes the Dawn
Last night Glenn fought his third professional mixed martial arts bout. Mariko took the kids and stayed over at her Mom & Dad’s place in East Ottawa to give Glenn a chance to sleep in this morning if he needed to. All things considered, we were sure he would.
When dawn arrived, I woke briefly, not sure if it was due to the pattern of sleep that I had grown accustomed to from staying with Glenn and Mariko, or to a stirring in the house. I toyed with the idea of climbing out of bed and up from the basement to check out the noise. We’ve had skunks around, not that I was going to try and do anything about that, and there was the other reason, the reason I stayed up later than I should have after a very long day and night of the fight; because Glenn might need a ride to the hospital and I was the only other one home. But instead, I turned over and fell back to sleep.
When I woke again, the house was still, and without the activity of the Kulka family waking, too quiet. You know that feeling you get, like something has happened, something that you are too late to do anything about, something that quickens your heart and puts ice in your belly; that’s the feeling I had. It came with guilt, a conviction that I had not been diligent enough, that while I slept Glenn had needed my help.
Then it came with fear, that I had not seen the warning signs, that the sound that woke me at dawn was muffled and sharp, and hung in the silence with the bitter tang of rust and cordite. Knowing Glenn’s past struggles, my mind went there with dread, and the growing possibility that my presence, the presence of my camera, had tipped the scales, the last stone on a mountain of building pressure Glenn has had to shoulder surrounding this fight.
The day after I arrived in Ottawa was March 10th, a Tuesday. I went with Glenn to watch him train at Nabil Khatib’s Bushido Ju-Jitsu Academy. I took only my still camera so I could get a sense of the lighting and the space. Glenn told me he would do the bulk of his training there so I wanted to be prepared. While doing escape drills with Nabil, Glenn separated his right shoulder and strained the tendons in the muscles connecting his neck to his shoulder girdle… all of them.
At this point, Glenn was two and a half weeks away from the fight, plenty of time, he thought, to get the injury treated, plenty of time to recover and get back into training. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. Glenn was not able to train again, aside from riding the bike for cardio, and a light, no-contact sparring session with me a couple of days ago. As a result, he came to last night’s fight with no training for 17 days, unprepared and in pain.
This was a part of the story I was unable to tell until now, after the fight, because if his opponent had gotten wind of this information, the result of the fight could have been much, much worse.
Add his injury to the pressures from sponsors, the promotion itself, taking on ticket sales as a way to supplement his meager fight fee, a documentary filmmaker scavenging for compelling footage, mounting pressure from family and friends to keep fighting as a badge of honor for his age, mounting pressure from his family and friends to stop fighting as a humble resignation to his age, personal pressure from himself to make good on his fight pledge… and what you get is a man who would have dragged himself stabbed and legless into the ring to make this fight if he had to.
I tried many times to go upstairs and deal with whatever heartbreak I might find, and eventually after steeling myself for several minutes, I climbed the stairs to the second floor. I could hear the rain on the roof. The upstairs hallway light was on. I could see a laundry basket of folded clothes resting on top of Glenn and Mariko’s unmade bed…
But Glenn was gone.
I ran down to check the driveway; the car was gone. I ran to my bedroom to grab my phone, debating the first call; 911, Mariko, or Glenn himself.
Then I heard the door open upstairs. I heard heavy feet strain the tired linoleum and floor joists above me…
On his right brow, a comma of dark blood marks the origin of what will soon be a whopping shiner, a light swelling across the bridge of his nose and right cheek tighten the skin giving it that artificial youth of a bad face lift, a fat lip and deep cut inside his mouth turn his grin Brandoesque.
“How are ya?” he says. Shit, how am I?
“I was starving. Had to go out and get some eggs.” he tells me.
His jeans are clean. He’s in his good golf shirt, the one I associate with dress up occasions like hockey games or church. And he’s smiling.
I realize that something special has just occurred; for a few moments I lost faith in Glenn. For a brief time, I expected him to cave and revert to old ways… to escape down the dark path. Because maybe if I was in his position, that’s what I would have done. So easy to walk that path, in spite of the heavy toll you pay. But Glenn didn’t do that. In spite of every excuse not to, he stood tall.
So many times in my life I have seen examples of extraordinary courage in the face of the unimaginable. Both my brothers will always remain heroes to me for the lives they have lived by necessity. They’re not saints, just everyday heroes, the finest kind, the kind that I believe is in all of us, the kind that today Glenn has chosen to be.
Glenn lost his fight last night by TKO in the first round, and if there is beauty in adversity, he has shone the light on it.
On Saturday night, Glenn’s professional mixed martial arts record slipped to 2 – 1, but this Sunday morning, I have never been prouder of my friend Glenn.
Sunday morning comes the dawn… and it is good.
