Valentine’s Day

I took a hard line against Valentine’s Day when I was raising my two kids. It’s for young lovers, I insisted, but still I capitulated and purchased the punch-out sheets of cards for the classroom. At least it had progressed to an inclusive observation, unlike when I was a child and only the same four or five popular kids would haul in 30 or 40 cards apiece while the rest of us settled for the one from our best friend – if we were lucky. A child’s life in those days was more Dickensian than the egalitarian approach of today.

It was a surprise to me, then, when my late daughter experienced a full-blown love affair at the tender age of eight with the character of Frederic in Gilbert and Sullivan’s light opera The Pirates of Penzance. We were a theatre-going family. Showboat, Rent, Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Miserables, Little Shop of Horrors – we saw them all but it started in Penzance with Frederic at the helm. Her eyes followed his every move and she hung on to each note like a prize. She left the theatre that night a singer and music became the one lasting expression of faith that never let her down, all thanks to Frederic and young love.

This Valentine’s Day, after attending my granddaughter’s dance recital, festooned and flanked by red hearts, I am reminded of that other little girl – my little girl. She lives in my heart today, as ever.

I still crabbed about the cards even as I made them (I’ve progressed to that!) I made sure to tell her the day was for young lovers and couples that need to remember to tell their partners they’re appreciated. This time ’round, though, I’m aware of a gentler, more subtle knowledge. Sometimes a fake Hallmark holiday can evolve to mean more than the retail sales surge for which it was originally created. Occasionally, like this year for me, it brings with it the memory of music and one girl’s first brush with sweet love.

Her love didn’t stop there. It grew to include Harry Anderson from Night Court fame (although we never could figure that one out), later including Jason Priestley and real boys, then men. But it started with Frederic and, now that she’s gone, it spirals back to the start where lightness and love first meet, so much like grief unfolding on the spectrum’s opposite end. I meet her there today, cinnamon heart-in-hand. Happy Valentine’s Day, love. I miss you.

© Kim Reynolds 2013

 

She Died on a Monday

In the seven years leading up to my daughter’s death, she suffered through hundreds of hospitalizations. I use the word “suffered” and I mean it. When I’d get the call from her husband in her distant city telling me she was once-again hospitalized, I’d do a quick survey of where we were in the week. Tuesday to Thursday = probably okay. Friday to Monday = disaster.

And now we have a new television show, entertainment, if you will, from the TNT network entitled “Monday Mornings” and penned by CNN’s top medical guy, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, which explores something all-too-many of us are all-too-familiar with: Medical mistakes.

My concern over the “entertainment value” of such a television show bumps up against relief. Real people with real lives and real families that love them die in real life versus now people will know some of the truth. The problem is that real people get lost in the drama of storytelling. My daughter is real. Our family is real. The loss is untenable always and in all ways.

As you watch this new program, I ask you to keep in mind that they will focus on one error at a time that results in a patient’s death but the truth is quite different. The errors come fast and furious, one atop the other, each moving the individual’s body further and further from its norm until, seven years later, no one can remember what the original problem was; nor can they find it. Instead, the medical collective has created so many new problems, it is virtually impossible to know or understand what they are dealing with today.

Amidst it all is a young, beautiful woman that trusted them to do their best for her. How tragic, then, for her to have to face the multitude of truths she must come to terms with on top of the outcome she must accept. Their “best” made her die. She backed the wrong horse. Their only interest now is to protect themselves.

If this new show turns out to be the type of entertainment you will consume, please remember that it presents nothing close to the truth. It has been sprinkled with just enough truth to make for a good and palatable story but not enough to frighten you and you should be frightened. Like most of you, there was a time I believed in the medical systems and structures put in place to protect me and mine. Having witnessed first-hand the depth of dysfunction in our health care system, I can tell you unequivocally, there is nothing healthy or caring within it. You will meet some fine people there, however, they are powerless and must comply completely in order to survive its political environment.

Should you choose to watch “Monday Mornings”, I can only hope that you will keep in mind that as you sit watching, real medical mistakes are happening. It is not fiction and the people experiencing it are not characters on a television show. They are loved ones. They are beautiful daughters. And they died on a Monday.

© Kim Reynolds 2013

 

I Have Two Kids

One of the more difficult moments to surface when meeting new people after the death of a child is the inevitable conversational curveball. How many kids do you have, Kim? The first time it happened, my heart shattered just a little bit more.

Beat. T-t-two, I finally spew. Of course I have two. You cannot, after all, erase an individual’s entire life and why would you want to? But it’s hard and it’s inopportune and some days you just can’t do the story justice but still you tell it because it’s important to acknowledge that even though life is not even-handed, it is still worth living. Those of us who die out of order must be equally celebrated for having had the courage to stand in there and duke it out for the little time they were offered in comparison to the rest of us.

My experience with loss has changed my approach to introductions. What keeps you busy? has replaced questions about hearth and home. Do you hike? has become my preferred opening line. I take little for granted now. I know that everyone has a story and that sometimes the telling of it shouldn’t take place in the midst of small talk.

Within the context of her job as a brain injury therapist, my daughter used to talk about the importance of being able to put yourself into the shoes of others. I do that more often now, and with greater intention. It’s a tough way to learn a lesson but it reminds me that even though she’s gone she still has plenty to teach me.

© Kim Reynolds 2013

 

The Backyard Rink

It should have come as no surprise to me that my late daughter would pursue prairie life as an adult. All the signs were there early on but never so clear as the year she became determined to build a backyard rink. In Vancouver. At sea level. Good luck with that.

A girl with a lifelong passion for hockey, we’d given her a book called “How to Build a Backyard Rink” the previous Christmas. We didn’t know she’d spent the year from one December to the next analyzing the appropriate barometric pressure combinations of temperature and humidity to determine the exact conditions needed for said rink. We would find out soon enough.

It was a colder than usual winter that December in 1996. She wore that look she’d get when she knew the tumblers were falling into place – a Cheshire cat meets the Holy Grail kind of look. We knew we were in trouble when she started dragging lumber out of the garage.

She announced it at dinner. We’re building a rink – all of us – and she stared her brother down with a don’t-get-me-started look and we readily agreed. We knew, he and I, that his Dad and sister would build it together while I made the cocoa and he stoked the fire. It’s just the way our world worked back then.

Build it they did. The temperature dropped daily and the two built the frame and she checked the weather hourly. These are the days before there was a weather channel on television. She had the weather centre number programmed on speed-dial.

Down the temperature went as the humidity rose and each night we received our weather tutorial from her. It’ll snow tonight, she said. It did – for days. She’d come home from school, her Dad from work, and out they’d go – tamping, flooding, smoothing – until, against all the west coast odds, a beautiful backyard rink emerged.

This photo here is my favourite. She’s bursting through the door, ecstatic with the outcome. I hear her voice as if she’s in the room. Come on, you guys. It’s done! It’s a beauty. And so it was. More beautiful than the rink, however, was this girl of mine and her belief that if you will it so, it will be.

She became so adept at this, she willed her body to last at least two years beyond its natural life. I’ll know when it’s time to go, when he’s ready, she said of her husband. As always, her timing was impeccable.

On this December night, the clouds gather, the temperature drops. We no longer live at sea level. Up here, high on this mountain, a fresh snowfall looms. We bought this house for her – a perfect place for a perfect rink, but she’s not here to share it. One day we’ll build it for her, though, and when we do I’m pretty sure we’ll hear her loud and clear. It’s done! It’s a beauty, all right. Just like her.

© Kim Reynolds 2012

 

Acts of Kindness

When my daughter died in August of 2011, I couldn’t remember how to breathe. It would be some time before I could do much of what once came naturally to me. Now, 16 months later, there are still some things, some events and some people I just can’t do.

The events of the last week, watching freshly grieving parents, renewed elements of grief I thought had passed. I suspect it will always be so. I’ve watched closely the reactions, responses and words of others as they spoke about the families. I couldn’t pay attention when I was in it. I doubt they can, either.

There is one part of it all that has been pleasant to recall. I heard about the people moved to start expressing their condolences by paying forward acts of kindness and it made me remember the impact something my daughter said to me had on the people who came together to remember her. She so wanted to have children but could not. She talked about adoption but her health was too fragile. She turned then to Africa, to the children there that had so little. She asked her Dad and I to adopt a foster child with her. It was in the works but not yet completed when she left us.

We included in her obituary a plea from her to any that might be so inclined to foster a child in Africa as a way for her life to continue to have meaning after her death. At last count there were upwards of 45 children and families receiving assistance as a result of her simple request. And I was reminded of this. Sometimes it takes asking so little to accomplish so much. And sometimes it takes 16 months of grief to remember it. Today, finally, I remember it.

© Kim Reynolds 2012

 

After School Aperitif?

There was a time a million years ago, back in the 90s, when the alcohol industry was just beginning to ponder what might happen to their marketplace if their beverages tasted like soda pop. My husband knew a sales rep for one such company and, thus, our refrigerator contained one of their testers – a big, plastic pop bottle of booze. I’d never seen such a thing and so I hadn’t contemplated the impact its presence in my after school fridge might have.

We were both at work. I came home to a still-dark house. Strange, considering the two knapsacks on the floor of the front hall. And I heard giggling. Hm. I put the dinner on, called hello and hopped in the shower. Somewhere around the second rinse I remembered seeing the bottle in the sink. No way. Oh shit. I ran down the stairs wrapped in a towel, dripping the whole way and there it was. One giant, empty, plastic bottle of fizzy, fruity booze. And I heard giggling.

Um, mum? Her voice was small. Unusual for her. I grabbed the empty and headed, still dripping, down one more flight of stairs and there they were. Tell me you didn’t, I said. We didn’t know, they protested and, both talking together, presented their case. It tasted so good, my daughter said. It wasn’t until we felt woozy that we looked at it, her friend corroborated. We made sandwiches to soak it up, they proclaimed together, proud of their 14 year-old problem solving skills.

I have to call your mother, I said. You’re staying for dinner. I’m not taking you home ’til you’re sober. I’m sorry, I said. It dawned on them that they weren’t going to be in the shit for this one. They began their debrief in earnest. I fell down the stairs, her friend said. It tastes so good, my daughter yelled, unaware of her volume. Yeah, you said that. Is there anything worse than drunk 14 year-olds? I think not.

Eat the sandwiches. I have to call your mother, I said.

Fortunately for me, the innocent mistake we’d all made harmed no one and was even perceived by the friend’s mum as an honest mistake thankfully accompanied by an appreciative laugh. Needless to say, I never became a consumer of that product and, as a result of the experience, developed the opinion that alcohol should actually taste like alcohol just so we remember it is. It really shouldn’t “taste so good.”

The best part of the story, though, then and now, is experiencing it with your best friend. Now that my daughter is gone and we’re left only with the memories of her life, the people she brought into our lives fill out the mental photo albums we work hard to hold onto.

This memory, those moments, how they unfolded, the people in it: It is all we have now. I’m so grateful for its sweet innocence.

When this same best friend stood at the front of the church and recited a poem in eulogy for my daughter, this was the moment I reached for. It is that day and its honest hilarity I keep close. The pain of loss permeates like acrid, filthy sweat – collecting day upon day. Sometimes you have to reach through it to the other side and find something better. And sometimes when you do, you uncover a memory like this that just tastes so good.

© Kim Reynolds 2012

 

Talking Turkey

My late daughter was the original Christmas-phile. Anywhere, anytime – there’s never a wrong time for yuletide. It infused all parts of her life and it was only a matter of time before she’d cook a Tom turkey of her own.

She was living in Rits at the University of British Columbia, the joint Japanese-Canadian residential program. Her four-bedroom apartment consisted of two Canadian students and two Japanese students. She, this girl of mine, took cultural exposure to a new level and she took it seriously. Not a single event went uncelebrated and she dragged her new-to-Canada roomies into each experience with a vengeance. From Thanksgiving to Hallowe’en pumpkins with toasty, salted seeds and costume parties at frat houses I worked hard to ignore to Christmas and, along with it, her commitment to provide a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings shoved unceremoniously between Term 1 final exams like some kind of mortar.

How do you buy a turkey? Fresh or frozen? What’s the stuff inside called? Do I have to put my hands in there to stuff it? At the store, frozen is cheaper, the gizzards, yes. That was just the first phone call. We booked a phone appointment for a stuffing tutorial from her Dad – the resident expert – and away she went over course content ranging from defrosting a turkey to making trifle for dessert – my personal specialty. She opened the doors and fed the floor and when she came home from school that holiday season she brought with her a new appreciation for what it takes to put a meal that size on the table.

That year, that Christmas holiday, provides me now with one of my dearest parent memories. I was making yet another pot of coffee in the kitchen one morning, indulging the luxury of having both kids home from school at the same time. They talked in the living room while we, out of sight, eavesdropped, unable to keep the permanent grin from our faces.

Don’t you love how there’s always food in the fridge and you never have to buy it, my son said.

It’s like a warm blanket, she said. They make better coffee, too, she whispered.

We two, in our hidden perch, choked to keep the laugh inside. Sweet, sweet memory now.

Once back at school in the New Year, her cultural quest continued unabated. Valentine’s Day gave way to St. Patrick’s Day replete with green beer, bawdy Irish tunes at the bar and tiny, matching green miniskirts covered in shamrocks procured from Old Navy. She went all-out every time and when she couldn’t explain the significance of certain customs to her roomies, she made it up.

It never occurred to me before, she said on the phone to me one fine Spring day, just how stupid the notion of bunnies having eggs is. I never heard what explanation she gave them for that. I only know she was armed with painted eggs and bunny ears for all come Easter Sunday morning. On to Victoria Day!

© Kim Reynolds 2012