If you were to ask those close to me (and I mean REALLY close to me) to use 5 phrases and/or words to best describe me, some of these things might include: "sickeningly cheery"," gullible", "laughs at everything", "drinks her body weight in Pepsi and overpriced coffee", "will spend $15 on a bad martini", "a total music nut", and "has a feverish love for kitties and pitbulls". But no matter what combination of words those close to me would come up with, everyone's list would no doubt include "Obsessed beyond reason with Duran Duran".
It's the day before my 33rd birthday, and as a gift to myself I have decided to write a blog piece in which I tell the tale of my life as a Duranie (Duranie: noun; the colloquial term for a highly obsessed fanboy/girl of the British pop/rock group Duran Duran that originated in the 1980's and are still going to this very day). I have been meaning to do this for some time, and I thought what better time to do it but on the cusp of my birthday. I believe my story as a Duranie is a unique one, and one I very much feel ready to tell. It is a story that encompasses my whole life, not just a part of it. I have been alive as long as Duran Duran have been making albums and their influence on key moments of my life have become essential to who I am today. My love for this band and the music they have created together fills my heart with deep satisfaction and affection and brings joy to my everyday existence, even in adulthood. If anything, more so in adulthood. Thanks to social media, I am fully aware that I am not the only grown-ass woman that feels this way. There is an enormous legion of us worldwide and there is a sisterly kinship we feel because of our love for this band. We've each got a fire and a passion that has never let up, and although many of us are separated by miles and oceans, it's Duran Duran that figuratively brings us all together.
So without further ado, here is my story:
I was born on April 7th, 1981 and was raised in a small mining town in Labrador, Canada. The winters were frigid and merciless, and the summers were short. I have two older sisters, the oldest being my sister Joanne who was 11 at the time of my birth. She was a quiet, bespectacled, studious girl who developed a love of the pop music of the day and by the time she was 13, had a pretty solid record collection. Her record collection included all the early Duran Duran albums.
She is what I would refer to as a "1st Generation Duranie" because she bought all the records that were out at the time, bought all the teen mags that they were featured in (Bop, Tiger Beat, etc), all her friends liked them, and she was even a member of the International Duran Duran Club. She played those early Duran records a lot, so much so, that my earliest childhood memory is hearing the 1981 Duran Duran single Girls On Film on vinyl. Yes. That is my first childhood memory. Not a cartoon, not a tender moment with my mother, not a toy, but hearing the cracks and pops of Duran Duran's 3rd single blaring through my sister's record player in the rec room that was in the basement of our family home.
My Duran-tinged childhood memories don't stop there. They continue on with hearing and learning the words and melodies of each song on all the Duran Duran albums my sister had, staring at the cover of the Rio album trying to figure out who this painted smiling woman with the black hair and magenta dress was, studying the cover of the Seven And The Ragged Tiger album asking my sister over and over again "Why do they have a pet tiger on a leash? Why can't I have a tiger as a pet?", singing and dancing to my personal favorite songs "Planet Earth", "Rio", "Save A Prayer", "New Moon On Monday", "Union Of The Snake", and "Wild Boys", and sitting in my sister's basement bedroom with the slime green shag carpeting examining her walls adorned with posters of Simon LeBon (singer), John Taylor (bassist), Andy Taylor (guitarist - at the time), Roger Taylor (drummer) and Nick Rhodes (keyboardist), both individually photographed as well as collectively.
However, my sister Joannes's Duran fandom did not last and was pretty much extinct by 1986 as she was completing her last year of high school. In 1987, she was off to bigger and better things as she took off for college in another province. My second eldest sister Lisa was also moved out to another province by 1991 and from then on, it was just my parents and I.
As the years trickled on, the influence that Duran Duran had over my early childhood moved to a far back burner, but not that far back. We got a family cable box converter during the summer of 1988 that gave us the 24-hour Canadian music video channel Much Music (Canada's answer to MTV) and I became absorbed by it instantly. Although at the time I was developing some of my own tastes for the pop of the time (New Kids On The Block, Tiffany, Madonna, etc) I also watched Duran Duran evolve over the years, never forgetting that they were my sister's favorite band as a teen and that I remembered an awful lot about them. I never forgot the names of their big hits, or the names of their early albums, or the names of the band members and whom did what in the group. I also always remembered that they were from England.
In 1993 I was 12 years old. I remember quite a lot of the music that was being played on the radio at the time, and there was a song during the summer of '93 that seemed as if it was played every hour on the hour. It had this terrific jazzy funk beat and the song was super mellow. I remember thinking "Wow....this is such a terrific song!" There was a female voice that would sing a line that went "Can't ever keep from falling apart...at the seams..." and I thought it was infectious, even at 12. I thought it was a cool new band, and I was quickly corrected by a radio dj who promptly announced that it was the latest single by Duran Duran called Come Undone. I remember thinking "That is the band Joanne loved! I can't believe they sound so cool!' But at the time, it was still a passing, fleeting thought.
Another moment I remember in 1993 was watching the Much Music Top 30 Countdown on a Friday afternoon and seeing the brand new entries kick off the chart. I have a vivid memory of when Duran Duran's video for their single Too Much Information entered the chart.
Another year and some passed on, and 1995 began. I was in Grade 8 (as we say here in Canada, Americans would say 8th Grade and I believe Brits would say Year 8), and I was having a great year at school. I had a nice little group of friends and I had developed my first crush on a nice boy named Jerry who was a grade ahead of me. I had become quite the music lover myself and already had a pretty impressive collection of music. I was the kid called on by my classmates who wanted mixed tapes made for them of stuff they didn't have or had never heard before. It was a massive hobby for me at that time.
It was the week of my 14th birthday and I had finished my week at school. On April 4th I had a day off and decided to spend much of it watching tv. I flipped on Much Music at the time and by the looks of it, there was an all-day special being aired. I quickly realized that it was in fact a Duran Duran special. It was called "Duran Duran:15 Years In 3 Hours" and I was to learn that it was to kick off the release of their latest cd, a covers album called Thank You. I decided to watch a little of it. Besides, there was nothing else on at that time. The special consisted of 3 members of the group being driven around to various locations within Toronto that commemorated certain milestones in their 15-year career, along with music videos of theirs being played in a chronological order.
The videos played one by one, and I found myself drowning in a sea of nostalgia. "I remember this song!! And this one!". I decided to record each video I saw. Then I got this bizarre urge to dig out my sister's old Duran Duran LPs and fawn over them to keep this blissful blast from my past going. "My sister loved these guys so much! Their music is still great!" my 14-year old self thought to herself.
Over the coming days, I found myself rewinding all the videos and re-watching them over and over again. Then I found myself singing the songs. I think my mom thought I was crazy, but I was having fun sorta digging this band that my sister was so into when she was my age. A few weeks later I was at the mall checking out cds, and I saw the new Duran Duran album Thank You, with its black and white cover with various photos of the artists that Duran Duran paid tribute to. "Hmmmm....would it be crazy if I picked this up? Would it?" so I did.
I was instantly hooked. Instantly. I loved it right away. Although they were cover songs, I loved the way this band sounded and I loved the way Simon LeBon sounded as he sang. I played the Thank You record non-stop for months, and I found myself craving more Duran Duran music. It was like a drug. Over the summer and fall of 1995, I snatched up as many Duran Duran cds as I could grab. The next cd I got was their 1981 debut, followed by 1993's The Wedding Album (the record that had Come Undone on it), then 1982's Rio, then 1984's Arena. Just before school began, I got 1986's Notorious and 1989's Decade, their first official greatest hits album. For Christmas that year, I got 1983's Seven And The Ragged Tiger, then 1988's Big Thing on cassette. It was very safe to say that by 1995's year end....it was official. I was a Duranie. I had it bad. Real bad, and way worse than my sister ever had it. I was love sick for this band.
It was a peculiar position to find myself in, a newly obsessed Duran Duran fangirl in 1995 that lived in an isolated northern Canada town. It felt a little lonely. All my "friends" at the time began to distance themselves from me slightly because they couldn't understand why I started liking this "old" band that weren't cool to them at all. None of my peers liked anything that wasn't from the last 6 months, let alone something that was as old as they were. I couldn't explain it. This music was brilliant to me. It sounded fresh to my ears and it moved me in a way no other band's music ever did. And as time in school went on, it would turn out that Duran Duran would become more important to me than ever.
I don't talk a lot about this part of my life, and certain members of my family (namely my last remaining living parent) would probably question why I was saying this, or outwardly deny what I am about to say, but it is the very raw truth. When this was occurring in my school and peer life at the time, I didn't have a name for it, but it seems now that it has been let go out in the open and is a much more discussed topic, so therefore I am no longer afraid to talk about it, so here it is:
I was a victim of bullying. Although there were speckled moments of my adolescence in which I did have some friends, there were far larger chunks of time in which I had nobody. More often than not, I was picked on, taunted, harassed, and completely ignored. I don't know all the reasons, but I can guess a few. I had acne for a good many years, plus when kids my age began underage drinking and partying, I completely turned my back on it and did not partake in it at all. I rarely spoke up in class and anytime I did, I was severely made fun of. I dreaded group activities because kids were so unbearably hateful and condescending towards me. There were even a couple of girls who for years on end would call my house and make crank phone calls, not just once, but several times for several years. I developed a crippling and debilitating anxiety before going to school each morning during certain years, and I would cry my eyes out, begging not to go. There were several mornings that I was so terrified to go to school that I would leave the house, but then go hide in the lobby of an apartment building for hours. All because I could not bear to face how I was treated. The only person in my life who sympathized with me was my mother. She was the only one who cared and listened. No one else understood. My dad just thought I was being a big baby and told me to grow up....not understanding that if no one teaches you how to stand up for yourself and if you have no one to back you up, its so very hard.
During these times, if I didn't have music to turn to for salvation, my thoughts would have probably turned very dark. But as it stands, when I came home from a horrendous day at school, I could always head to my bedroom, put on Duran Duran and feel the anxiety and sadness evaporate away with the melodies. My mother always supported my obsession for them because she saw the joy they brought to me. She never ever once told me to shut my music off or grow out of it. It was nothing but pure encouragement from her. She saw that it was a positive thing to have this band in my life. They wrote positive, artistic, uplifting music with no cursing, and it wasn't noise pollution as she thought metal and rap to be. I would find out very soon that not only was it Duran Duran's music that would bring me joy, but I wouldn't feel so all alone in my fandom while being stuck in my tiny frozen hometown.
I discovered the internet for the first time at my local library during November of 1996. With that discovery, I found Duran Duran fans just like myself all over the place seeking friendships with other fans to share their passion with. I made penpals with several girls and we wrote letters to each other and began exchanging memorabilia through the mail. They sent me birthday cards and Xmas gifts, and I them. It was something I became so passionate about and would bring me so much elation during my high school years. I made friends with fellow Canadians, a few Americans, and even ones in Germany, Japan and Indonesia. A few of these penpals would become some of the dearest friends I would ever have in life. In fact, I became such good friends with one of them that during the summer of 1998, her mother bought me a plane ticket and flew me down to Orlando, Florida to spend two weeks with her! I made another terrific friend in Nova Scotia and when I moved away from home to Halifax, it was she who picked me up from the airport as a homesick emotional wreck. She took me to her home and made me tea and hugged me and told me to be brave, that I would make it on my own. She was right. I made another who lived in Missouri and we would talk on the phone for hours and hours and when my mother died, her and her family would call me every single day for weeks to talk to me and make sure I was ok. I would never have ever crossed paths with these girls had it not been for our mutual love of Duran Duran.
I had one girl whom I would call a best friend during a two year period in high school, and although she was not obsessed with Duran Duran, she was the one person in my hometown among my peers who was supportive of my love, as she had her own equally feverish obsession. Her obsession was with the Britpop band Oasis, and we shared our obsessions in tandem. It was wonderful. There was a great time in 1997 in which both Oasis and Duran Duran's latest albums were to be released on October 14th, and they both were going to be performing on late night television, Oasis on Letterman and Duran Duran on Leno. We both sat on the phone screaming into our respective receivers expressing our excitement for ourselves and each other. When a Duran Duran video would come on tv, she would call me. When an Oasis video would come on tv, I would call her. We egged on each other's love for our bands and it was a wonderful friendship. But alas, she then got a boyfriend who pushed her into underage drinking and she wiped her mind of me, and sadly, Oasis too.
I often wondered would this ever happen to me? Would I let another human being rob me of my passion for something? I certainly hoped not.
As time went on, as boyfriends came and went, I would soon learn that if you're lucky, you will hit the mother load in terms of someone who will accept you so wholeheartedly, urge you not to change any of the core aspects that make you who you are, and love you to smithereens. I found this in Darrell, the guy who would steal my heart. He has accepted every single musical obsession I have ever had, some would say even encourages them, just as my mother did.
We got married in February of 2005 and in April, he surprised me with a trip to Toronto to see the newly reformed original line-up of Duran Duran live in concert at the Air Canada Center. The concert was April 5th, and we arrived on April 4th. When we got there, I saw that Duran Duran were going to be at Much Music for a Live @ Much special and live interview.......and that our hotel was a mere few blocks away from Much Music!!! Right away, Darrell says "Let's go!!! Let's wait outside so you can see if you can catch a glimpse of them!" Well....not only did I catch a glimpse, but I found a prime spot right up against the barricade outside!!! During that live special, the members of the band came outside several times to chat and sign memorabilia, and for the first time in my life, I was seeing my idols in the flesh. It was magical. I had a rare LP with me that I got signed by ALL the members, I got lots of pictures, and as I stood there in awe of these men, I realized that April 4th was exactly 10 years to the day that I re-discovered Duran Duran for myself when I was 14 thanks to a Much Music special. It was a real commemorative day. I cried my eyes out that night.
As I sit here typing these last few words, I am aware of my surroundings. I am seated in the living room of the house I own with my husband. My pitbull is snoring next to me. Candles are lit. I've got 5 Duran Duran cds on shuffle. It is now my birthday, and I am 33 years old. I have a good job, great friends, and I am no longer a victim of anything. I am now a loud mouth who stands up for what she believes in. I am still obsessed by music, and I am still a Duranie. I am impatiently waiting for them to release their 14th album, as many of us fans are! I'm not the biggest Duranie of them all in many aspects, as I have only seen them live 2 times, and there are items that are missing from my collection that I would need to complete it. But I have lots, and it's all precious to me. I have every studio album on cd, and many on vinyl, including many singles and rarities. I have a huge scrapbook filled with pictures and clippings. I have dvds and hours of footage taped on VHS cassettes that I will someday convert to DVD for preservation. I'm proud of the collection I have, and I can also stand toe to toe with any fellow fan in terms of Duran trivia. In fact, I wrote a 3500 word research paper on Duran Duran in my second last year of high school (I unfortunately misplaced the copy I kept of it though!! GRRR).
Duran Duran set out to make flashy, fashionable, danceable pop records. They didn't set out to change the world. They didn't even initially set out to be a band that girls liked! But it was out of their control. It's what happened, and it's what pushed them to global stardom. I am one of those girls. I took the torch that my sister lit and grabbed it before she let it burn out. With the torch in my hand now, it burns brighter and with more fury than ever. I owe all I am to this band. Duran Duran showed me the world. They coaxed me out of my shell. They made me the happiest I ever could have been. They will be a part of who I am now, and forever.
Vanessa Knox
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Duranie 4 Lyfe
My Duran Duran Stats:
-----------------------------------------------------
Favorite album: Big Thing (1988)
Favorite singles: Violence of Summer (1990) New Moon On Monday (1983) White Lines (1995)
Favorite album tracks: Before The Rain (2011) Palomino (1988) The Chauffer (1982)
Favorite B-side: Late Bar (1981)
Favorite remix: Wild Boys - extended mix (1984)
Favorite song to hear live: Sunrise (2005)
Favorite member: John Taylor
Sunday, 6 April 2014
Thursday, 2 January 2014
14 Years: A Legacy Of Loss & the Aftermath of Growth
Most individuals, when called to task, can categorize their lives by multiple, ever-changing chapters. The same could be done by an outsider's glance at my life and it's events, if one would ever be so inclined or interested to do so.
I myself however would only designate my personal story into just 2 chapters: the life I lived before the death of my mother, and the life I lived after the death of my mother.
"Why only 2 chapters?" one would perhaps ask me. "Surely one's life story would have more color, depth, and resonance than what could be contained within just 2 chapters." Yes of course, I do concur with that sentiment. I'm certainly not saying that these two chapters aren't filled with many, many subdivisions in which my memories and personal story are held, it's just that the event in question was so metamorphosing and transcending to me that it's a book splitter. Hence, two chapters. Chapter 1 is the part of the story in which my mother was an existing and active source of life, breath, energy, love, inspiration, influence and knowledge. Chapter 2 is the part of the story where she just ceased to exist, and the cascade of events that occurred from that point on. Therefore Chapter 2 will continue on until I cease to exist.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My personal story began as follows: I was born Vanessa Ann McEvoy, on Tuesday, April 7th, 1981. My parents are Joseph McEvoy and Marjorie McEvoy (Ryan). My father was a truck driver and blaster at the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOCC) and my mother was a teacher turned stay-at-home mom. I have 2 sisters, Joanne and Lisa, who at the time of my birth were 11 years old and 9 years old, respectively.
I was born in St. Johns, NL, but raised in Labrador City. I spend my entire childhood, adolescence and teenage years in Labrador. My two sisters left home when I was still very young (a decade-long age gap would make that inevitable). My oldest sister Joanne left home in 1987 to go to university in Antigonish, NS. I was 6 years old at the time. My sister Lisa left home in 1991 to move to Ottawa, ON. I was 10 at the time. The remainder of that first chapter continues on with just my mom, my dad and me right up to the 6 months after I graduate high school.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2 of that story begins on Sunday, January 2nd, 2000. It was a day that began like any other. Nothing spectacular at all stands out about that day at face value.
It's an overcast, chilly morning, the day after the very first day of the new millennium. I'm 18 years old. My dad and I go off to the morning church service (we were a Catholic family). My mom stays home because she had a very bad bronchial infection and accompanying flu. We come back from church. My mother is eating some breakfast whilst sitting on the couch. The tv is on. We chat. My dad leaves to go visit his sister who has the same flu that my mom had.
I plan on spending the entire afternoon in my bedroom drinking tea and watching Much Music, as there was going to be a marathon of the top 100 videos of all-time airing. I had watched it every New Year's Day for the previous 3 years, and I was going to do the same that year. Then that night, we were going to have leftover ham for supper, and Mom and I discussed how she was going to take me shopping for a new top as a gift on Old Christmas Day, January 6th. (mom always made it a point to do something for Old Christmas Day during my childhood, and she kept it up for me as a teenager too. It was a tradition she enjoyed).
I grabbed my tea and was about to head in my room, and my mom was heading in to take a hot bath. I asked her "Do you need anything?" and she casually replied "No."
I shut my bedroom door and settled in to watch my marathon.
When I think about the quiet calm that happened over that next 15 minute timespan on that day, nothing is out of the ordinary or spectacular. Just normal stuff that most people wouldn't notice. Over the years I've reflected on it, and I think it's my mind's way to hold on to whatever scrap of normalcy that it can. It's almost as if an egg timer was set to go off on that day at that time, starting at 15 minutes and counting all the way down to 1. It's just that on this egg timer, when the 1 minute was up, my life, my sense of security, my emotions, my memories, and my heart would be completely and utterly ripped into shreds at the speed of light and sound, and would take years upon years to mend and heal. A cornerstone in my family would be smashed into a million pieces, rendered irreparable. Written off.
During that 15 minutes of calm, this is all that happened: My mom was in the tub, having her bath. I was still in my room watching the first 3 music videos of the marathon, and my dad was on his way back home from my aunt Edith's house. Dad was pulling in the driveway, then mom was getting out of the tub. I was still sipping my tea. Dad came in the house, mom was coming out of the bathroom, then as Dad was turning the corner into the hallway, my mom let out a massive yelp and fell to the ground. The sound of her falling was not unlike the sound of a bookcase being knocked over. Dad ran to her and yelled "Oh Marjorie, honey!!" I didn't see what happened as my door was still closed. I was frightened and was about to come out when Dad yelled out for me to call an ambulance.
The next several minutes and hours seem like a blur. I remember them, but my mind must have numbed itself to protect against trauma. It's like a point form-dream sequence, and I may get the odd detail wrong. But this is how I remember it: I came out of my room, saw my mom lying there on the hallway floor and ran to the phone. As I was calling the ambulance, Dad was yelling mom's name trying to get her to respond, but she wasn't responding. I don't remember what I said at all on the phone, but I called. Then I think dad asked me to call my uncle Don too, which I don't remember doing, but I do remember him arriving with my cousin Brad in tow. I sat there on the sofa trying to piece together reality when Brad said to me "Common. You don't need to see any of this." and took me to the basement where we sat in the rec room. I was on the verge of hyperventilating because none of this seemed real. I felt like an idiot because Brad was sitting with me and I just couldn't think of anything to say. What can you talk about during a moment like that? I think I apologized to him for not talking or having anything to say, and he told me to stop being ridiculous. We stayed in the basement while the paramedics arrived. I remember hearing a lot of clanging and banging and dragging, and then it all stopped. They took my mom to the hospital. We came back upstairs, and dad told me to get ready and get in the truck. "There's a chance she'll be ok." he said.
I don't remember that much about the specifics of the next several hours, but somewhere in that time frame we arrived at the hospital. I sat in the waiting room. It might have been 45 minutes or it might have been 2 hours. I don't remember exactly how long I was waiting in there.. I also don't remember what I was thinking about. Dad was in with the doctors. I remember I got up at some point to go see where dad was, and then dad turned the corner, saw me, and with a sullen, defeated look on his face he said "They did all they could do."
My mother died of heart failure and head trauma from the fall. When she fell, she went down head first, which knocked her out cold. They managed to revive her heartbeat, but told dad she was virtually brain dead from the fall, and she would be a vegetable. If you ask me, my mother was a person. NOT a vegetable. So therefore I would not want her to be a vegetable, and neither did dad.
A priest was called in to do last rites, which dad and I were present for. Somehow, some way. we made it back home. I do not remember leaving the hospital and I don't remember exactly how we got home, but I do remember that within 1 hour of us arriving back at my house, there must have been 30 people who eventually arrived. The only other family we had in Labrador City was my aunt Edith, Uncle Don and their 2 sons, my cousins Brad and Craig. Everyone else that arrived were neighbors, dad's co-workers, and just random people that wanted to make sure we were okay.
The next hurdle that had to be crossed that night was notifying my sisters, both of whom were living in different parts of Ontario. Lisa was notified first, then Joanne. Within 2 days they both were home.
The next several weeks, had they not happened the way that they did, I'm not sure if I would have been able to recover and heal as well as I did. A strange yet comforting paradox overtook my environment.
Internally, the stages of grief began to filter through my conscience. I could slowly and surely feel the beginnings of a vicious, stormy battle that would overtake me for the better part of the next several years. But externally, my dad, sisters and I were swarmed and showered with an unearthly, unimaginable amount of the most gentle care. A floodgate of love and support from what felt like my entire home town came at us from all angles. It was shocking and overwhelming, but so beautiful and appreciated beyond words.
People who I had never even spoke to or met before in my whole life showed up at our door with cooked whole turkeys and hams with all the fixings, casseroles, trays upon trays upon trays of cold cuts, finger foods, and cookies, loaves and loaves of homemade bread, cobblers, huge salads, fruit baskets, bags of grocery essentials like milk and butter, and some even ordered party-size pizzas and massive containers of Chinese food and just brought them to us, just because. A teacher who taught me one subject in grades 4 and 5 showed up with a massive homemade 6-layer chocolate cake with my name written on it in icing. I mean...how did she remember me??? Or even know where I lived??? On top of that were the flowers, the cards, and gifts like money to help out. It came from everywhere. It was incredible.
And not just the food and flowers. The sheer human support was just naked and unending. I had people from all angles coming at me sitting with me on my living room floor, all urging me to tell as many stories as I could about mom. Everyone that showed up was full of unending hugs and laughter. That's one thing that really stands out. The laughter. During that first 2 weeks or so, no one dared let me or any of us be melancholy and cry. It was joy. Laughing. Talking. Reminiscing. The three of us girls, although we did have our moments, spent the better part of those weeks together picking on each other and messing around, just like we did when we all lived under the same roof. We just laughed and laughed. It was incredibly healing and made all the hard stuff during those weeks so much easier.
The two inevitable hard events in question were my mother's wake and my mother's funeral. I had never, ever been to a wake or a funeral in my life until that time. I remember when we arrived at the funeral home to see the casket, I was so scared to go look. It was such a foreign feeling. Dad had to coax me into the room. I stood outside the room and just peeked my head around the corner a few times before I even went in, and then with the footsteps of a mouse, I finally went in to face the reality that I couldn't hide from any longer.
On the day of the funeral, the sun was shining. We all seemed like we were in good, peaceful states of mind. I was drowning in a blissful sea of denial that morning, as I continually smiled and lied to myself "You know what? It's ok. I'm ok now. I can do this. I'm at peace now. Everything is all good." We got to the church, which I was surprised to find was pretty packed. My mother did not have a lot of close, personal friends, but she was very active in the church. She was a regularly scheduled reader during many of the evening masses. Everyone knew my mom's face who went to those masses.
Being the immediate family members arriving at the funeral of another immediate family member is sort of like being in the wedding party at a backwards, upside down wedding in another dimension. Many elements are similar, in that you arrive to a packed church, walk down the isle one by one to watch an event that is taking place at the front of the church. At the end, everyone walks back down the isle in sequence, and there is a "receiving line" of sorts that happens after. But of course you are not arriving to celebrate the new life of two newlyweds. Instead you are arriving to say farewell to someone you will never see again.
My mother's funeral was bittersweet and beautiful. As my dad says "She sure got one hell of a send off." My mother's closed casket sat at the front of the church, directly in the sun. A ray of sun shone down on it during the whole service and the sun did not let up. The bishop of our archdiocese performed the ceremony, which was amazing. To my knowledge, not too many bishops perform entire funerals for common folk, but he knew my mother and flew to town just to be a part of it. I remember that being a big deal. Throughout the procession, he kept referring my mother as "Our sister Marjorie," which I thought was incredible.
As the ceremony began, I became acutely aware that the artificially happy, positive façade that my family and I upheld before we arrived at the church was about to crumble beneath itself. I didn't know that churches distribute boxes of tissues, and maybe they don't usually, but in those first front pews where we all sat, there were boxes of tissues. It was not long before we all were breaking them open. Lisa broke down first. I was still okay for another little while, that was until my dad broke down. I had never seen my dad cry before in my whole life and it just did me in. I collapsed onto my sister Joanne's shoulder and we all just sat there, trying to hang on. Hang on to.....what? I'm not sure. Maybe anything. Everything. Nothing. Each other. Reality. Space. Time. Life as we knew it.
My uncle Peter who is an accomplished singer, songwriter, and guitarist offered to sing "Amazing Grace" along with the church choir. It was the most glorious rendition of the song I had ever seen. He started out singing it as a solo, then towards the end the entire church choir join him in unison.
It was during that moment that I had my very first dose of intense grief. It smacked me in the guts with an ungodly force. While uncle Peter was singing, I realized what day it was. January 6th. Old Christmas Day. The day that mom and I were supposed to have a much anticipated lunch and shopping date.
For those of you who have been kind and considerate enough to read this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. But right now, I want to get real for a second. I would like to shed some light on the more unpleasant and difficult phases of my experience with mother loss. I truly hope that you know that I'm not doing this to be malicious or mean or scare anyone, I just think it's time for me to truly express my feelings from this whole endeavor. I apologize if the next few paragraphs are harsh or hard to read, but I want to be as honest as possible and I need to get this stuff out.
For those of you who are fortunate to still have your moms, let me ask you all an honest question. Have you ever in your life imagined what it would feel like to all of a sudden realize that you will never, ever, ever, and I mean NEVER EVER again, for the rest of your existence on this planet, have lunch with your mother? Ever again? Or go to the mall or grocery store with her? Or have coffee with her? Or have her make you toast in the morning? Or watch tv with her at night? Or have her fold your socks? Or hem your jeans? Or light the candles on your birthday cake? Or take care of you when your sick? Or hug you and kiss you when your sad? Or give you a Christmas gift that she wrapped and signed "From Mom"? Or talk to her on the phone?
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to never hear her voice again? Never hear her laugh? Never hear the way she pronounced certain words? Never hear the way she whispered? Or coughed? Or sneezed? Or yawned? Or scuffed her feet on the floor in the morning? Or stirred her coffee?
What did she cook you for dinner growing up? What special things did she make for you on the weekends or during birthdays that you remember? Did she make you bacon and French toast on Saturday mornings like mine did? Did she have a special recipe for sweet and sour pork chops that you loved so much like mine did? Did she make you bubblegum-flavoured cupcakes on your 14th birthday? Or make you raspberry turnovers with vanilla icing when you won 3rd place in a science fair at school when you were 12? Did she make you peanut butter and jam sandwiches with the peanut butter spread on the bread exactly how you liked it with not too much jam? Did she fry you eggs sunny side up for breakfast certain mornings and cut the egg whites off of them because you hated them? On Friday nights, did she make you those boxed Kraft Pizzas with the parmesan cheese and oregano spice but with no other toppings because you just liked the pizza the way it was? Did you have a really bad cold when you were 13 and she made you your favorite chicken rice soup and bought a big bag of oranges for you to eat that she peeled and split into halves for you and decorated the plate with cut up green grapes? Did she make your cup of tea just right? Like mine did? Did she make the absolute best lemon meringue pies and the best light and dark fruit cakes and cherry cakes at Xmas like mine did?
Just for one split second, just one, for me today, please just try and picture what it would be like to have all of those things, all of those seemingly mundane, routine things that sometimes are accidently taken for granted, gone from your life forever, for the rest of eternity.
Was that hard to think about? If it was, I am very sorry. But that has been the reality I've been faced with for the last 14 years.
For years now, I have been trying to put into words the grief cycle and the manifestations that occur during it's process, and trying to relate to how it appears at first glance. On paper, the grief cycle as theorized In the Kubler-Ross model (look it up if you need to) appears as a nice , neat, organized pie chart or point-form list, and are as follows:
But we are human beings. We are forces of nature. When an intense bond is broken, the reactions and responses to that broken bond are multi-faced. Ever-changing. Intense. Fevered. I found another model recently that is a much more relatable description for grief, and matched my experience almost exactly, and that is a more recent adaptation to what is now referred to as "The 4 Step Model", which reads as follows:
Shock and Denial
The shock is the initial reaction to loss. Shock is the person’s emotional protection from being too suddenly overwhelmed by the loss. The person may not yet be willing or able to believe what their mind knows to be true.
That is the text book breakdown of grief, and now here is my very own personal analysis of my own experience, which I found in a journal entry I made around 2 years ago. The way I felt then is still the way I feel today about the experience, put into words as best as I could do:
"The grief and pain and shock and realization of what had just happened would transform me. The experience of losing my one maternal parent and one of the very few people that have ever been in my life that truly understood me and "got" me, was like nothing I had ever felt before. It was like being trapped on a rollercoaster that you are scared to death of and are crying and pleading to get off of, but it won't let you off. You are forced to stay strapped into it until you get used to it, until the terror and knots in your stomach slowly dissipate and become like a dull, manageable pain. Having no choice but to "get used to" that unfathomable experience was not an easy task, and it took a really, really long time. The better part of a few years. Because as life goes on after that happens, just as you thought the worst was over and you have reached a point of so called "acceptance", you will arrive on a date or an event in your life that will shock you and bring all that pain that you just buried right back to the surface. The wound will feel fresh and like it just happened all over again. Emotional injury you thought was finally sewed up gets ripped open again. This will not happen once, but many, many times. Day in and day out, and in some cases, year in and year out." --- my journal from 2011
One thing my mother taught me and taught me well is that crying is an essential human function. She taught me that if you hold in tears, it can damage you, and I truly believe that. I have never been shy or afraid to cry. And believe me. I was put to the king of all tests with this one. I remember one specific afternoon about 2 months after she had passed, in which I had the house to myself and my dad was working a 12-hour day shift. A wave of grief began to wash over me, and I knew I had to get it out. I went into my room, closed the door, collapsed on my bed in the fetal position, and literally cried, sobbed and screamed at the top of my lungs continuously for 5 hours. Five straight hours. I collapsed onto my bed at approximately 1:30 pm, and didn't stop vocalizing my pain and grief until close to 6:30 pm. My throat was raw, my eyes were swollen, and I was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. But you know what? I felt a thousand times better after. Why? Because it just needed to happen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is some good news from this. The good news is that it does get better. It really does. As painful and exhausting as grieving the loss of your mother is, you have to do it. You have to. It tears you apart, but then it puts you back together. The experience is different for everyone and it all depends on your own life, relationships, and coping mechanisms.
My Chapter 2 continues on as varied but glorious tale. 5 months after mom died, I made a big decision and moved away from home. That was another difficult experience because I was now dealing with homesickness and the thought of leaving my dad all alone. Truth be told, I almost didn't do it. The night before I was to leave on the plane the next day to move to Halifax, NS, I said to myself "What am I doing? Why am I moving away to a strange city and leaving my dad all alone? I can't do this!!!"
But I did do it, and with the 20/20 hindsight that 14 years of adult life will give you, it was the most important and best decision I ever made. I became a different person upon moving away. I grew into woman. I graduated college. I made friends that I never would have made and dated terrific boys that I never would have dated. I fell in love with the little city I now call my home. I had many great work and learning experiences. I became cultural. I travelled. I kept my love of pop music alive by going to all my first concerts. I grew into an avid reader and blogger, which is the closest I've ever come to writing a book, which of course I hope to achieve someday. I became a foodie and connoisseur of many things. And best of all, if I had made the cowardly choice to call the whole thing off and stay in Labrador City, I never would have crossed paths with the one thing that has been my #1 source of joy, peace, happiness, success, and love for the past 11 years: my D. Darrell Knox, the love of my life. He is me and I am him. We are the same, yet different in ways that compliment each other. We are the yin to each other's yang. We are partners in life and love forever more. He is essentially the #1 protagonist in my Chapter 2. He is what makes it all ok.
Things got better for Dad too. He eventually married Marg, our wonderful stepmother who has taken the utmost care of him in these last several years and has become a new and important chapter in our family. He moved away from the isolated cold of Labrador after retiring and is now living a wonderful life close to all his family in a beautiful house on the island of NL. It took a lot of years, but I can now finally and proudly say that I am close with my extended family as well. A lot of reconnection has occurred over the last 2 years, and it is now a source of daily happiness and peace in my current life.
My final word about it all is that all that pain is part of the learning and coping process. You cannot control who gets taken from you. You can only learn to be equipped with the tools to help you get through it. You grow from it. As the years go on, it goes from being the center of your life to being just another event that shaped the story of your life.
I'm not saying there isn't a void still left in my life with her passing. It's just now that void is a revolving and evolving one. It changes shape and resonance, and is now just a piece of the Vanessa puzzle. It's not this gaping hole that needs to be filled anymore. It's just a patch on the quilt of my life.
***FOOTNOTES***
My mother was smart, educated, charming, caring, loving, supportive and hilarious.
She supported and encouraged all my music obsessions, all of which are still a part of my life to this very minute. She let me teach her about all the music and bands I loved, and she is one of the few people who really and truly understood on a deep level how important music and bands are to me. She understood that this was a source of joy to me. One time when I was in grade 11, I was in class when I got called over the PA to go to the principal's office and that my mother was on the phone. In a panic, I ran and picked up the phone thinking she had some terrible news. Turns out she was getting me out of school to come home because Much Music was going to be airing Duran Duran's latest video premiere and she knew I had been waiting for it for weeks and that I would want to tape it. HOW FUCKING COOL. DID YOUR MOM DO THAT???? MY MOM DID.
She was a math wiz, as she could easily complete an algebra or long division equation in her head. IN HER HEAD.
She was an eloquent public speaker and avid reader, and she taught me to read when I was two years old. As a toddler, I could both read and repeat out loud anything she put in front of me. It was from this very early experience in my development that I must have acquired my love of the written word.
She loved sketch comedy like Monty Python and Saturday Night Live, and we spend a lot of time together laughing our guts out.
We talked. And I mean TALKED. About anything and everything. That is one thing I can gladly say I did not take for granted. I couldn't count the amount of hours of conversation we shared over the course of 18 years if I tried.
I entered a contest on Much Music in 1994 to win a chance to have dinner with a favorite group, and when I lost, she bought me a statue of a kitten sitting in a boot with a note attached to it that read "You'll always be a winner to me." I still have it.
She put the travel bug in me by taking me on trips to Ontario nearly every summer in the 1990's. Because of her, I could easily live on a plane, train or bus and be happy as anything.
In my stocking at Christmas time, she would put huge packs of VHS cassettes and blank audio cassettes because she knew I loved to make tapes for people and loved taping music videos and concerts that were on tv.
My last footnote is this: my only real regret which is completely out of my control, is that she never got to know me as an adult. We never got to become real grown up friends. She only ever got to know the child and teenage version of me, and not the much more refined grown up version of me. I often wonder if she were to meet me in the street in this day in age, what would her opinion of me be? Would she think I was nice? Smart? Successful? A failure? Would she like me as a person? Would she think I was pretty? Would I be someone she would want to get to know? Would she turn away?
I guess I'll leave the answers to those questions to those who are physically in my life today and who love me. I only hope the answers would be similar,
-Nessa K,
January 3rd, 2014
I myself however would only designate my personal story into just 2 chapters: the life I lived before the death of my mother, and the life I lived after the death of my mother.
"Why only 2 chapters?" one would perhaps ask me. "Surely one's life story would have more color, depth, and resonance than what could be contained within just 2 chapters." Yes of course, I do concur with that sentiment. I'm certainly not saying that these two chapters aren't filled with many, many subdivisions in which my memories and personal story are held, it's just that the event in question was so metamorphosing and transcending to me that it's a book splitter. Hence, two chapters. Chapter 1 is the part of the story in which my mother was an existing and active source of life, breath, energy, love, inspiration, influence and knowledge. Chapter 2 is the part of the story where she just ceased to exist, and the cascade of events that occurred from that point on. Therefore Chapter 2 will continue on until I cease to exist.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My personal story began as follows: I was born Vanessa Ann McEvoy, on Tuesday, April 7th, 1981. My parents are Joseph McEvoy and Marjorie McEvoy (Ryan). My father was a truck driver and blaster at the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOCC) and my mother was a teacher turned stay-at-home mom. I have 2 sisters, Joanne and Lisa, who at the time of my birth were 11 years old and 9 years old, respectively.
I was born in St. Johns, NL, but raised in Labrador City. I spend my entire childhood, adolescence and teenage years in Labrador. My two sisters left home when I was still very young (a decade-long age gap would make that inevitable). My oldest sister Joanne left home in 1987 to go to university in Antigonish, NS. I was 6 years old at the time. My sister Lisa left home in 1991 to move to Ottawa, ON. I was 10 at the time. The remainder of that first chapter continues on with just my mom, my dad and me right up to the 6 months after I graduate high school.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2 of that story begins on Sunday, January 2nd, 2000. It was a day that began like any other. Nothing spectacular at all stands out about that day at face value.
It's an overcast, chilly morning, the day after the very first day of the new millennium. I'm 18 years old. My dad and I go off to the morning church service (we were a Catholic family). My mom stays home because she had a very bad bronchial infection and accompanying flu. We come back from church. My mother is eating some breakfast whilst sitting on the couch. The tv is on. We chat. My dad leaves to go visit his sister who has the same flu that my mom had.
I plan on spending the entire afternoon in my bedroom drinking tea and watching Much Music, as there was going to be a marathon of the top 100 videos of all-time airing. I had watched it every New Year's Day for the previous 3 years, and I was going to do the same that year. Then that night, we were going to have leftover ham for supper, and Mom and I discussed how she was going to take me shopping for a new top as a gift on Old Christmas Day, January 6th. (mom always made it a point to do something for Old Christmas Day during my childhood, and she kept it up for me as a teenager too. It was a tradition she enjoyed).
I grabbed my tea and was about to head in my room, and my mom was heading in to take a hot bath. I asked her "Do you need anything?" and she casually replied "No."
I shut my bedroom door and settled in to watch my marathon.
When I think about the quiet calm that happened over that next 15 minute timespan on that day, nothing is out of the ordinary or spectacular. Just normal stuff that most people wouldn't notice. Over the years I've reflected on it, and I think it's my mind's way to hold on to whatever scrap of normalcy that it can. It's almost as if an egg timer was set to go off on that day at that time, starting at 15 minutes and counting all the way down to 1. It's just that on this egg timer, when the 1 minute was up, my life, my sense of security, my emotions, my memories, and my heart would be completely and utterly ripped into shreds at the speed of light and sound, and would take years upon years to mend and heal. A cornerstone in my family would be smashed into a million pieces, rendered irreparable. Written off.
During that 15 minutes of calm, this is all that happened: My mom was in the tub, having her bath. I was still in my room watching the first 3 music videos of the marathon, and my dad was on his way back home from my aunt Edith's house. Dad was pulling in the driveway, then mom was getting out of the tub. I was still sipping my tea. Dad came in the house, mom was coming out of the bathroom, then as Dad was turning the corner into the hallway, my mom let out a massive yelp and fell to the ground. The sound of her falling was not unlike the sound of a bookcase being knocked over. Dad ran to her and yelled "Oh Marjorie, honey!!" I didn't see what happened as my door was still closed. I was frightened and was about to come out when Dad yelled out for me to call an ambulance.
The next several minutes and hours seem like a blur. I remember them, but my mind must have numbed itself to protect against trauma. It's like a point form-dream sequence, and I may get the odd detail wrong. But this is how I remember it: I came out of my room, saw my mom lying there on the hallway floor and ran to the phone. As I was calling the ambulance, Dad was yelling mom's name trying to get her to respond, but she wasn't responding. I don't remember what I said at all on the phone, but I called. Then I think dad asked me to call my uncle Don too, which I don't remember doing, but I do remember him arriving with my cousin Brad in tow. I sat there on the sofa trying to piece together reality when Brad said to me "Common. You don't need to see any of this." and took me to the basement where we sat in the rec room. I was on the verge of hyperventilating because none of this seemed real. I felt like an idiot because Brad was sitting with me and I just couldn't think of anything to say. What can you talk about during a moment like that? I think I apologized to him for not talking or having anything to say, and he told me to stop being ridiculous. We stayed in the basement while the paramedics arrived. I remember hearing a lot of clanging and banging and dragging, and then it all stopped. They took my mom to the hospital. We came back upstairs, and dad told me to get ready and get in the truck. "There's a chance she'll be ok." he said.
I don't remember that much about the specifics of the next several hours, but somewhere in that time frame we arrived at the hospital. I sat in the waiting room. It might have been 45 minutes or it might have been 2 hours. I don't remember exactly how long I was waiting in there.. I also don't remember what I was thinking about. Dad was in with the doctors. I remember I got up at some point to go see where dad was, and then dad turned the corner, saw me, and with a sullen, defeated look on his face he said "They did all they could do."
My mother died of heart failure and head trauma from the fall. When she fell, she went down head first, which knocked her out cold. They managed to revive her heartbeat, but told dad she was virtually brain dead from the fall, and she would be a vegetable. If you ask me, my mother was a person. NOT a vegetable. So therefore I would not want her to be a vegetable, and neither did dad.
A priest was called in to do last rites, which dad and I were present for. Somehow, some way. we made it back home. I do not remember leaving the hospital and I don't remember exactly how we got home, but I do remember that within 1 hour of us arriving back at my house, there must have been 30 people who eventually arrived. The only other family we had in Labrador City was my aunt Edith, Uncle Don and their 2 sons, my cousins Brad and Craig. Everyone else that arrived were neighbors, dad's co-workers, and just random people that wanted to make sure we were okay.
The next hurdle that had to be crossed that night was notifying my sisters, both of whom were living in different parts of Ontario. Lisa was notified first, then Joanne. Within 2 days they both were home.
The next several weeks, had they not happened the way that they did, I'm not sure if I would have been able to recover and heal as well as I did. A strange yet comforting paradox overtook my environment.
Internally, the stages of grief began to filter through my conscience. I could slowly and surely feel the beginnings of a vicious, stormy battle that would overtake me for the better part of the next several years. But externally, my dad, sisters and I were swarmed and showered with an unearthly, unimaginable amount of the most gentle care. A floodgate of love and support from what felt like my entire home town came at us from all angles. It was shocking and overwhelming, but so beautiful and appreciated beyond words.
People who I had never even spoke to or met before in my whole life showed up at our door with cooked whole turkeys and hams with all the fixings, casseroles, trays upon trays upon trays of cold cuts, finger foods, and cookies, loaves and loaves of homemade bread, cobblers, huge salads, fruit baskets, bags of grocery essentials like milk and butter, and some even ordered party-size pizzas and massive containers of Chinese food and just brought them to us, just because. A teacher who taught me one subject in grades 4 and 5 showed up with a massive homemade 6-layer chocolate cake with my name written on it in icing. I mean...how did she remember me??? Or even know where I lived??? On top of that were the flowers, the cards, and gifts like money to help out. It came from everywhere. It was incredible.
And not just the food and flowers. The sheer human support was just naked and unending. I had people from all angles coming at me sitting with me on my living room floor, all urging me to tell as many stories as I could about mom. Everyone that showed up was full of unending hugs and laughter. That's one thing that really stands out. The laughter. During that first 2 weeks or so, no one dared let me or any of us be melancholy and cry. It was joy. Laughing. Talking. Reminiscing. The three of us girls, although we did have our moments, spent the better part of those weeks together picking on each other and messing around, just like we did when we all lived under the same roof. We just laughed and laughed. It was incredibly healing and made all the hard stuff during those weeks so much easier.
The two inevitable hard events in question were my mother's wake and my mother's funeral. I had never, ever been to a wake or a funeral in my life until that time. I remember when we arrived at the funeral home to see the casket, I was so scared to go look. It was such a foreign feeling. Dad had to coax me into the room. I stood outside the room and just peeked my head around the corner a few times before I even went in, and then with the footsteps of a mouse, I finally went in to face the reality that I couldn't hide from any longer.
On the day of the funeral, the sun was shining. We all seemed like we were in good, peaceful states of mind. I was drowning in a blissful sea of denial that morning, as I continually smiled and lied to myself "You know what? It's ok. I'm ok now. I can do this. I'm at peace now. Everything is all good." We got to the church, which I was surprised to find was pretty packed. My mother did not have a lot of close, personal friends, but she was very active in the church. She was a regularly scheduled reader during many of the evening masses. Everyone knew my mom's face who went to those masses.
Being the immediate family members arriving at the funeral of another immediate family member is sort of like being in the wedding party at a backwards, upside down wedding in another dimension. Many elements are similar, in that you arrive to a packed church, walk down the isle one by one to watch an event that is taking place at the front of the church. At the end, everyone walks back down the isle in sequence, and there is a "receiving line" of sorts that happens after. But of course you are not arriving to celebrate the new life of two newlyweds. Instead you are arriving to say farewell to someone you will never see again.
My mother's funeral was bittersweet and beautiful. As my dad says "She sure got one hell of a send off." My mother's closed casket sat at the front of the church, directly in the sun. A ray of sun shone down on it during the whole service and the sun did not let up. The bishop of our archdiocese performed the ceremony, which was amazing. To my knowledge, not too many bishops perform entire funerals for common folk, but he knew my mother and flew to town just to be a part of it. I remember that being a big deal. Throughout the procession, he kept referring my mother as "Our sister Marjorie," which I thought was incredible.
As the ceremony began, I became acutely aware that the artificially happy, positive façade that my family and I upheld before we arrived at the church was about to crumble beneath itself. I didn't know that churches distribute boxes of tissues, and maybe they don't usually, but in those first front pews where we all sat, there were boxes of tissues. It was not long before we all were breaking them open. Lisa broke down first. I was still okay for another little while, that was until my dad broke down. I had never seen my dad cry before in my whole life and it just did me in. I collapsed onto my sister Joanne's shoulder and we all just sat there, trying to hang on. Hang on to.....what? I'm not sure. Maybe anything. Everything. Nothing. Each other. Reality. Space. Time. Life as we knew it.
My uncle Peter who is an accomplished singer, songwriter, and guitarist offered to sing "Amazing Grace" along with the church choir. It was the most glorious rendition of the song I had ever seen. He started out singing it as a solo, then towards the end the entire church choir join him in unison.
It was during that moment that I had my very first dose of intense grief. It smacked me in the guts with an ungodly force. While uncle Peter was singing, I realized what day it was. January 6th. Old Christmas Day. The day that mom and I were supposed to have a much anticipated lunch and shopping date.
For those of you who have been kind and considerate enough to read this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. But right now, I want to get real for a second. I would like to shed some light on the more unpleasant and difficult phases of my experience with mother loss. I truly hope that you know that I'm not doing this to be malicious or mean or scare anyone, I just think it's time for me to truly express my feelings from this whole endeavor. I apologize if the next few paragraphs are harsh or hard to read, but I want to be as honest as possible and I need to get this stuff out.
For those of you who are fortunate to still have your moms, let me ask you all an honest question. Have you ever in your life imagined what it would feel like to all of a sudden realize that you will never, ever, ever, and I mean NEVER EVER again, for the rest of your existence on this planet, have lunch with your mother? Ever again? Or go to the mall or grocery store with her? Or have coffee with her? Or have her make you toast in the morning? Or watch tv with her at night? Or have her fold your socks? Or hem your jeans? Or light the candles on your birthday cake? Or take care of you when your sick? Or hug you and kiss you when your sad? Or give you a Christmas gift that she wrapped and signed "From Mom"? Or talk to her on the phone?
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to never hear her voice again? Never hear her laugh? Never hear the way she pronounced certain words? Never hear the way she whispered? Or coughed? Or sneezed? Or yawned? Or scuffed her feet on the floor in the morning? Or stirred her coffee?
What did she cook you for dinner growing up? What special things did she make for you on the weekends or during birthdays that you remember? Did she make you bacon and French toast on Saturday mornings like mine did? Did she have a special recipe for sweet and sour pork chops that you loved so much like mine did? Did she make you bubblegum-flavoured cupcakes on your 14th birthday? Or make you raspberry turnovers with vanilla icing when you won 3rd place in a science fair at school when you were 12? Did she make you peanut butter and jam sandwiches with the peanut butter spread on the bread exactly how you liked it with not too much jam? Did she fry you eggs sunny side up for breakfast certain mornings and cut the egg whites off of them because you hated them? On Friday nights, did she make you those boxed Kraft Pizzas with the parmesan cheese and oregano spice but with no other toppings because you just liked the pizza the way it was? Did you have a really bad cold when you were 13 and she made you your favorite chicken rice soup and bought a big bag of oranges for you to eat that she peeled and split into halves for you and decorated the plate with cut up green grapes? Did she make your cup of tea just right? Like mine did? Did she make the absolute best lemon meringue pies and the best light and dark fruit cakes and cherry cakes at Xmas like mine did?
Just for one split second, just one, for me today, please just try and picture what it would be like to have all of those things, all of those seemingly mundane, routine things that sometimes are accidently taken for granted, gone from your life forever, for the rest of eternity.
Was that hard to think about? If it was, I am very sorry. But that has been the reality I've been faced with for the last 14 years.
For years now, I have been trying to put into words the grief cycle and the manifestations that occur during it's process, and trying to relate to how it appears at first glance. On paper, the grief cycle as theorized In the Kubler-Ross model (look it up if you need to) appears as a nice , neat, organized pie chart or point-form list, and are as follows:
- denial
- anger
- bargaining
- depression
- acceptance
But we are human beings. We are forces of nature. When an intense bond is broken, the reactions and responses to that broken bond are multi-faced. Ever-changing. Intense. Fevered. I found another model recently that is a much more relatable description for grief, and matched my experience almost exactly, and that is a more recent adaptation to what is now referred to as "The 4 Step Model", which reads as follows:
- Intense Concern
- Despair and Depression
- Recovery
That is the text book breakdown of grief, and now here is my very own personal analysis of my own experience, which I found in a journal entry I made around 2 years ago. The way I felt then is still the way I feel today about the experience, put into words as best as I could do:
"The grief and pain and shock and realization of what had just happened would transform me. The experience of losing my one maternal parent and one of the very few people that have ever been in my life that truly understood me and "got" me, was like nothing I had ever felt before. It was like being trapped on a rollercoaster that you are scared to death of and are crying and pleading to get off of, but it won't let you off. You are forced to stay strapped into it until you get used to it, until the terror and knots in your stomach slowly dissipate and become like a dull, manageable pain. Having no choice but to "get used to" that unfathomable experience was not an easy task, and it took a really, really long time. The better part of a few years. Because as life goes on after that happens, just as you thought the worst was over and you have reached a point of so called "acceptance", you will arrive on a date or an event in your life that will shock you and bring all that pain that you just buried right back to the surface. The wound will feel fresh and like it just happened all over again. Emotional injury you thought was finally sewed up gets ripped open again. This will not happen once, but many, many times. Day in and day out, and in some cases, year in and year out." --- my journal from 2011
One thing my mother taught me and taught me well is that crying is an essential human function. She taught me that if you hold in tears, it can damage you, and I truly believe that. I have never been shy or afraid to cry. And believe me. I was put to the king of all tests with this one. I remember one specific afternoon about 2 months after she had passed, in which I had the house to myself and my dad was working a 12-hour day shift. A wave of grief began to wash over me, and I knew I had to get it out. I went into my room, closed the door, collapsed on my bed in the fetal position, and literally cried, sobbed and screamed at the top of my lungs continuously for 5 hours. Five straight hours. I collapsed onto my bed at approximately 1:30 pm, and didn't stop vocalizing my pain and grief until close to 6:30 pm. My throat was raw, my eyes were swollen, and I was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. But you know what? I felt a thousand times better after. Why? Because it just needed to happen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is some good news from this. The good news is that it does get better. It really does. As painful and exhausting as grieving the loss of your mother is, you have to do it. You have to. It tears you apart, but then it puts you back together. The experience is different for everyone and it all depends on your own life, relationships, and coping mechanisms.
My Chapter 2 continues on as varied but glorious tale. 5 months after mom died, I made a big decision and moved away from home. That was another difficult experience because I was now dealing with homesickness and the thought of leaving my dad all alone. Truth be told, I almost didn't do it. The night before I was to leave on the plane the next day to move to Halifax, NS, I said to myself "What am I doing? Why am I moving away to a strange city and leaving my dad all alone? I can't do this!!!"
But I did do it, and with the 20/20 hindsight that 14 years of adult life will give you, it was the most important and best decision I ever made. I became a different person upon moving away. I grew into woman. I graduated college. I made friends that I never would have made and dated terrific boys that I never would have dated. I fell in love with the little city I now call my home. I had many great work and learning experiences. I became cultural. I travelled. I kept my love of pop music alive by going to all my first concerts. I grew into an avid reader and blogger, which is the closest I've ever come to writing a book, which of course I hope to achieve someday. I became a foodie and connoisseur of many things. And best of all, if I had made the cowardly choice to call the whole thing off and stay in Labrador City, I never would have crossed paths with the one thing that has been my #1 source of joy, peace, happiness, success, and love for the past 11 years: my D. Darrell Knox, the love of my life. He is me and I am him. We are the same, yet different in ways that compliment each other. We are the yin to each other's yang. We are partners in life and love forever more. He is essentially the #1 protagonist in my Chapter 2. He is what makes it all ok.
Things got better for Dad too. He eventually married Marg, our wonderful stepmother who has taken the utmost care of him in these last several years and has become a new and important chapter in our family. He moved away from the isolated cold of Labrador after retiring and is now living a wonderful life close to all his family in a beautiful house on the island of NL. It took a lot of years, but I can now finally and proudly say that I am close with my extended family as well. A lot of reconnection has occurred over the last 2 years, and it is now a source of daily happiness and peace in my current life.
My final word about it all is that all that pain is part of the learning and coping process. You cannot control who gets taken from you. You can only learn to be equipped with the tools to help you get through it. You grow from it. As the years go on, it goes from being the center of your life to being just another event that shaped the story of your life.
I'm not saying there isn't a void still left in my life with her passing. It's just now that void is a revolving and evolving one. It changes shape and resonance, and is now just a piece of the Vanessa puzzle. It's not this gaping hole that needs to be filled anymore. It's just a patch on the quilt of my life.
***FOOTNOTES***
My mother was smart, educated, charming, caring, loving, supportive and hilarious.
She supported and encouraged all my music obsessions, all of which are still a part of my life to this very minute. She let me teach her about all the music and bands I loved, and she is one of the few people who really and truly understood on a deep level how important music and bands are to me. She understood that this was a source of joy to me. One time when I was in grade 11, I was in class when I got called over the PA to go to the principal's office and that my mother was on the phone. In a panic, I ran and picked up the phone thinking she had some terrible news. Turns out she was getting me out of school to come home because Much Music was going to be airing Duran Duran's latest video premiere and she knew I had been waiting for it for weeks and that I would want to tape it. HOW FUCKING COOL. DID YOUR MOM DO THAT???? MY MOM DID.
She was a math wiz, as she could easily complete an algebra or long division equation in her head. IN HER HEAD.
She was an eloquent public speaker and avid reader, and she taught me to read when I was two years old. As a toddler, I could both read and repeat out loud anything she put in front of me. It was from this very early experience in my development that I must have acquired my love of the written word.
She loved sketch comedy like Monty Python and Saturday Night Live, and we spend a lot of time together laughing our guts out.
We talked. And I mean TALKED. About anything and everything. That is one thing I can gladly say I did not take for granted. I couldn't count the amount of hours of conversation we shared over the course of 18 years if I tried.
I entered a contest on Much Music in 1994 to win a chance to have dinner with a favorite group, and when I lost, she bought me a statue of a kitten sitting in a boot with a note attached to it that read "You'll always be a winner to me." I still have it.
She put the travel bug in me by taking me on trips to Ontario nearly every summer in the 1990's. Because of her, I could easily live on a plane, train or bus and be happy as anything.
In my stocking at Christmas time, she would put huge packs of VHS cassettes and blank audio cassettes because she knew I loved to make tapes for people and loved taping music videos and concerts that were on tv.
My last footnote is this: my only real regret which is completely out of my control, is that she never got to know me as an adult. We never got to become real grown up friends. She only ever got to know the child and teenage version of me, and not the much more refined grown up version of me. I often wonder if she were to meet me in the street in this day in age, what would her opinion of me be? Would she think I was nice? Smart? Successful? A failure? Would she like me as a person? Would she think I was pretty? Would I be someone she would want to get to know? Would she turn away?
I guess I'll leave the answers to those questions to those who are physically in my life today and who love me. I only hope the answers would be similar,
-Nessa K,
January 3rd, 2014
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
Why The Fuck Have I Waited So Long To Do This?
This is a pretty gigantic moment in my life. My very first blog post on my very first BLOG! Holy shit!
I'm sort of using this opportunity to practice writing my long-awaited first book that has been my dream for ages and ages. It's the #1 thing I've wanted to do all my life. My mother instilled my love of literature and writing within me. She taught me to read at the tender age of 2 and by the age of 3, I was reading entire children's books out loud without assistance. **TOOTING MY OWN HORN HERE**
This blog will be just a massive mish-mash of ramblings about the things I love and the things I am passionate about, the things that get me fired up and the things that make me smile.
I may also visit here on days that I'm feeling down or uninspired, and perhaps seeing it come to life on the page of my blog with re-inspire me and keep me going!
I hope to make myself and anyone else who is gracious enough to visit this blog laugh and get excited about things in their own lives. For I, Nessa K, have one main belief in my life that I strive to make all around me realize, and it is this: PASSION. Be passionate about something. Anything. Let something get you so happy and excited that you have to scream out loud and jump around like your feet were on fire!
I am passionate about pop music and the musicians that play it, concerts, food, drink, books and the folks that write them, tv shows and the awesome people that act in them. I am passionate about Canadian stuff, British stuff, and Icelandic stuff. I am a passionate pit bull and cat lover, and a passionate atheist. Everyday it seems I could find something new to get excited about and I hope it continues for me.
These things may be mundane and frivolous to some, but they are the things that matter most to me and keep me wanting to live life every day. It might be different to you. Perhaps you're passionate about role-playing games, charity, and computers. Maybe it's the theatre or movies, or classical music. Or perhaps it's the art of tattooing and piercing, sailing, rugby, or scrapbooking. No matter what it is, I just think it's essential to go through life no matter how old you get and still have something within your life to get you jumping up and down in your living room like an excited kid who ate too many Tootsie Rolls!
I sort of feel bad for those who just go through their own lives and don't feel passion or excitement for anything. But by the same token, I also feel that perhaps they are taking everything in their life for granted. I know a few people like that personally and I have a lot of trouble understanding why.
I believe that in order to truly be excited over something specific in life no matter how big or how small, you must also feel gratitude and humility. When you feel deeply thankful and happy with something, passion sort of just develops from that. I'm passionate about the things I love because I am thankful that they are in my life and I can fully enjoy them. I could have been dealt a very different set of cards in life, ones that perhaps would have placed me in a much more sad or unfortunate type of life. But because I wasn't, I strive each day to be thankful and happy with even the littlest nice thing that happens to me everyday.
On a final note today, if this blog can inspire others to find passion of some sort in their life or to keep having passion for something they love and deeply appreciate having, then my job will be done!
"If this life is the only party we're ever going to have, then we better PARTY HARD!"
-- Nessa K.
I'm sort of using this opportunity to practice writing my long-awaited first book that has been my dream for ages and ages. It's the #1 thing I've wanted to do all my life. My mother instilled my love of literature and writing within me. She taught me to read at the tender age of 2 and by the age of 3, I was reading entire children's books out loud without assistance. **TOOTING MY OWN HORN HERE**
This blog will be just a massive mish-mash of ramblings about the things I love and the things I am passionate about, the things that get me fired up and the things that make me smile.
I may also visit here on days that I'm feeling down or uninspired, and perhaps seeing it come to life on the page of my blog with re-inspire me and keep me going!
I hope to make myself and anyone else who is gracious enough to visit this blog laugh and get excited about things in their own lives. For I, Nessa K, have one main belief in my life that I strive to make all around me realize, and it is this: PASSION. Be passionate about something. Anything. Let something get you so happy and excited that you have to scream out loud and jump around like your feet were on fire!
I am passionate about pop music and the musicians that play it, concerts, food, drink, books and the folks that write them, tv shows and the awesome people that act in them. I am passionate about Canadian stuff, British stuff, and Icelandic stuff. I am a passionate pit bull and cat lover, and a passionate atheist. Everyday it seems I could find something new to get excited about and I hope it continues for me.
These things may be mundane and frivolous to some, but they are the things that matter most to me and keep me wanting to live life every day. It might be different to you. Perhaps you're passionate about role-playing games, charity, and computers. Maybe it's the theatre or movies, or classical music. Or perhaps it's the art of tattooing and piercing, sailing, rugby, or scrapbooking. No matter what it is, I just think it's essential to go through life no matter how old you get and still have something within your life to get you jumping up and down in your living room like an excited kid who ate too many Tootsie Rolls!
I sort of feel bad for those who just go through their own lives and don't feel passion or excitement for anything. But by the same token, I also feel that perhaps they are taking everything in their life for granted. I know a few people like that personally and I have a lot of trouble understanding why.
I believe that in order to truly be excited over something specific in life no matter how big or how small, you must also feel gratitude and humility. When you feel deeply thankful and happy with something, passion sort of just develops from that. I'm passionate about the things I love because I am thankful that they are in my life and I can fully enjoy them. I could have been dealt a very different set of cards in life, ones that perhaps would have placed me in a much more sad or unfortunate type of life. But because I wasn't, I strive each day to be thankful and happy with even the littlest nice thing that happens to me everyday.
On a final note today, if this blog can inspire others to find passion of some sort in their life or to keep having passion for something they love and deeply appreciate having, then my job will be done!
"If this life is the only party we're ever going to have, then we better PARTY HARD!"
-- Nessa K.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)