April 7, 2025

"I hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you were a child and fell asleep on the couch during a family party. I hope you can hear the laughter from the next room.” - Lilies Abounded

When I was little (it must’ve been before my brother was born?) my parents and I were on a road trip to visit my maternal grandparents in rural Saskatchewan (or were we on our way back home?). It was winter time and we were travelling at night and got hit with a big storm. It got so bad we eventually pulled over in a town called Caronport (I think it was Caronport?) right outside of Moose Jaw. There was a gas station with a restaurant attached (Smitty’s?). We, along with several other groups of travellers, were going to wait out the worst of the storm there. The only real memory I have of this night is lying on one of the upholstered (red?) booth seats of the restaurant where I had been tasked to sleep - staring up at the ceiling in the dark (had we lost power?) and listening to the grown ups talking in the next booth over. The experience was novel and exciting. I felt safe because I was there, in the middle of a blustery nowhere, with my parents, their voices just on the other side of the booth. 

I’ve spent a lot of my adult life trying to understand, or find an answer to a question I’m unsure of.

Death does that to you I suppose.

Losing my Dad 10 years ago today was as shocking as it was somehow expected - like I had been holding my breath for the inevitable massive loss and it finally happened. 

My nihilistic (selfish) self felt like this is what I deserve, this is my lot in life. I’m the girl with the dead mom after all. That’s my identity. My life has had a fairly significant loss every 3-4 years since I was 6 years old. As someone who tells stories for a living and leans particularly hard on narratives to help make sense of the world, the loss of my father made me suddenly realize that with him I also lost so many memories of my mom, of our family, and of me.

Still a young adult in my late twenties trying to figure myself out (both metaphorically and literally through copious amounts of therapy) I had suddenly lost a huge piece of the puzzle. How could I ever really know and understand who my Dad really was, who my Mom was, and most importantly - who I was?

I started to realize with new clarity that it had felt unsafe or at the very least not welcomed to ask about my Mom growing up. For a few years her urn was relegated to the top shelf of my Dad’s closet, and later she was interred in a remote prairie cemetery that I had no means to visit on my own and always felt uncomfortable attending. All those years I could’ve asked so many things about her - things that after my Dad died (and I became more and more of an adult) people began to share little nuggets about. With just a few sprinkling of stories I started to get a sense of what a cool and incredible person my Mom was. The more I learned the deeper I felt her loss. She wasn’t just a 2-D cutout of a Mother anymore, she had all this drive and tenacity and humour and courage that I had missed out on. 

That new intense wave of grief came alongside an incredible disillusionment of who my father was, particularly in the final years of his life. I believe he had found some real happiness amidst his struggles, but that happiness came at a price and was found walking a road of sometimes hurtful decisions. This triggered in me a realization that perhaps I didn’t know the real person behind my father. I certainly knew more about his past and character than I knew of my my mother, but in the aftermath of his death I became consumed with the loss of all the parts of him I didn’t and now never would know.

With him he took the vault of memories containing my mother, my father, and me. In the weeks before his death he told me a story about a time before my brother was born, when the three of us were staying at a hotel (don’t recall the occasion). He and I walked from our hotel room to a corner store one evening, and on the walk we saw a chipmunk playing on an overhead electrical wire. In the mere minutes we were in the store, the chipmunk had met its untimely demise and was electrocuted on the ground. I think the story concluded with us and much of the block losing power? The story struck me with its absurdity - how could I not remember? What other crazy hi jinx was I not remembering? When I regaled my husband with the story later, the importance of it was lost on him. I realized it wasn’t the content of the anecdote that held meaning, but the fact that there was an anecdote at all. 

In recent years I’ve started asking for anecdotes and stories in an effort to… well, I’m not quite sure. In an effort to perhaps alleviate the feeling I felt when I started Junior High and my “dead mom” status was suddenly novel with all my new friends. They peppered me with questions I felt shame for not knowing the answers to - everything from “what did your mom do for a living” (at the time I had no idea), to “what was it like the night she died?” (I have no recollection so instead made something up). I’ve often likened this search to trying to find a missing piece to a puzzle - as if I can learn one fact, uncover one story, and suddenly everything will make sense and I’ll have closure and not have this gaping hole in my heart. 

But (ironically) grief is love with nowhere to go. That is the painful truth. And it is my cross to bear to learn it again and again and again. 

It is also my blessing and curse to realize that, although I have become more and more comfortable asking about my parents and learning about the wonderfully complex people they were through stories from others - frankly, none of the new information really matters. 

It doesn’t matter if I can’t remember what year my parents met, or when my Dad moved to Calgary, or how long my Mom was out east. It doesn’t even matter if my memory is an unreliable narrator and doesn’t remember the specifics of what the fried chipmunk looked like. 

Unlike the documentaries I create, there is no plot twist to be found, no fourth act reveal. None of the new information I glean diminishes (fortunately) or enhances (unfortunately) the relationship I had with my parents.

There is no new memory, or moment, or experience with them to be had.

My story with them is complete.

I believe in the power of “saying hello before you say goodbye” when it comes to grief. I suppose all of my searching and questioning is triggered by that. My wish over the next 10+ years is to give myself permission to stop desperately digging, and instead focus more on the little moments of “hello”.

I relish opportunities to tell my own stories about them. I love doing something bold at work that I think my mom would’ve encouraged. I smile when I use a tool I stole from my dad when I first moved out. I laugh when I hear his voice in my head - knowing his knee jerk reaction to some small everyday frustration. I like the feeling of my mom’s marble rolling pin in my flour powdered hands.

Someday my daughters will think to ask where Grandpa Tom and Grandma Jill are. For now I will revel in the simplicity of hearing them say their grandparents’ names as if they are, if only in that moment, just a room away.