Around this time last year I wrote a column about grieving after taking photos at the annual lighting of Squamish Hospice Society’s Memory Tree. This time, I’m writing from a more personal point of view.
Her name was Cathy. She was a tomboyish, buoyant 13-year-old who excelled at volleyball and basketball. One of her schoolmates told me years later he thought she was “the prettiest girl in class.” She was a diehard Montréal Canadiens’ fan until one November night when she died in a bike accident.
She was my older sister. In the days before helicopter parenting, she was charged with making my Halloween costumes, taking me to hockey, etc., yet never complaining as I followed her around like a puppy.
Then she was gone, and I was yanked into something that wasn’t adulthood but no longer childhood, marked by insomnia and various other hang-ups, like not being able to talk about her death.
My mom later tried to console me by saying “Cathy’s in heaven,” but that didn’t make up for my sister’s absence. Of course, grief support really was only in its infancy then.
I’ve experienced grief several times since, and each time it’s different. I get better at acknowledging it, but it’s always there on some level, a little like a particle’s radioactive half-life, getting smaller and smaller but never fully disappearing.
Again this year, it was hard not to be moved by the Memory Tree. This time I recognized more faces, such as the man who’d recently lost a son and with whom I exchanged a silent nod.
On the surface, I was there for photos, but I also felt a bond, knowing everyone had experienced a loss that’s unfathomable until you’ve been through it.
I don’t tell my story for pity, but to remind people to make sure their children have ways to deal with grief, and that first means adults have to deal with their own grief – all of which underscores the importance of support programs like the hospice’s.
As I concluded last time, the holiday season can bring an overwhelming sense of loss, but it’s part of the process.
Again, I’ll wish people as happy a holiday as they can manage, and here’s to better days ahead. They will return.
