One Year Later

It was sunnier on this day last year. I do remember that. Not by much, but less gloomy clouds.

I remember that because it felt like it should have been a much darker day on the outside. On the inside, everything was alight with fire.

Maybe that’s why I remember it that way – brighter out. Memory is a strange thing. It’s not a recollection, but more of a recreation. We carry forward the things that mean something, and alter details unintentionally to tell a specific story. To cope.

It was exactly this time, 8:30 in the morning, on May 31, 2021, that our lives changed forever. Sitting on the couch, worrying about the stomach ache that Violet had been complaining about for weeks – that got her up in the middle of the night and sent her to the edge of my bed in pain and fear – Violet lost consciousness. Her arm starting twitching and her eyes wandered into the blank space in the air. And she didn’t stop until paramedics put her into a coma on the side of the highway on the way to the hospital.

I remember sitting in that ambulance next to a well-trained EMT who spoke to me with more composure than I’d ever heard. His words were kind and calculated. “It will be alright. You are doing wonderful. We have excellent people coming to help. They are the experts and they will help us get your little girl there safely.”

I remember turning to look through the window behind me that opened to the back of the ambulance and seeing the frantic paramedic team intentionally position themselves in front of my view. I remember recognizing the significance of that – that I was being protected from something no mother should see. They were scared and didn’t want me to be. I remember knowing that was a very bad sign.

I also remember looking across the road and seeing White Spot – thinking that if things were to suddenly, miraculously, get better, I would take Violet there that night for cheeseburgers and milkshakes. We would laugh about how dramatic it all was. We would shake off this crazy dream.

I remember being told not to panic when we arrived because it would be “a bit busy” (carefully selected vocabulary to prepare me for 25 Doctors and Nurses and Paramedics scrambling around in one tiny room, collaboratively keeping my little girl alive). And I remember recounting the details to Doctor after Doctor about what took place before we arrived. The tummy aches. The vomit. The loss of response. The seizures that wouldn’t stop.

I don’t know how I managed that equanimity. How I was able to communicate with clarity. I was never very good in a crisis. But maybe that’s just how I want to remember it.

There was the flight. The tiny plane that had space for myself, two EMTs and a stretcher where my unconscious daughter lay with a breathing tube down her throat. There were the clouds outside the window. My beating heart. The kind face of the man who sat next to her with his hand on her bed, more for my sake then hers. There was exiting the plane and walking in the doors of BC Children’s Hospital, feeling my stomach swell up through my throat, threatening to choke me. There was the backpack strap on my shoulder that I clung to with one hand for dear life, as if letting it go would mean letting go of my grip on the planet itself.

And then, nothing. Hours gone to the cracks and crevasses of my mind. Dead air. Blank space.

At some point, Matt arrived. It could have been that night, or the next day, but she woke up. They took the tube out of her mouth. And she smiled. For one fleeting second, every single thing in the entire universe was alright again.

A lot of details fill in here and there depending on the day, and I’m never sure of what I can trust. What really happens in those episodes in our lives when there is just too much to process? White noise that sometimes crystalizes into a clearer picture. Sometimes not. Sometimes we reach so hard for meaning that we just make it all up.

Maybe we make it all up all the time, the memory of things. We use emotions and reasoning and evidence and other people’s recollections to draw our own conclusions and make our own stories. But thank God we can do that. Thank God for that.

This morning I woke up and went into Lucy’s room. Violet stayed at Grandma’s last night. She wanted a chance to sleep over before we head back to Vancouver next week. It’s my birthday on Saturday, and so much is going on. This was her one window. But I’m glad she’s there. Violet and I had a year to process that day together, but my parents haven’t had that with her. And that was a day for us all.

I laid there holding Lucy in her bed and wondered what she remembered. What she went through. That first week was unimaginably consuming, and I wasn’t there for her. I was in city far away praying her sister would live another day, and finding out the true nature of her illness. I was sorting things out with Specialists and Social Workers. I was settling into a room in the ICU I would spend the next month in, wrapping my brain around how to manage the day. And there she was – 4 years old and suddenly without her parents and sister and any idea of what was going on.

When they gave us Violet’s diagnosis and let us know that the treatment would be 18 months long, it felt like a life sentence. No going back. No escape. No return.

But today, exactly 365 days later, we are home. I am looking out my window at the lake, lilacs freshly cut from the yard and in a vase on the table, dog at my feet. In front of me is the living room couch, empty. No children poised in fear or spasms. Just tidy pillows. Lucy is in kindergarten. Violet is cuddled with Grandpa in bed.

Sometimes I wonder what the value is in having anniversaries to recollect traumas we endure. Why relive things so incredibly painful? But in doing so, I am able to come full circle. To see the distance we’ve covered. And to recognize the miracle that our lives have been since.

We don’t just create our past. We create our present, too. And that, in turn, shapes our future. Today I woke up knowing this – knowing that each day we get to choreograph the thoughts in our head, to put the puzzle together in whatever way fits, and to use that picture to set a foundation for tomorrow. My picture is so beautiful today. And it took me some time to sit down and play around with the pieces. Today marks a milestone in an epic journey our family has been on, and a milestone, too, for those that have journeyed with us.

Our lives are changing all the time. Sometimes in small ways that we hardly recognize. And in others, such monumental change happens so quickly that it needs to be marked on the calendar. Today is a big day for us, but now we have another day of celebration to add to the list. And no doubt we will add details and memories today that we can carry forward to next year.