 Alison's Story | |||||
End-of-Life Organizations Hospice Associations Canada USA Worldwide Hospice Homes Related Organizations In The News  Grief & Bereavement Caregiver Resources & Caregiver Tools  The island beckoned and I walked From within it's nature you talked. Mourn me not as a daughter For I am the sun Who shines rays of light and rainbows into your life. Mourn me not as a sister For I am the ocean My waves of courage will carry you. Mourn me not as an aunt For although the leaves may fall I am the newness of the spring. Mourn me not as a wife and lover For I am the air which you will breathe Mourn me not as a mother For I am the earth from which you will grow Mourn me not as your friend For I am the energy in your mind And the inspiration of your soul. "There is no death - just a change of worlds" Mourn me not Look up and see the brightness of my star. Kim Nov.9/1994  | The Letters When we were just little, even though I was the oldest, it was Alison I woke up in the middle of the night to walk me ten steps down the hall to the bathroom. She would always throw her clothes into the drawer inside out and then assure me it didn't matter, because when she grew up and got married, she would have a housekeeper who would wash and fold all her clothes. She hated the sight of blood and a trip to the dentist could make her pass out, a racing ambulance with sirens made her faint. She always hated her picture being taken. In all those childhood pictures there she is reluctantly peeking out from behind someone's legs. In school, she wasn't an over achiever, she was what they referred to as "average". She liked it that way - no one expected anything from her and she breezed through those school years footloose and fancy free. She loved to have fun but she never let herself get caught for things like I did. I got married when she was fourteen. I wasn't that close to her then, I was in a hurry to get to other places and another life. She sort of wandered through my life in stages. She would baby-sit my daughter and have wonderful crazy meals waiting for me when I got home from work. She was practicing her cooking; she was getting married soon. I remember stuffed chicken breasts with little toothpicks sticking out and peach cobbler. My home was a place where on a Friday night, she and her friends could have a drink or two, play cards and listen to tunes. I remember the jokes we made about her boyfriend's "Passion Wagon" with the bed in the back, the captain's seats and the furry walls. She had the "right" wedding, an expensive Southern Belle, very white dress and went off to the Poconos to embark on marriage amidst bubbles, in a heart shaped tub. Of course she didn't do the housework, the cleaning lady came in so she could work hard to get that "right" house. Besides, I continued to tease her that she only knew how to put things away inside out!! She waited ten long years to start having children, my children by now teens. A beautiful son and then another. Everything is supposed to be so good. However, on this day, I feel her letting go with each word of the letters she speaks. I had first broached the subject of the letters about three months prior and she was hesitant then, but soon her urgency was obvious. I have purchased an airline ticket home, to "recharge my batteries" or so I tell myself. Her determination to complete the letters becomes more pronounced as my flight date approaches. It is an amazing thing to witness our family in this time of crisis. Each member's strengths become integral. My other two sisters, brother, sister-in-law, mother and father, my daughter, have all teamed together to help her through this final passage in her life. One of my offerings is to help her write letters to leave for the people she loves. "Take the words" she says "and make them sound good."  The words come ever so slowly. Her emaciated body, lacks the strength for her to write herself. She is counting on me. We start early each day but by the end of eight hours we are lucky to have three pages of one letter written. She sits with her eyes closed, a shadow of her former self, surrounded by pillows. Each breath is laboured and is intensified by the impact of the memories she is recounting. Moments are fondly recalled. Having her 7th birthday cake in the trunk of the car on a road trip to Niagara Falls. Mom calling her and her friends in from play to serve them "chips" in newspaper. Meeting her husband. The birth of her babies. Our sister Heather (her best friend). All the happiness that has filled her thirty-four years. It astounds me that she cannot remember things that happened two hours ago but she can retrace her life like a vivid movie complete in techni-colour and dolby sound, every conversation an imprinted script. We take breaks often as hospice volunteers, home-care nurses and visitors arrive. My Mom is constantly by her side. One day, it takes Alison almost an hour to eat just half a jar of baby food that Mom has carefully made in the blender. I take the spoon and help her. It's a simple act, but to Alison it is another piece of independence lost. Her first tears come with the letter to Taylor; her 4 year old son. She tells him that by the time he reads this, she will have died a long time ago. She tells him that is was nobody's fault, and that no one-not Daddy, not his grandpas or grandmas-could fix her. She tells him that the day he was born was the happiest day of her life. "The hardest thing for me is to leave you," she tells me to write."I am nowhere near ready to stop being your mommy yet." My mind replays it's own memories as she speaks. It was after the birth of her children that we really got to know each other as adults. Although we lived 4,800 kilometres apart, we shared stories of our children and learned about the women we had become. In 1993, when her second son, Michael, was born, I flew out to spend time with her in Ontario. I remember sharing tea with her in the wee hours of the morning when she got up to breast-feed. She never really gained her strength back after Michael was born. She was anemic and had abnormal bleeding. Her trips to the doctors resulted in all kinds of remedies for her symptoms, all attributed to childbirth. Then in February 1994, we learned the bad news. There was a tumor on her pancreas. They removed the tumor and the prognosis at that time was good. Out of 29 lymph nodes checked only two were cancerous and they were near the tumor. It looked good. A year of chemotherapy, they said and she would be as good as new. I looked after the boys while she was in the hospital and brightened Alison's day by giving her a ten day diary I had kept while she was in. One thing was for certain all you had to do was mention her boys and her face would light up and she could talk about them forever. She was such a proud Mom. In April she came out west to our home on a small island off the coast of Vancouver Island. She brought the boys and my sister Heather a nurse, came as well. I was shocked to see how thin and drawn she looked, but it was comforting to hear her speak brightly about her future. She would tell me that as far as she was concerned she'd only had cancer for ten days. From the day they first discovered it until the day they removed it. That was my sister, Alison. The locals nicknamed her "Spunky". She could be seen everyday walking around the Island with the boys. Michael still on eastern time would wake up every day at six a.m. Afraid he would wake us up she would get up, put him in the stroller and walk to the dock to watch the sun come up and the first seaplanes of the day leave. She thrived there, she loved the ocean, the mountains and the island. Every day was spent to the fullest. Even on chemotherapy she didn't want to miss a thing. The drugs she was taking gave water a funny taste and smell and here she was surrounded by water, yet she never complained. There we were - the three sisters who had not spent a night together under the same roof in nineteen years. We had a blast sharing silly childhood memories. Accusing Heather of always having to go to the bathroom when it was time to do the dishes. Reminding Alison of her short musical career-the strains of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on the violin invading our ears over and over again. It was a time of relationship renewal and spiritual building for all of us. There were serious moments too. I asked Alison if she was ever afraid she was going to die. She quickly responded "no". She did not believe for one moment throughout her ordeal of the past six months that she was ever going to die. The tumor was gone and that was that. She told me that although she was going to go back to school to finish the courses she had been forced to quit, she wanted very much to do volunteer work. While in the hospital she had heard of an older man who was very depressed over his cancer diagnosis and would not get up or talk. She had visited this man and talked with him for some time. The next day this gentleman's wife had made a point of stopping in to thank Alison. Talking with Alison had brought this man around. This impacted Alison so much she believed she would be able to instill hope in others. One beautiful fall day on our way back from chemotherapy she tells me she is not a greedy person and she has prayed to her God: " Please, allow me just another twenty years, let my sons come home and introduce me to their first girl friends, let me be here to share in little league wins and prom nights. I want to be here to hold them in the middle of the night when dreams haunt their sleep and colds wake them up. Please." I am so thankful for that time we all had together then. It was a time before the pain of now. A time when hope was still thinkable.The days we spent writing the letters have changed me and my life forever. Above all, the letters to her two sons, relating memories to them that only a mother can share, answering questions of later years only she knows the answers to and expressing her hopes for their future. The futures she knows she will not be here for. Other than the one regret, her letters are filled with only good things. Hopes and wisdom, her courage and strength drenching each sentence as she urges her little family to "get the most of life, live each day to the fullest, hurt no others, follow your dreams and most of all do not mourn my death but honour my life". As an early darkness hints of winter cocooning the room, Alison dictates her letter to our mother to me. She tells Mom she was "the absolute best mom in the world." The night before my departure we work until 8 o'clock , an incredible feat for her. Three weeks later while I was safely ensconced on my island, she passed away. She would laugh if she knew these words were written on the back of cash register tape in a bar. I have escaped once again to spend this particular time near the raging ocean but her words are in me and I am surrounded by her presence. The words she left were not just 83,642 characters on a computer they were cherished memories of the past, regrets of the present and hope for the future. They were her life. I know that one day when her sons read those letters, she will live once more through the words they contain. Mourn me not. Look up and see the brightness of my star. My hospice journey and what has become my hospice "family" is a beautiful yet bittersweet gift that my sister gave me, for without her life's journey my hospice experience and this website would not exist. We all search for meaning when we lose a loved one and that "Why?" just keeps popping up. Alison's wish to contribute to other's, should she have survived, compelled me to validate and try to honour her life by becoming involved with hospice. Although I would rather have my earthly sister back any day, I am eternally grateful to her for leaving me many gifts, including the directions to this place.  | FOREVER REMEMBERED MEMORIALS/DONATIONS Advertising Membership Contact us Submit New Link Report Broken Link | |||
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