Explaining Rainbows & Dodging the Bullet

My son is 4 years old. That means we're really in to words now. We're into rhyming, sounding things out and even trying a bit of spelling now and then. And he wants to know what every single one means. Sometimes, it is surprisingly easy.



Walking with daddy a while back they passed someone with a rainbow patch on his jacket. "Why does he have a rainbow?" our son asked. "Well, because he's gay," said daddy. "What's gay?" Perhaps because he was honestly curious about what I would say and I'm the one who writes on and off for Xtra West, daddy told him to ask me when he saw me later that day.

"Well, you know how mommy and daddy are a couple, we're together, right? Well, if two men are a couple or if two women are a couple, they are 'gay'," I said. (I wasn't going to get into explaining the the entire LGBTQ alphabet soup just yet). "Oh, okay," said M and that was that. See, easy, right? I was feeling cocky.

Well, life knows how to keep cockiness in line. You may recall recently one of our cats, Bella, had to be euthanized. Friends volunteered to take our son out that morning. He knew the cat was very sick. I told him she was dying and that he needed to say goodbye before he left; that she wouldn't be there when he came back. I was crying, so maybe he didn't ask questions because of that.

The next morning he sprinted into our room, climbed on top of my husband and asked, "When's Bella coming back?" This time it was his turn and frankly, I was relieved that he got this one. "Buddy, she's dead. She's not coming back." The other day, my son said, "Bella's with Grandma Sue." He knows his Grandma Sue died before mommy and daddy got married, so daddy must have had to elaborate on his answer at some point.



Then last weekend, the vet dropped of the urn - yeah, we're those people - and before he got to our place, I panicked. "What if M asks what's inside?" I asked my husband. I'm not a fan of sugarcoating things. Give me rainbow flags over that damned Rainbow Bridge poem any day please, because we all know how I am about death. Love is easy for me. Death? Not so much.

Don't get me wrong: I don't set out to scare or scar my kid. But at the same time, I don't want him to be misinformed. I tell him as much as I think he needs to know in basic terms and sometimes (like last weekend) I also cross my fingers that he doesn't ask for more. How do you explain cremation to a 4-year-old? Yikes.

Luckily, we dodged the bullet on that one. He didn't ask. But I'm sure one day he will notice the two urns, one Bella's, the other Bob's (another feline) on the shelf. Hopefully I'll be equipped to answer that one without giving my kid nightmares.

Finding the Words

Lately, it seems I've been signing an awful lot of sympathy cards. Deaths in families (my own and those of friends), a devastating miscarriage. And death brings with it plenty of opportunities for awkwardness. The awkward in-person, "I'm sorry."

And then there's the sympathy card or letter if you're trying to communicate the appropriate expression of grief to a friend or family member who is far away or if you're simply someone who is the card-giving type. The problem starts right from the moment you select the card, as noted in the above video by Lynn Harrison. Then comes writing in it.

I likely put more pressure on myself because I write for a living. But to be honest, in most cases, I have to keep emotions out of my professional writing.

If I'm writing a story for a publication, I'm being paid for an impartial, "just the facts, ma'am" account of events. As noted before in this blog, it's part of the reason I never had an interest in being a reporter on the daily city news sort of beat - sometimes keeping emotions in check, particularly when writing about death, can be a challenge. Passion can certainly drive a story, but emotion is supposed to remain locked out. Unless you're a columnist.

These days, my day job has me writing about software. No worries there about having to pour my heart out and feeling all weird and exposed.

But acknowledging someone's grief in a way that may help them for a moment feel some sort of peace? That's hard. And maybe it's not even the purpose of sending a sympathy card or note. Write too much and you're in danger of making it all about you. I distinctly remember the intense sorrow I felt when my mother-in-law died, the feeling of being cheated of getting to know her better, etc. And now you see? Yeah, that's all about me.

Write too little and how does it come off? "So sorry. Please let me know if I can do anything." Empty. Because any of us who have lost a loved one know that those who truly will drop their lives to "do anything" will simply do it, not say, "Tell me when." But what's the happy medium?

I googled "bad sympathy cards" and got a few links to sites that essentially give you fill-in-the-blanks suggestions for what to write. It seems wrong, but maybe this is one case where what you say doesn't really matter. Damned if I know.

Why I could never be a daily reporter

I loved being a reporter. I loved the buzz of getting a story done on deadline, finding a new spin on it, getting the perfect source to give me the juicy tidbit no one else had. A lot of people asked me why I stopped doing it on a full-time basis.

Out of j-school I landed a news editor's job, followed by a reporting job on Parliament Hill. Then I moved across the country. I started freelancing for niche publications - community papers mainly, various magazines. Why not be a reporter full-time?

Well, the natural step would have been to start hunting down a job at a major daily. Better money, greater recognition. Sounds just about right. Except for one thing. In most cases, you don't start with a sweet little niche. You start with general city reporting. City Hall I could handle, I'd done the politics thing. But the guy goes crazy and shoots his entire family? It's that kind of shit I couldn't handle.

When I was 12, there were a few missing-kids' cases in Toronto. I won't forget Christine Jessop. Her body was found on New Year's Eve. My dad was a TV reporter. He got the call shortly before midnight that a body, likely hers, was found. It was confirmed the next day. I honestly don't know how my dad did it without it destroying his spirit. And reporters will continue to do it for many years to come. Not me though. I have issues with death and remaining detached when I write about it simply doesn't happen.

Some of you may already know how upset I was by the passing of a teenage boy, Edward Sun, who drowned at Alice Lake last weekend. I won't ever forget seeing his feet and swimming shorts as two people performed CPR on him. He looked so small (simply my perception, only being able to see the bottom half of him) that initially, I thought he was a younger child. I hope this picture I found of him tonight will help me erase that image.

When we left the park, I handed my son to my husband and cried. I didn't want to hold my son as I wept because I was worried I would scare him by squeezing him too tight as I bawled. I couldn't get it out of my head: he was somebody's child. Not mine, but somebody's. When I heard that he had died the following morning, I just kept thinking about his mother. How dare I claim such sorrow. How must she feel? The friends who were with him that day?

I'm certainly not saying the daily reporters who can do it are heartless - my dad continued doing it for more than a decade after Christine Jessop died, though he did move on to cover politics. He can be grumpy, but he's certainly full of heart. I am saying I can't do it. I'll write promo stuff, I'll blog, and I may write for papers and magazines again about causes that move me. But I'm simply not made of the right stuff to make a go of the mainstream dailies.

Writing about death

So on this bright and sunny day, I'm thinking about writing about death. Perhaps it's because we've just come out of about a week of rain. It could be all the death that's been happening in the last little while: in Haiti, the mom run over and killed in Toronto, journalist Michelle Lang in Afghanistan.

It got me thinking about how tough it is to write about death, particularly when the deceased was young and healthy. One of my early assignments as a reporter at The Hill Times was writing an obituary for a senator - it certainly wasn't a joyful occasion, but he had lead a full life and been around to see and be a part of a lot of cool things in his career. I spoke with his friends and colleagues who were sad, but expected his death.

I didn't get off so easily the next time I wrote an obit. A young man who had gone to the same university as me died after wiping out going full-speed on his rollerblades. I remembered his name as he'd been heavily involved with the student government. When he died, he was working for a high-profile cabinet minister. His death was stupid and senseless. He hadn't been wearing a helmet and had no I.D. on him, so it wasn't until the day after the accident when his coworkers started making calls that anyone found out what had happened to him. He was in a hospital on life support until his family was able to come from out of province to say their final goodbyes. I went to his service, but didn't speak with anyone there. I was terrified, quite honestly and still very green as a reporter. But there were other reporters there, so I felt comfortable taking notes and wrote about it accordingly.

A couple years later, it got harder. Liberal MP Shaughnessy Cohen collapsed in the House of Commons and later died in the hospital of a cerebral hemorrhage. The next day, I was outside of the House with my news editor. Did I mention I was also the paper's photographer? I got to take photos of her mourning friends. I felt pretty shitty about it. Yeah, it was my job, but it still felt wrong. This assignment was particularly tough as Ms. Cohen had been close with some of the reporters. I was still new enough that I didn't really know her, but for some reason, seeing the people I considered mentors break down was particularly difficult. Thankfully, my editor came with me to an interview I had with a couple of her friends, reporter Susan Delacourt and I believe Mary Clancy who if memory serves me correctly, was no longer an MP at that point.

My final stint as a reporter dealing with death came after I had written a piece for Canadian Living about young breast cancer survivors. One of the women I had interviewed, Gabi Helms, passed away months after the story ran. When I'd last spoken with her, she was frustrated that the cancer treatment had possibly left her infertile. Well, she did get pregnant but the cancer came back. She gave birth to a girl and died days after her birth. One of the other women I'd interviewed contacted me to let me know. She later warned me that another member of their circle had come under fire for contacting a local daily about it. She said I was welcome to come to the service, but not as a reporter. I respected her request.

So what's my point other than depressing everyone who's reading this? Well, I'm not too sure to be honest with you. Perhaps my issues with reporting about death made me a bad reporter. Maybe they made me a more sensitive, respectful reporter. And it's not like I've escaped writing about death - last summer, Dave Still, a faculty member at Douglas College passed away unexpectedly. As editor of the employee blog, I had to cover it. But I had the luxury of time. I waited until his colleagues were ready. I simply ran the Q & A and let those who knew him best speak for themselves. It felt right doing it that way.