by Erin Davis
As our group sat near our gate in the Sangster International Airport departure lounge, we tried not to attract any attention as our tears flowed. We were still unaware that people in Ottawa and Toronto were beginning to feel the shock waves that accompanied the news of Lauren’s death. In our nation’s capital, prominent politicians tweeted their regrets. As a member of the Ottawa media, Lauren had become a familiar figure, further proof to Rob and to me that she was, indeed, making her own mark. She had no shadow of mine to worry about.
* * *
AS the day went on, compassionate tweets were posted by members of competing media conglomerates in both Ottawa and Toronto. The news was shared on morning breakfast TV shows. Across the country, our daughter’s death was included in news crawls and website feeds.
Of all of the stories we heard about people’s reactions that day—and we’d hear of so many in the weeks and months to come—without a doubt this one touched Rob and me the most. Back in Toronto, a woman who heard about Lauren’s death on the radio pulled over to the side of the road and sobbed. Another motorist, seeing her distress, stopped her car to see if she could be of help. When she learned the cause of the first driver’s tears, they both stood there, hugging and crying.
This public outpouring of grief set the tone for a display of sadness that would continue for weeks at the radio station and among its family of listeners. Once the initial disbelief wore off, that widely spread cloak of grief would serve as an immense source of warmth, comfort and strength for us. I continue to hear from listeners who think of Lauren whenever they receive or donate blood. I’d made it known that this was a favourite cause of hers; she gave blood on the very day that she was eligible after giving birth. We hadn’t been able to donate Lauren’s organs upon her death because of the extent of the autopsy that her body would undergo in order to try to determine how a seemingly healthy twenty-four-year-old woman had died, so we hoped this would be the next best thing. What a lovely legacy, the knowledge that people giving life to others do so as they remember our daughter. It makes me so proud, and I know that Lauren would be grateful—and incredulous.
While we were in the air, back at my radio home, hosts were on the air explaining what had happened. Julie Adam—senior VP of Rogers Radio, my boss and my friend—joined our midday host, Michelle Butterly, and spoke on the edge of tears, her voice filled with emotion.
MICHELLE: We have received some absolutely devastating news today, and Julie Adam is here to share it with us.
JULIE: It is with a very heavy heart and great sadness that I share the news today that we have lost a member of our CHFI family. Lauren Davis, beloved daughter of Erin and Rob, passed away suddenly this morning.
MICHELLE: We are heartbroken . . . beyond belief, and we can’t imagine what Rob and Erin are going through right now, and their family and their friends.
JULIE: It’s devastating. We got the news first thing this morning, just after 6 a.m. As you know, Erin and Mike are broadcasting live from Jamaica with a planeload of CHFI listeners. And we got them on a plane right away—Erin and Rob, Mike Cooper and the General [Ian MacArthur]—and they are en route back to Toronto. Erin and Rob will, of course, be going to Ottawa to be with Lauren’s husband’s family to make arrangements. We are all shocked and saddened. There are no words to express how everyone is feeling today.
MICHELLE: The shock is beyond. I met Lauren when she was eight. Lauren was eight years old when I started here. A lot of CHFI listeners were around when Lauren was born and remember when Erin was pregnant with Lauren and when they were on the cover of Today’s Parent together. There’s no words, no words for this.
JULIE: I think, as everyone knows, CHFI is a family—our team is very close, and the love for Erin and Rob and Lauren spreads wide across the Rogers Radio organization. This is a very difficult day for our team; as you can imagine, our on-air hosts are working very hard to be professional and to keep their emotions at bay because they have a job to do to entertain the listeners. But I would ask that you understand if we’re not as peppy as we usually are; that’s the reason. We do thank the CHFI listeners for your unwavering support; we know you’re going to do whatever you can to help Erin and Rob get through this. And if you’d like to pass along any condolences, you can do so on our Facebook page or on CHFI.com.
MICHELLE: Thank you.
JULIE: Thanks, Michelle.
The interview ended with the playing of Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel.” It’s one of the saddest and most beautiful pieces of radio I’ve ever heard—that perfect combination of real emotions and just the right piece of music. Time and time again over my career, I’d striven to come up with the same type of heartfelt and real moment. I just wish this one hadn’t been about us.
* * *
IT’S remarkable the things that come back to you through the heavy grey fog of shock and pain. One of the small acts of kindness that we experienced that awful day came during our hastily booked trip home. A flight attendant leaned over and told Rob and me that she could block off the lavatory entrance area near the cockpit if we just needed to be together behind the curtain. It wasn’t as if we’d been moaning and crying loudly on the trip home; the most any fellow travellers might have seen would have been me dabbing at my eyes or blowing my nose. I might just as easily have been watching The Notebook on my iPad. No, it was just an extremely compassionate gesture on the part of the WestJet crew. I’ll always remember it with gratitude.
Like a bitter bookend to the “I need to see your ticket” man back at the resort, a terse welcome awaited us upon our arrival home; in retrospect, though, it was completely understandable and should almost have been expected. When we collected our luggage at the airport in Toronto, we were pulled aside by Canada Border Service agents; I’m sure we were flagged for having been in Jamaica for just two days. I remember Rob and me telling the officer the reason for our sudden return and still not quite believing the words as they came out of our mouths. Fortunately, he did believe them, but not before a cursory search of our luggage. I recall being treated with courtesy and even a semblance of understanding and being sent quickly on our way. The radio station had arranged for a car to meet us at the airport, and had even offered to provide a ride to Ottawa the next day if we were too distraught to drive. We assured our bosses that we’d be fine. As we would soon learn, long car rides turned out to be a great chance to talk and cry and shake our fists at the sky.
A few minutes after we entered our downtown condo and put down our bags, the phone rang. It was a Toronto Star reporter asking if I’d answer some questions. I took a deep breath and agreed. After all, speculation about the cause of Lauren’s death had already begun on our radio station’s Facebook page (among other sites, of course). I understood that. First of all, it’s the internet. Second, like nature, the truth abhors a vacuum. If there is a paucity of facts, people are going to start to make up details and post sheer conjecture, especially when a healthy young woman dies so suddenly, so senselessly.
I set aside my worries about how it might appear—a grieving mother agreeing to an interview—and decided to try to fill the void. I sat down with phone in hand and told the reporter the few details that we knew at such an early stage. Then came the reporter’s apologetically posed but inevitable question about her state of mind: Was she suffering postpartum depression? Truthfully, I hadn’t been expecting that association, but my years in media should have prepared me for the likely link in people’s minds between the words “died suddenly” and suicide. It’s often a euphemism used in obituaries and news articles, and I get that. In an even tone, I responded, “absolutely not.” I told the reporter that if our daughter had died by suicide, I would most definitely be forthright and say so. My career was built on honesty and transparency. Through our positions in the media, Lauren and I both were vocal advocates of open discussion of mental health issues, including my own. I stated unequivocally that we had no idea what had taken our daughter’s life.
In the days
ahead, I had a spectacular life to celebrate in two cities, and plans to make to do just that. I also had my mourning husband to console and support, and the shared job of figuring out what we were going to do, moving forward with our lives as people who are no longer parents, who no longer have a child to carry their name, their dreams, their genes into a future without them—you know, the things people expect when they have a child. It’s funny how these things come at you when your mind stops churning and the facts of your new life start to worm their way in. You realize that everything has changed, and the way you thought the steps and stages of your life were going to go has suddenly been upended. I thought there would be someone to whom my mother’s silver and china would go. Someone to whom I could pass on my wedding rings and other special things I’d long ago envisioned giving to our daughter before I died, just to see her enjoyment. Like an unusual sapphire- and diamond-adorned ring.
In 1986, about a month before I began dating the man who would become my husband, I had bought this piece of jewellery. Tired of waiting for someone to come into my life to buy me the gifts I found so hard to give to myself, I spotted a sparkling dark blue sapphire and diamond ring that looked somewhat like an eye. It certainly caught mine. After giving myself the “you’re worth it” pep talk, I bought the ring and wore it every day for years, even after Rob had given me an engagement and then wedding ring to wear on my left hand. When Lauren was a teen, I asked her if she wanted that ring, and she gave me an enthusiastic response. I joked with her that I’d be keeping my eye on her, through that piece of jewellery.
Lauren wore the unusual ring every day, even on her wedding day. Twenty-three months later, she was wearing it the morning that she died and, fortunately, it wasn’t necessary for it to be cut off her long fingers. I’m grateful to Phil for returning it to me; I wear it almost as often as Lauren did.
But when I look at that ring, I’m reminded of so much, the past as well as the future: I wonder to whom that ring will go next. When you lose your clear path to what lies ahead (or at least, what you envision your future will be), you stumble, trying to discern where the new lines on the road may be. You rewrite your wills. You dread Christmases that bring you more pain than joy, leaving you to throw up your hands and say, “Aw, fa-la-la-la forget it!” and just want to fly off, escape to someplace warm, where you and your husband can be anonymous and just cry in private. You wonder just what you worked for all of those years as a parent; what it was you were trying to build. The entire snow globe that held your little family is suddenly, unexpectedly pitched in a slow arc into the air and then hit so hard it could split an aluminum bat in two. Except there are no pieces left to pick up because, for a time, it feels as if it’s all gone. All of it. And it becomes very difficult to remember the point in everything you’ve worked for. You can’t look ahead and you can’t look back; all you can see is where you are at that very moment and all you can do is try to keep breathing. It all feels like the quicksand we used to see in the Tarzan TV shows when we were kids. For me, that had always been the scariest part of those episodes. And now I was standing in it, or rather sinking . . . sinking.
I think back to the words that I said quietly to my husband as we walked from our hotel room back to the lobby and the shuttle that would eventually take our grieving party to the airport in Montego Bay.
“This is who we are now,” I muttered.
“Sorry?” Rob replied.
“This is who we are now. We’re those people. We’re the ones who’ve lost a child. This is who we are.”
We are members of a club with dues so high you never, ever want to pay them, but now we’re members for life. And we found ourselves invited to join an especially elite chapter of the club: the one for parents who have lost their only child. And look! The clubhouse even has a stage. Because when we pull back the curtain, this whole ordeal is about to be played out in public.
This was not the first time that the CHFI morning show had also become a mourning show. In 1991, six months after the arrival of our child, my radio partner at the time was grappling with the death of one of his children. I recall a conversation we had a short time after he lost an adult child to suicide, in which he asked if I thought he should talk about his son’s death on the air. I was young and had yet to learn the many lessons about sharing oneself publicly and connecting with listeners on a deeply personal level. I had given the man’s question some thought long before he asked it, and my response signalled caution: Did he want to become Pagliacci—the laughing, crying clown—in people’s eyes? Did he want to risk his popularity, or just keep up his facade of humour and continue to make people laugh?
It shows what I knew then. How lucky I am to have learned enough in those ensuing decades to be able to be honest and real with our listeners. Because, like that co-worker who quite rightly ignored my questions and did the right thing by being open with his audience, I too found a form of freedom in speaking of and writing about my story, my trials, my deliverance. Although the idea of sharing something that personal had scared the younger broadcaster and person I was at the time of that conversation, stepping through that fear and being real, raw and truthful with our audience allowed them to feel safe enough to reach out to me and, in so doing, offer me a form of comfort and ultimately salvation. So much for “be on your best.” I am so grateful to have felt secure enough to be openly vulnerable and human.
CHAPTER 4
Saying Goodbye
Lauren on her wedding day, June 22, 2013
IN RETROSPECT, I AM NOT QUITE SURE WHETHER our hastily arranged flight from Montego Bay back to Toronto was the shortest or the longest trip of our lives. I don’t remember much, other than that kindness from the flight attendant who offered Rob and me privacy. She probably offered us a drink too, and I’m sure it was only the support of Rob and our radio friends that kept it from even entering my mind as a possibility. How lucky I am that the devious-snake part of my brain didn’t whisper to me that this was the best possible excuse to numb myself, if only I would take it. I had logged nine years of sobriety by then and somehow it was staying intact—so far.
As much as I would have appreciated the opportunity to deaden the pain that was setting in along with the realization that all of this was actually happening, there was much to do, and I was grateful for a clear head. We hurriedly and haphazardly unpacked our beach and party clothes and threw together what we thought we would need for who-knows-how-long in Ottawa. After a sleepless night, we were up at dawn the following day, a Tuesday. We headed into the sun for the long and tearful journey to be with Phil and Colin.
While we drove, people in search of details about our daughter’s death and our own well-being were going to the journal I’d posted hurriedly on my website the night before.
Hello, Dear Friend.
I feel I should write you a goodbye for now, as I will be taking leave of this space until my heart no longer feels filled to bursting with sadness, tears and the awful pain of being ripped away from my flesh, my own.
You will likely have heard by now our tragic news: our dearest, sweetest, kindest daughter Lauren went to sleep on Sunday night—her first Mother’s Day—and did not wake up to her baby’s cries and husband’s nudges on Monday.
The world will keep turning—a 7-month-old baby will grow surrounded by limitless love and support—and we will search forever to find answers to something that is so unspeakably wrong that none will ever suffice.
Thank you for reaching out through Twitter, on CHFI Facebook, in email. I will answer what I can, when I can. Know that I have seen them, and we’ve taken them in, as best we can.
In the meantime, Rob and I, Phil and our families need some time to try to make sense of the death of a healthy, happy, beautiful young mother.
Sounds like a lifetime, doesn’t it?
I’ll be in touch when I can. And thank you again. She was our world.
Erin
How grateful I was to have a place to tell people what had ha
ppened—or at least as much as we knew. Of course, that didn’t stop some from jumping to the wrong conclusions, but at least we tried, through the journal, the newspaper interview and, of course, the airwaves, where my colleagues at CHFI told listeners of Lauren’s sudden and inexplicable passing.
As we drove up to the house, we saw Phil sitting outside on the steps, watching his phone and smoking from the first pack of cigarettes he’d bought since quitting over a year earlier at Lauren’s insistence. She wasn’t going to risk having third-hand smoke from clothes or hair coming in contact with her baby, and Phil agreed. As it turns out, a police officer on scene during those early hours of investigation gave Phil his first puff of relief upon his wife’s death. Not one of us could or would blame him for seeking some kind of comfort; we could all relate. Rob and I took up smoking steadily again in the early weeks and months after Lauren’s death as well. With almost every new cigarette I lit, I said, “Sorry, Loo,” knowing how distressed she’d be at our starting again after all of the years we’d butted out. It took a few months for us to stop, once and for all.
After that first night without Lauren, spent in a hotel while police investigated their townhouse, father and infant returned to the cozy new house with its boldly painted rooms where Lauren had died such a short time earlier. Understandably, his warm mother gone from his side, his routine completely upended, Colin was, at times, as inconsolable as the rest of us.
We had checked into that same hotel, but we spent that first evening visiting with Phil and the baby. At one point while Colin dozed in his father’s arms, I stepped away to go downstairs to the baby’s nursery. Just a few weeks before, I’d sat and rocked in this previously cheery and sunny mustard-coloured room—decorated with framed Beatles lyrics, stuffed animals and books—looking on with immense pride and love as my little girl laughed and changed her freshly bathed and lavender-scented baby boy. Her joy was so immense it was palpable, and I loved being asked to help dress him in his cozy sleepwear before she began the ritual of turning on a night light and soft music, and then rocking him while feeding. Lauren and I were becoming closer than we had ever been. On this evening, though, the room reminded me of how much had been snatched so cruelly from every one of us in that house.