by Erin Davis
As Phil ended his time at the microphone, he thanked everyone gathered in an even and measured voice and attributed any strength he might be showing to his son, Colin, and the job he had ahead. Phil gave a beautiful tribute to our daughter and their lives together, and we were so proud of this young man who had had such unthinkable tragedy thrown at him in the past eight days.
With the help of my one-time co-worker and Lauren’s boss, Steve Winogron, we ended the Ottawa gathering by introducing a recording of Lauren’s own beautiful voice.
During high school, she and her bandmates had gone on a school trip to Memphis where, at Sun Studios, they had recorded an album. Although the musicians had moments where they were uncharacteristically out of time and out of tune (“hungover” was the excuse Lauren gave for her school chums’ performance), Lauren’s vocals were just about perfect: throaty, laid back and, as always, perfectly on key. If she’d been indulging too, it wasn’t obvious in the recording. The song was “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” and Rob had produced the piece to include, during a bumpy instrumental break, a clip of Lauren talking in that Mother’s Day interview with me about what motherhood meant to her.
Although I had prepared for it days earlier with those screams into the pillow, it was as big an emotional blow as you might imagine, hearing her singing and then talking about the baby who had cried throughout the gathering. Poor Phil broke down for the first time in the entire service; we had inadvertently overlooked letting him know this moment was coming. He told us through tears that he missed hearing her voice as much as we did. And that moment of great sadness in listening to Lauren’s clear, strong singing voice, and the clip of her eliciting their baby boy’s belly laughter as she described her joy, served to underline not only the enormity of our shared loss but also just how tragic the whole situation truly was. A baby without his mother, a husband without his young wife, two parents without their only child. The layers were thick and dark.
Like the sweetness of that phantom whiff of baking, the very real smell of spring lilacs in the air alleviated our heaviness in the first days of mourning. Even though we knew for a fact that the best part of our lives was ending, life began anew around us in the form of blossoms erupting on branches throughout a city known for its trees, flowers and landscaped beauty. I recall taking breaks during the preparation for Lauren’s cremation and her memorial and strolling across the street from the funeral home to a little park dotted with fragrant trees. As I gathered the perfumed purple masses into my hands and pulled them to my face to take in their scent, I asked Rob how the world could be so beautiful and so awful.
His answer? “It always has been.”
Love. Loss. Lilacs. Lauren. Life itself. So much beauty, and so unimaginably awful. More than once on a long drive to or from Ottawa, I told Rob that had she died in the grey darkness of November, I don’t think I could have survived it. The hope of spring helped carry me through that May. Now, though, May is a month so rife with razor-edged memories—not to mention the full weight of Mother’s Day, whatever that’s supposed to be to me now—that it brings more sadness than hope. But I do believe it will get easier. These are still early times, after all.
That evening, after the memorial, we gathered at our hotel restaurant and bar on the outskirts of the city with a few close friends and co-workers who’d driven from Toronto to be with us on this difficult day. We ate a bit of dinner and shared a few inappropriate but blessedly welcome laughs. You can always count on radio people to make you laugh under the worst circumstances; call it gallows humour if you will, but it makes life a little more tolerable when all hell and the worst of humanity are thrown into your face and you have to share it with people who are counting on you to make sense of it all somehow, or at least give them the details so that they can. I was grateful to be able to do something besides cry and grieve. And soon I was able to turn around and make our friends laugh too: when our server told us that the kitchen was out of whatever special was up on the board, I looked up at her and said, “Well, that’s the WORST thing that has happened to me ALL DAY!” She didn’t get it, but we all did. You have to laugh or the awfulness of it all could kill you.
One of those people who laughed along and was at our side in so many ways during the early days of our grieving, including at the first memorial and the gathering that followed, was my boss, Julie Adam. Julie figured prominently in our family’s life in so many ways, but one of the most welcome benefits of our years spent working together was the friendship that grew among us. As such, she was one of the few people outside family to witness a time when Lauren broke the rules. But luckily for Lauren, Julie would soften the terms of our daughter’s punishment—something for which Lauren would always be grateful.
During the early years of social media, we had made it clear that Lauren was not to use MSN. We were unsure about the safety of the messaging application on her desktop computer, and we forbade her to use it. But the lure of the connection to her friends was too strong, and she did go on MSN. One evening—after we’d found her using it earlier and had issued a warning—we heard the tattletale “ping” coming from her bedroom.
Our caution was the result of the many stories we’d heard (and which I’d shared with listeners) about the dangers of strangers on the internet. We didn’t know enough about MSN, and although Lauren downplayed our concerns, we had made a rule in an effort to protect her. When we heard proof that she’d disobeyed, we grounded her: no using her computer, and no attending an Elton John concert to which I’d been given tickets.
There were many tears and pleas, and she even hand-wrote a letter of apology (which I have kept) expressing her regret at having disappointed us. Her efforts proved effective: when Julie asked if she could take Lauren to the concert instead of us, we felt it was a bit of a win on both sides. Lauren got to go, and we got to stick to our guns by not taking her. And to be honest, I was honoured that my boss wanted the company of our teenaged daughter.
Looking back now, I’m glad that Lauren made her own choices, even if I didn’t immediately approve of or appreciate them. Rob and I might have been disappointed by her decision to dye her hair pink, get a tattoo or contact her friends on MSN, but it was all part of growing up. We now cherish those acts of everyday rebellion and are as proud of her feistiness as we are of her graciousness and generosity.
* * *
AFTER one more night in Ottawa, it was time to head back home to Toronto and begin the task of planning a second memorial, without letting much more time pass. We struggled to find a place to hold it, as May is the time for graduations and weddings and there were very few suitable options available. We needed a venue large enough to accommodate our friends, co-workers and acquaintances, as well as those listeners with whom Lauren had a relationship. Eventually it was suggested we try Koerner Hall, an acoustically acclaimed concert venue with seating for a thousand or so and a wide, deep stage. As it turned out, we were able to book it for the afternoon of May 29, ten days after the Ottawa gathering. Fortunately for us, the woman who was in charge of the hall just happened to have worked with me twelve years earlier in a production of Cinderella. She remembered Lauren coming often to rehearsals and performances, enthralled with the musical comedy as well as the backstage workings of a professional show—and more than a little in love with the actor who embodied Prince Charming. We were grateful for this connection to help walk us through planning our event and to have found what looked to be the perfect setting.
Clearly, this memorial was going to be less casual than the first. Being in production mode and planning for another gathering was really a saving grace, and Rob and I were both grateful for the diversion: an opportunity to focus not on the totality of our suffering but on making this the best tribute to our daughter’s brief but shining life that we could.
We spent many hours during those ten days between memorials scouring through and choosing photos to go along with lyrics to songs that were to be performed live, as well as for Lauren
’s own recording of “Dream a Little Dream.” We enlisted the help of our friend Allan Bell to aid us put this together. An event planner and professional hospital and charity fundraiser, Allan had turned Lauren’s wedding in an otherwise unremarkable hotel ballroom into a sheer white and sparkling setting. His love for our family and sense of—for lack of a better word—show would come in very handy for the May 29 event. As had been the case at her all-too-recent wedding, Lauren’s goodbye celebration featured several Beatles songs. Our friend and fellow Cinderella performer, musician, director and writer David Warrack, took his seat at the shiny black grand piano under a spotlight at centre stage. Near him stood solo artist and lead singer of the band Lighthouse, Dan Clancy, also a family acquaintance; the two performed Billy Joel’s “Lullabye” and the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers.” A large black and stainless steel urn shaped like a sleek blackbird (in honour of that favourite and familiar Beatles song that Rob had taught Lauren on guitar) sat on a table onstage next to a microphone bearing her radio station’s call letters, its head bent as if in sorrow.
A warm and down-to-earth minister, Susanne McKim, who had performed Lauren and Phil’s wedding ceremony, oversaw our goodbyes to her. Our mutual co-worker from Ottawa, Steve Madely, spoke again, and then we heard “Stop All the Clocks,” this time recited live by my radio partner and our close family friend, Mike Cooper. There was also a live rendition of the traditional Celtic blessing “She Does Not Leave,” read by Lisa Brandt, my fellow broadcaster, my friend and a mentor to Lauren, and accompanied, quietly—perfectly—by David Warrack playing Billy Joel’s “Dublinesque.”
She does not leave, she is not gone, she looks upon us still.
She walks among the valleys now, she strides upon the hill.
Her smile is in the summer sky, her grace is in the breeze.
Her memories whisper in the grass, her calm is in the trees.
Her light is in the winter snow, her tears are in the rain.
Her merriment runs in the brook, her laughter in the lane.
Her gentleness is in the flowers, her sigh in autumn leaves.
She does not leave, she is not gone, ’tis only we that grieve.
This time, Rob and I spoke at our daughter’s memorial in person. We used many of the same notes we had written for Lauren’s Ottawa gathering, and had only fleeting moments where emotions risked closing our throats. I recall walking up the stairs from the audience at Koerner Hall and onto the stage. As I stepped up to the podium, I took a deep breath. I began by saying the words I’d always used in the studio when there was a challenge at hand: “We can do this.” And we did.
I told our friends and family in the auditorium and watching online (both live and later on) that Lauren had never worried us: she didn’t do drugs, didn’t drink and always made sound decisions. She was everything we wanted in a daughter, and we took comfort in knowing that she knew we felt this way every day that she lived. I joked that she grew up knowing there would be a therapy fund for her if she ever needed it. But she was so well-adjusted, it turned out she didn’t, and we had Rob to thank for that! I said that I’d learned at her Ottawa memorial that although Lauren had worried she wasn’t going to be good enough to get into Algonquin College’s radio course, her professor said she was the best student ever to have gone through the program. Then I apologized if that sounded boastful. Throughout the time I had at that podium, I kept asking: With her short courtship, her desire to get into her career as soon as she could and, of course, her untimely and tragic passing, “Why couldn’t she wait?” (In the months ahead, I would come to believe there was a preordained response to that question.) I shared the things for which we were grateful, both about Lauren’s life and even her death. But I also took the opportunity to thank my husband, Rob, publicly for the amazing job he’d done as the stay-at-home father to our daughter.
Lauren did what Lauren wanted to do . . . and nothing held her back. And you know, she had her priorities straight—family first. Phil would take on four jobs: two minimum wage (the radio ones), one volunteer (again, radio) and a night job as a server/manager at a restaurant to allow Coco to have a full-time mom for a year. And somehow, our brilliant girl and her smart, hard-working new husband found a way to save money. To buy life insurance. To make sure their little family would be taken care of . . . no matter what.
You see, the plan was for Lauren to return to work after her year’s maternity leave, and Phil would take on the role that Lauren’s own father had joyfully fulfilled: stay-at-home dad.
Lauren knew what a solid and powerful relationship could come of this kind of arrangement . . . and I will tell you that it was Rob who fed and dressed Lauren before she went to school each day. He made her lunch. He also made her the butt of school jokes when he put a weenie in a thermos of hot water, complete with dental floss, so she could fish it out and put it in an already dressed hot dog bun.
Rob’s influence on Lauren was felt long after she began her life with Phil, and here’s an example: in their home, Lauren has rigged up this hose sprayer through their toilet plumbing, complete with shut-off valve and Teflon tape, for rinsing cloth diapers. She was a smart, smart girl, and she learned well. She had the best possible role model in her daddy.
Then I moved aside and stroked Rob’s back as he stepped up to the microphone and spoke to the hushed gathering. He told Phil that he was taking on the most important role a person can ever have, and one that he had relished so completely: that of full-time father. He said to his son-in-law that having seen how he’d handled parenting Colin single-handedly over the previous eighteen days, he knew for sure: “You’ve got this.”
Just as he had ten days earlier, Phil took the stage and spoke eloquently and from the heart. In a strange twist—and as if to underline how public a life his wife and her family lived—this time he wore a suit that was sold to him by a man in a Toronto-area store who, when Phil gave his name at the counter, recognized it from hearing about his wife’s death on the radio. I’m sure Phil was as blindsided as he was touched by the man’s kind words of condolence.
At this second memorial, the grieving widower’s soft words weren’t punctuated by the wails of his small son; baby Colin was backstage in Koerner Hall’s comfortable green room with his paternal grandfather, nursing on a bottle during the heart-wrenching proceedings as Grandpa followed the memorial on a television monitor.
It was a marked difference from the Ottawa gathering, when Colin’s cries had given voice to our feelings and underlined the uncertainty, the hornet’s nest of questions to which we had no answers: What was to become of this sweet baby and his father? What was to become of us, two shattered parents who were now childless? Who were we now as a couple? Would I return to work? How would someone so completely shattered ever take up the mantle of morning show host again—and would it be appropriate? We’d get answers to almost all of these questions in time. Everything would take time. But the first order of business, now that we had said our goodbyes to our dear Lauren, was to continue to survive publicly and to start to heal privately.
CHAPTER 5
No Easy Answers
Lauren and Colin
BEFORE WE HAD EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO HOLD Lauren’s first memorial we began searching for answers to the question on the mind of everyone who knew and knew of Lauren: How could a seemingly healthy twenty-four-year-old simply die in her sleep? The word why became a mantra that ran through my brain with what seemed like every second thought; I screamed it into a pillow and sobbed it onto Rob’s shoulder within moments of retreating to our Jamaica hotel room. From May 11, 2015, on, I could almost see that one-syllable word hanging over our heads. I heard it in my restless sleep like an earworm, a pervasive melody that refused to cease. Everything about Lauren’s passing defied logic: the fractured lines of the natural life order wherein a parent is expected to die before their offspring; the sudden, freakish and fatal thunderstorm that struck her down in the midst of what would have appeared to be the sunniest time
in her life. Nothing about her death was expected, dreaded, understood.
Crime procedural television dramas like the massively popular CSI franchise have conditioned us to expect answers in an hour. But life, as we have all come to know, rarely mirrors television, and anyone involved in the real world of crime-solving will tell you that scientific investigation is necessarily painstakingly slow. Although a crime was never suspected, our situation would be no different: it would be months before we could hold a neatly printed, clinically worded copy (in the most literal sense) of the coroner’s report in our hands. And had ours been the storyline of a TV show, no writer would have conjured up such an inconclusive final scene (not if he or she expected to be hired again). We were given no explanations. Only possibilities. In an age where we can turn to pocket pals like Siri or Google for resolutions to almost every big question or trivial pursuit, we found ourselves with only suspicions and no concrete answers. A big question mark came within the first twenty-four hours, when my friend wrote to inquire as to what Lauren had been taking to help her in her struggles to breastfeed. If you were going to drop in a plot twist, this would be the one to add.
* * *
IT seems almost impossible now, as parents, to look back and realize how much we did not know—and didn’t even know we didn’t know. Yes, there was always that readily available advice from our own mothers, mothers-in-law and even grandmothers—the sisterhood of those who’d gone before and had so much more experience and knowledge than we did as new moms, and who were more than anxious to share it. But it is difficult to measure how quickly that steady stream of advice became a firehose as soon as every know-it-all, every been-there-done-that-got-those-stretchmarks, got a megaphone and a soapbox with the arrival of the internet.