We knew that Kelty’s zeal about going to Notre Dame was tempered by some apprehension. He would be leaving his friends and his family, his comfort zone, and we talked about how that might make it a drastic change. He was so focussed on ultimately becoming an NHL player that nothing else seemed to matter. I wasn’t convinced, but as he always did, Kelty started working on me, knowing that I would eventually cave and that my acquiescence would make his dad an easier sell on the idea. Kerry was the perfect counter to my impulsiveness—he tended to think longer and harder about things, especially when it came to money, and private school meant money. Kelty was good at persuading us, though, and we finally agreed that he could go. He applied and was accepted, and we enrolled him for Grade 10. All four of us drove out to Saskatchewan in August 1998 to get him settled.
Kelty’s first year went reasonably well. He joined the school’s golf team and made some good friends, but the school work was a challenge, more stringent than he was used to, and he would often phone home to talk about how things were going. The hardest part, we knew, was when he realized that though he had been a top player in Whistler, he was now in another league. As a Notre Dame Hound, he was a small fish in a big pond stocked with some of the best young players in the country. When Kelty didn’t make the A team or even the B team at Notre Dame but was instead put on the C team, it was a blow. Even if he wasn’t gaining a name through hockey, he had become a popular fixture around the Notre Dame campus. Everyone called him Doctor D., the good-natured peacemaker his classmates would seek out for advice. Nonetheless, when he asked us if he could return to Whistler Secondary for Grade 11, we told him he could. We wanted him to be happy, and we missed him and wanted him home with us.
Back in Whistler, Kelty pulled up his socks and began to thrive again, working so hard at school that he was the only boy to make the Grade 11 honour roll. He was proud to be up on that stage, the only boy with all the smart girls, once again the centre of attention. Sitting in the audience, we were more proud of him than ever.
That Christmas, we decided to take the kids on a two-week cruise through the Panama Canal. We went with our neighbours, the Richmonds, and their friends the Thomases. Altogether, there were fourteen of us, and most of the youngsters in the group were the same ages as Kelty and Riley. It seemed like the ideal vacation—lots of kids and lots of things for them to do. It was our first cruise as a family, and we were excited. We flew to Puerto Vallarta and spent Christmas Day there before boarding the ship and heading south through the canal to Cartagena, Colombia.
Visits to the ports along the way kept us not only entertained but also busy from morning to night. We hardly saw the kids, except when we met for meals to talk about the day. At first, Kelty was his usual social self, jumping around in the pool, teasing the girls and partying with the other teens in our group. He was into rap and break dancing, having spent hours honing his skills in our garage with his friend Jeff, and he showed up at the start of each day wearing his favourite baseball hat and stylish street clothes, full of confidence and mischief.
And then everything changed.
One evening toward the end of the trip, we were in our cabin getting ready for dinner when Kelty turned to his dad and said, “I’m going to throw myself off the cruise ship.” It was as if a switch had gone off—he was suddenly a completely different boy, withdrawn, agitated, and fretful. We didn’t know what was going on, but Kerry calmed Kelty down and said he’d stay with him in the cabin while Riley and I met the others for dinner. Back in the cabin, though, Kelty didn’t settle down. He told his dad that he didn’t want to eat, he didn’t want to see anyone. He was insistent, and it was so unlike him. Worried, Kerry called the ship’s doctor, who came and gave Kelty a sedative, assuring Kerry that it was nothing more than an anxiety attack. The shot seemed to work, and Kelty slept a bit.
But his mood, his anxiousness, continued for the next two days. Kelty talked about feeling overwhelmed, unable to control or understand his emotions. Kerry stayed in the cabin with him, ordering soup and cheese sandwiches and desperately trying to keep our son on an even keel. But it was a scary time. “Dad,” Kelty would say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This thing just grabbed me.” Kerry thought it might help to involve the ship’s priest; he knew that Kelty believed in God and had become more interested in Catholicism while at Notre Dame. The priest came and talked to Kelty, and that did seem to help.
During a stopover in the San Blas Islands of Panama, Kelty joined the other kids in a volleyball game they had planned. He was slightly embarrassed about what had happened and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. But although he appeared more composed, he definitely wasn’t the Kelty we knew. His heart wasn’t in the game, and his usual gregarious self had been replaced by a quiet, subdued boy we barely recognized. We were very worried. Kelty had always been a bit of a fretter, but he had never acted like this. We now know he was exhibiting signs of a deep-seated depression.
The cruise was winding down, but before heading home, we stayed overnight in San Diego, taking in the zoo and the local sights. Things almost seemed back to normal. Kelty was in good spirits, and we had a wonderful family time there. Back in Whistler, we settled into our routines. Kelty seemed happy to be playing hockey, going to parties, working at the golf course, and hanging out with his friends. But there was no question that something in our son had changed. The carefree part of his personality had been replaced by a drive for perfection, a need to get the best grades, play the best hockey, shoot the best golf score. Looking back, I think the switch was tripped after his Grade 11 honour roll achievement. Once he’d had a taste of academic excellence and the accolades that could bring, he wanted more challenges than he felt Whistler Secondary could offer. He asked us if he could return to Notre Dame in September for Grade 12.
Once again, his argument was convincing. It wasn’t just for the hockey, he told us, but for the scholastics. Kelty had always been a boy more likely to take the easier path, relying on his charm and hockey skills, but here he was talking about going to law school after graduation from Notre Dame, about applying to Bishop’s College, a small, high-level, sports-oriented university in Lennoxville, Quebec. He had thought hard about what he wanted to do with his life, and this, he said with much conviction, was the path he wanted to take.
Kerry and I were beyond proud. The incident on our vacation simmered in the back of our minds, but it seemed our sixteen-year-old son had turned a corner and was growing up, taking responsibility, and exhibiting ambition about his future. As much as Kelty was the goofball of the family, he had never been the kind of teen who drank too much or who would drink and drive or even party late into the night. He worked part-time, earning his own spending money, and he was the one who drove his friends home or made them stay with us if they had been drinking too much. He was a good kid, and it made sense to us that he was on this track. As much as we wanted him home with us, we felt that as parents we needed to support his goals. We enrolled him again in Notre Dame.
For Riley, Kelty’s spell on our vacation, and his newfound conviction about his future, were all just part of what was happening in the family. She was a teenager, too, and as much as she loved her brother, she didn’t mind having the house to herself. She loved high school and was immersed in the social swirl. She and Britt were still inseparable; they were birds of a feather and had been since elementary school, always up to shenanigans. Their time in Brownies had lasted no longer than a heartbeat; they were kicked out for giggling at the wrong times, like over the fake campfire at circle time in the gym. And although they vowed to be best friends forever, they occasionally squabbled. It wasn’t unusual for me to phone Britt’s mom, Colleen, and say, “Okay, is the war between Britain and France on or off?” Riley was busy playing hockey and snowboarding, and she was starting to take more than a passing interest in boys. Her affections included Kelty’s best friend, Trevor, and she dated Thomas, a family friend’s son, for about a year before he moved away to go t
o school. It wasn’t that she wasn’t engaged in what was happening with Kelty; it was just that she was wrapped up in her own life.
I was nervous about Kelty’s return to Notre Dame. I remembered how homesick he had been before and how he had seemed lost in the crowd out there. The incident on the cruise ship weighed heavily on my mind. I reminded Kelty of how he had struggled at Notre Dame, but he was adamant: “Mom, I need to be tougher, I need to be challenged, I have to do this.” He was so determined.
Kerry drove Kelty to Saskatchewan in August 2000, a long father-son trip with open stretches of highway perfect for talking. At some point, as he told me later, Kerry let Kelty take the wheel, but he became alarmed at his careless driving. When Kerry told him to slow down, Kelty just looked over at his dad and shrugged. It was so out of character, as was an incident a few months later when Kerry made a visit to the school to watch Kelty play hockey with his Notre Dame team. When Kelty told him, “Dad, I’m going to get in a fight for you,” Kerry was stunned. Kelty had never been aggressive in any way; on the ice, he had always exhibited his talent through his skating finesse. Kerry said “No, Kelt,” but Kelty did it anyway, as if he was trying to prove something to his dad.
Kerry and I chalked these things up to the transitions Kelty was making on the road to maturity, the rocky time all teenagers go through as they make the break from the protective cocoon of their parents. We had kept a close eye on our children’s friends and their activities, but we had no idea that the breakdown on the ship and Kelty’s overt drive for perfection, his speeding and fighting, were all signs of the depression that was tightening its grip on him.
Kelty seemed to love being back at Notre Dame for his senior year, and he checked in with us regularly on the phone. He was doing well in everything except math, and he told Kerry about one math teacher who had thrown a test down on Kelty’s desk and said derisively, “Good luck with this one.” We know now that sometimes the smallest things can trigger anxiety, act as catalysts for the dormant demons that feed depression. Sometime later, Kerry would take that teacher aside and remind him that words can do much harm.
Kelty came home that Christmas, and on the surface he seemed happy with his life. He quickly took up with his Whistler friends, hit the mountains, and reconnected with Riley. Feeling it was time for another family vacation, we booked an all-inclusive trip to Puerto Vallarta with the families who had joined us on the cruise the year before. Things started out well. The parents met every night for cocktail hour just before dinner while the kids were busy on the beach, parasailing and partying in the banana boat that sailed back and forth offshore. Kelty was once again the ringleader of the group.
One night at dinner, Kelty said out of the blue, “C’mon, Mom, let’s dance.” It was special, me and my seventeen-year-old son twirling together around the dance floor, and it was so like Kelty. He was the rare kind of teenager who would run up to me in front of his friends, give me a big hug, and tell me I was the best mom in the world. I had always said we were soulmates, and I never felt it more than that night while we were dancing.
New Year’s Eve is a huge celebration in Mexico, and we agreed to gather in the dining room to celebrate and ring in the new year. At some point, I realized Kelty wasn’t there. When I went up to the room he was sharing with Riley, I found him in bed. It startled me. I said: “Kelts, what are you doing? It’s New Year’s Eve.”
“Mom, it’s okay,” he said. “I just want to be safe. I’m fine, don’t worry. I just feel that this is where I need to be right now.”
My alarm bells went off. I found Kerry and told him, and when he went to check on our son, Kelty said the same thing. “I’m fine, Dad. I’m just tired. I’m okay.” Kelty eventually fell asleep, but we kept checking on him all night.
We weren’t home in Whistler long before it was time for Kelty to go back to Notre Dame. I took him to the airport, but we were early, so we decided to have something to eat. At one point, he looked at me and said: “Mom, I just don’t feel that good about going back to school.”
I was surprised. He had been doing so well since he’d returned in September, and he hadn’t said a word to Kerry or me about not wanting to return until that moment. I told him I sometimes felt like that when it was time to return to work after a vacation, and that sometimes we just had to push through it and do our best. I was sure he wasn’t the only high school student, the only Notre Dame student, who struggled to measure up to high standards, I said. He nodded, and then it was time for his flight. He walked toward the security gate and then came back out and waved to me, doing it several times. It rattled me a bit—I couldn’t help but think, “Is my boy okay?” I just didn’t know. I worried on the drive back to Whistler.
That night, Kelty phoned me from the dorm pay phone. He was crying. “Mom, I don’t know how to explain this, but I was on the airplane and I had these terrible, terrible thoughts. It was kind of like I was on this roller coaster, and I’d kind of go into the pit of my stomach. Mom, I don’t want to feel like that. How come I’m feeling like that? Mom, make me better.”
A prickle of fear shot down my back. “Kelts, settle down, just settle down.” I told him to hold on, and from our other line I phoned his house parent in the dorm, related what was going on, and asked him to go and be with Kelty. The house parent phoned me back to say that Kelty had been anxious at first, but now everything seemed okay.
After that, we talked to Kelty every day. Sometimes he was in a great mood, telling us about the hockey games on his schedule, but other days he wasn’t himself. At our request, Notre Dame arranged for him to see a therapist in Regina. He prescribed Paxil, a widely used antidepressant, and Ativan, another common prescription used to treat anxiety. Kelty didn’t like taking medication of any kind—he hid the pill bottles from his friends—but he told us the drugs calmed him and allowed him to concentrate. It was, like everything else for Kelty, about being normal. If he needed Paxil and Ativan to feel normal, then that’s all that mattered.
In late January, Kerry went out to Notre Dame. He convinced Kelty to start keeping a journal, which he hoped would help our son better understand how he was feeling. We felt we were doing everything we could—the school was aware of Kelty’s fragility, he was seeing a Notre Dame counsellor, he had been prescribed the appropriate medication, and we were monitoring him daily. Still, when it was time for Kerry to leave, he did so reluctantly.
A week later, I was on a business trip in Toronto when Kelty phoned me. His voice was filled with the kind of anguish you never want to hear from your children. “Mom, I need you. I need you so much.”
Again, the prickle of fear. “Kelty,” I said, “I’m coming.”
I immediately flew to Regina, drove to the school, and took Kelty with me to my hotel. His midterm exams were coming up, and he was worried about how he would do. It was also the weekend of the school’s winter dance, and he wanted to go. We decided to study together and then went shopping for some new clothes so that he could look sharp at the dance. I dropped him off at the school for the Friday night party, but on the way back to the hotel I couldn’t stop asking myself: “How can my beautiful boy be suffering so much? Why can’t I take away his pain?”
The next morning I had an appointment with the therapist the school had recommended Kelty see. The counsellor greeted me at his office mid-shave, as if that was perfectly normal. He was too casual for me—and unprofessional. Things didn’t improve when the first thing he said to me was, “Do you think Kelty is gay?”
I was furious. “I couldn’t care less if he’s gay,” I snapped. “That’s not what we’re talking about. I want to know what’s going on with my child.”
“Well, he’s probably gay. That’s his problem.”
That’s all the counsellor could say. After I’d asked him a few more questions, I decided I didn’t want Kelty to see him again.
After the disastrous appointment, I picked up Kelty at his dorm. He’d enjoyed the dance and partying with his friends,
he said. As we continued talking, I was surprised by the number of questions he asked about our family history, wondering what people like his great-grandfather had been like. He told me that he liked going to the school chapel, because he found comfort and quiet there. A girl he liked was always there, too. “That’s kind of a neat sign, eh, Mom?”
Over the course of the day, I met with everyone around Kelty, including the head of the school and the school priest. We all knew that many teens struggle with anxiety through their school years, that the pressure and the expectations are often too much to handle. The school was not unfamiliar with the phenomenon of teen depression or with its widespread effect.
That night over dinner, Kelty asked, “Mom, do you think Dad would mind if I wanted to be a priest?”
“Kelty, Dad will be fine with whatever you want to be. He just wants you to be happy.”
“Well, I think I might want to go into the army. What do you think about that? What do you think Dad would say?”
It was strange, so extreme—from a priest to a soldier—but I told him we would support him in whatever he decided to do, that we just wanted what was best for him.
Then he started talking about Bishop’s and wanting to be a lawyer. He was all over the map, taking stabs at everything, looking ahead but also looking for approval.
Kelty stayed with me at my hotel in Regina, and I drove him back to school on Monday. When I dropped him off, he told me he was fine. He was going to study for his midterms, and he was looking forward to an upcoming hockey game in Morden, Manitoba, because all four of his grandparents were driving in from Winnipeg to watch him play. I headed for the airport and flew home.
Choosing Hope Page 5