Choosing Hope

by Ginny Dennehy

  It was during this hectic time that Kerry and I met Lloyd and Heather Craig. Lloyd was then CEO of the Surrey Credit Union, and he and Heather had lost their twenty-five-year-old son Gavin to suicide in the fall of 2001. When the four of us got together for lunch in Whistler one day, the Craigs told us they were working with the University of British Columbia medical faculty and the VGH Foundation to raise $4.5 million to endow a mental health chair for the university. The plan was to hire an international expert who would conduct research and raise the profile of depression and the need for detection and treatment. They asked us to join their undertaking.

  Kerry and I liked the idea, as did the rest of the board. However, we were adamant that whoever was hired be not only renowned and credible in the field of mental health but also personable. He or she had to be someone approachable who could get the message out to both adults and young people, especially the vulnerable “lost” group between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five.

  Lloyd was an indefatigable proponent of the new position, and he engaged credit union members all over the province, asking them to pledge a mere $1 each to the cause. One million of them did. He raised another $800,000 through charity golf tournaments, and when our foundation donated $500,000, the proposal became a reality. In 2005, psychiatrist Dr. Allan Young was recruited from a university in Britain to become the first chair of UBC’s new B.C. Credit Union Centre of Excellence for Depression Research and Care. The provincial government under then premier Gordon Campbell had matched the $2.5 million raised by our foundation and the Craigs’ efforts, resulting in $5 million for the UBC program. (Campbell had also been touched by the disease of depression—his father, Charles, had committed suicide in 1961.)

  Allan Young was a wonderful catch, a celebrated pioneer in the use of brain imaging as a way to study mental illness. He was not shy about speaking on “the monster disease” at events all over Greater Vancouver, reminding the media that it was important to dispel the myths and report the facts about depression. He was learned, amiable, and a father himself. We were especially pleased with his public stance on depression. “It’s about promoting a shift in culture. Of holding stigma up to the light and letting it be seen for what it is—nothing less than prejudice,” Allan told the Vancouver Sun. Not long after, our foundation pledged another $500,000 to the UBC project so that Allan and his team could conduct a multi-year study into the relationship between age and vulnerability to mood disorders, adolescent depression, and suicide.

  One of my duties from the beginning was to be the face of the foundation. I’d never had a hard time talking—people always said that Kelty got his love of the spotlight from me—but standing up in front of strangers to talk about such personal events was nerve-wracking at first. I gave one of my first speeches several months after Kelty died to the Young Presidents’ Organization, which was holding an event on giving back. The YPO is an international organization of CEOs under the age of forty-five who share a mission of gaining leadership values through education and the exchange of ideas. Kerry and I were happy to talk about Kelty and our decision to start the foundation. Kerry started off, and he was his usual confident and engaging self. Then I got up and emotionally told the audience what it was like to go through Kelty’s illness and suicide. At one point, a woman stood up and said, “My brother took his life, and I’ve never talked about it.” Several other people in the room followed suit. Suddenly, we were lifting the cloak of secrecy that has so long shrouded the topic of depression. As hard as it was to hear their stories and relive ours—something that continues to be difficult to this day, every time we appear at an event or give a speech—we knew that we were making a difference.

  I was invited to speak at the 2002 B.C. Children’s Hospital Crystal Ball, the hospital foundation’s annual fundraiser at the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver. It was a lavish, well-attended event, and I was nervous. But I knew by that point that we had committed the foundation to raising money for the new mental health centre, and I needed to get our message out. I spoke at the same event in 2004.

  Riley was involved from the time the foundation began its work. She came along to most of the events, to the dinners and out on the golf course, but mostly stayed in the background, occasionally posing for photographs but never speaking in public. It was wonderful to have her there, but I would learn that even though she never talked about it, it was hard to see all of us so focussed on the brother she had lost.

  By the time we were forced to cancel the golf tournament in 2008 because of shifting economic realities, we were proud to have raised an astonishing $1.5 million from the tournament revenue alone, testimony not only to the hard work of our board and volunteers but also to the generosity of the community. The board got together to decide on our next move. We held two Dance Fore Life events at Bar None in Vancouver, based on the successful fundraisers we’d previously held at Buffalo Bills in Whistler. We raised $7,000 or so and had a great time. The Kelty Circle, along with assorted donations and other small fundraisers, kept the foundation and its endowment going strong.

  (5)

  Riley

  THE MONTHS AFTER Kelty died had been rough for Riley. In June 2001, she came home from school and told us that she wanted to go to the Notre Dame summer hockey school with her cousin from Calgary. Riley was a good player, had been from the start, and she played forward for the Whistler Winterhawks. Hockey was a rough sport for someone with her history of illnesses, but Rye worked hard at whatever she did. After Kelty died, she changed the number on her jersey to seventeen to honour him. Her Notre Dame request surprised us, but we agreed, and off she went.

  She loved the hockey school, and when she came back she informed us that she wanted to go to Notre Dame that fall for Grade 10. I was screaming inside. It was as if she was following her brother’s lead, and I couldn’t face it. I was afraid to let her go, worried about feeling even more empty than I already did. But Kerry and I talked about it, and I relented. Even though she didn’t articulate it, I knew it was Riley’s way of escaping the grief and the too-visible memories of Kelty.

  Toward the end of August, I flew with Riley to Notre Dame. Just like I had done for Kelty, I got her settled into her dorm room. Letting my other baby go was harder than I could have imagined. I had a lump in my throat as I watched her walk around the campus; I was proud that she was maturing into a beautiful young woman but scared about what the future might hold.

  Riley liked her new school, and in our frequent phone chats she seemed to be doing well, both in her studies and in her social life. Then, just before Thanksgiving, she called home in tears. A girl in her dorm, a girl she knew from summer hockey camp, had committed suicide. Riley was devastated. She didn’t want to stay at Notre Dame. We got her on the next flight out and picked her up at the airport the next day. I squeezed her so hard when I saw her that I’m sure she thought I would never let go.

  Riley returned to Whistler Secondary, and at first it was as if she had never left. She was playing hockey again and snowboarding with her friends. But her grades started slipping, which was unusual. She seemed concerned mostly about things that didn’t matter, like how she looked, and we couldn’t get her to talk about what was bothering her.

  That Christmas, our first without Kelty, Kerry decided we should rent out our house to tourists for New Year’s Eve. We didn’t want to go too far afield, so for fun we rented a cabin in the Whistler campground, and three of Kelty’s friends from Notre Dame—Noah, Neal, and Hughie—joined us. We called them the Lost Boys. It was as if we had three Keltys staying with us, playing pool in the communal area, horsing around and bringing back to us, ever so briefly, a delightful piece of our son’s life. Riley opted to spend the holidays with Britt and her family. We thought she couldn’t bear to be around Kelty’s friends.

  We weren’t surprised when Riley told us she didn’t want to go back to Whistler Secondary for Grade 11. She wanted to go away to school, she said, somewhere far from our small town where everyone
knew her. We tried to talk her out of it, but she was as persuasive as her brother had been. “Please, Mom,” she said. “You let Kelty go away. Why can’t I go away? I think it will be good for me. I need to get out of Whistler.”

  She was becoming lost in the shadow of her brother’s death.

  We checked out several private schools on Vancouver Island and settled on Shawnigan Lake in Cowichan Bay. We talked to the staff there about Riley and her background; they understood the challenges she was facing and said they would be happy to have her. In late August 2002, we were once again taking our child to a school far from home.

  But Riley struggled at Shawnigan. She was always phoning us, and I was constantly heading to the ferry for visits to the school. I spent hours on the phone with her counsellors, trying to figure out what was going on and how to fix it. She didn’t seem to feel good about anything. There was no hockey team at the school, so she played volleyball, but she wasn’t good enough to make the first-string team. It eerily mirrored the disappointments Kelty had faced at Notre Dame, something that began to haunt me. It all haunted me: Riley’s change in personality, her difficulties with academics, her anxiety and uneasiness. This couldn’t be happening again, I told myself. It just couldn’t. But the phone calls continued, and just before the end of the first term, I told her that we were done with Shawnigan. “You know what, Rye?” I said. “You’re coming home. I know you think you need to be away, but you’re just not ready.” She didn’t put up a fight, and she was back in Whistler the next day.

  It wasn’t long before I noticed how thin she was getting. Riley had always had an athletic build, and she was a careful eater, partly because of her allergies. Now she was clearly showing signs of bulimia, eating and purging so that she could control her weight. She brushed off my concerns, telling me I was overreacting. But it nagged at me, and one day the mother of one of Riley’s buddies said, “You know, Ginny, I think Riley needs to see somebody.” She recommended a Vancouver therapist who might be able to help. We insisted Riley see the therapist, and their relationship would last for several years. It seemed to help, though Riley—true to form—never said anything about those sessions to Kerry or me.

  Back at Whistler Secondary for Grade 12, Riley fell right back into the social whirl. She worked part-time, as she always had, as a server at Earl’s restaurant and then in a little sweater shop in Whistler village. She and the rest of her crowd spent their spare time up the mountain snowboarding or off the mountain drinking and getting into a little mischief. We weren’t naïve parents, and we knew that Riley and her friends were probably smoking pot, too. We nursed her through the aftermath of more than one drinking incident, including the night she fell off the deck of a house still under construction and was rushed by ambulance to the Vancouver General Hospital spinal cord unit. She was lucky, ending up with only a few bruised ribs. “There must have been a guardian angel placing her on the ground,” a nurse told us.

  Another time, at a Christmas party while on a date with Britt’s cousin Sam, Riley fell on top of a scalding woodstove, suffering second-degree burns on her arm. She was also caught driving under the influence by the Whistler police and had her licence suspended. It didn’t stop her from drinking, but the impact on her mobility and her social life taught her a valuable lesson, and she vowed to never drive drunk again. Much to my consternation, Riley also smoked cigarettes. All teenagers think they’re immortal, and Riley was no different. She didn’t listen when I admonished her about smoking and reminded her that it was even more dangerous for someone with asthma.

  Riley’s last year at school was a rocky one. Because she had missed the requisite career prep course in Grade 11, she took the course online. I pretty much completed it for her, but I didn’t feel guilty for one second. All I cared about was getting her through Grade 12, getting her to that graduation ceremony. When she made it, Kerry and I were both relieved and proud. Before we knew it, Riley was moving to Vancouver with her boyfriend, L.J., and signing up for arts courses at Langara College.

  In October 2004, Kerry’s brother Shaun died. He had been sick with cancer since before Kelty’s death, but it was devastating for all of us. Shaun had always meant so much to us and to our kids. For Riley, the death of her uncle was just one more unbearable loss.

  We were back from the funeral for what seemed like only a millisecond when Riley announced that she had broken up with L.J., was quitting Langara, and was heading to Los Angeles to visit her cousin Tegan, who was by then an established actress working in the movie business. She told us not to worry; she would bunk with Tegan, get an under-the-table job, and see how things went. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea, but she was eighteen. We let her go.

  She hadn’t been there long before I got a frightening phone call. “Mom, I think I’m in trouble. I need help with this eating thing, because I can’t control it on my own.” I was terrified, but I was happy that Riley was reaching out. I immediately went into Mom mode, telling her to get on the next plane and come right back home. Before I could finish the sentence, she shut me down. “No, Mom, I need to do this on my own.”

  Worried, I immediately flew to Los Angeles as soon as I could. Riley was noticeably thinner. I got on the phone to her therapist back in Vancouver, and we started working on getting Riley into a facility that could help her. The Sierra Tucson treatment centre in Tucson, Arizona, instructed us to get a raft of tests done and send them the results. For the next few days, the emails flew back and forth.

  Riley and I finally drove to Tucson for interviews, and we waited back at our hotel for a decision. Finally, the centre phoned to say they’d take her. It would cost $50,000 for the month or so she’d be there, but I didn’t care. The centre asked that I stay in town for a week, having no contact with Riley, so that they could ensure that she was stable enough to undertake the program. They assured me they would call me regularly at the hotel to keep me updated, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had abandoned her. It was a feeling I was starting to hate. I had felt it when my Grams died, then when Kelty died, and now here I was again, abandoning someone I loved. But at last the centre said Riley was okay and I could go home.

  Three weeks into the program, Kerry and I flew to Tucson for parent week. We checked into a hotel for five days and began attending counselling sessions at the facility, some with just the three of us, others in group settings. It was gruelling to see our daughter so vulnerable and hear her talk about everything that was wrong with her life. At one of the sessions, Riley focussed on her issues with us, mostly with me. She said her eating disorder was my fault because I always seemed to be on a diet and was never happy with the way I looked.

  Just as hurtful was Riley’s revelation in another session that I was devoting so much time to the Kelty Patrick Dennehy Foundation that she felt neglected. “You care more about a dead person than a live one,” she accused. It stunned me. I knew she needed to get these feelings off her chest if she was going to deal with them, but it broke my heart to hear her say such things. I had immersed myself in the foundation as my way of making something meaningful out of Kelty’s death, but my main concern had always been Riley. I cared more about her than anything, and it was hard to hear she didn’t understand that. She had less criticism for her father, but it didn’t matter. Through it all, Kerry and I simply sat and listened. This was Riley’s way of dealing with her demons, and if she needed to place the blame on our shoulders, so be it.

  The staff at the centre told us that when Riley had finished her treatment to their satisfaction, she would be moved to a halfway house to help her integrate back into the community. They warned us that we should not be surprised if she replaced the bulimia with another addiction, drugs or drinking or anything else that allowed her to be in control and push away her pain. Riley refused to go to a halfway house, though, insisting she could come home and get on with her life. Kerry and I had returned to Whistler by then, but I flew back to Tucson and took her to visit the recommended halfway houses, hop
ing she might change her mind. But she’d had enough, and part of me could understand that. Since Kelty’s death, I had been inundated with advice, much of it in the form of books about the grieving process. But you can only take in so much. I think she was sick of all the analysis.

  Riley came home, and she never had a problem with bulimia after that. But soon she was off on another track, wanting to join Tegan and Cath’s son Jesse in the movie business. To do that, she said, she needed to go to Vancouver Film School. We enrolled her for the year-long program, starting in the spring of 2006.

  She loved film school and immersed herself in her film production classes. She met a new set of friends, talented and committed young people who seemed to have a good sense of what they wanted out of life. But she was twenty and living in downtown Vancouver, where there were parties around every corner. She graduated from VFS in March 2007—her final project was an interview with the owners of the Kearney funeral home, a family dynasty. When she had no luck finding work, she moved back to Whistler again.

  Kerry and I had the sense that our daughter was still feeling lost. And once again, she reached out for help. This time, her drinking was out of control. Alcohol would change her from a bright, vibrant girl to a babbling rag doll. It was as if she was allergic to it; even one glass of wine would set her off. She was never a mean drunk or an angry one. Instead, alcohol seemed to shut her down.

  That Riley recognized this, and admitted she needed to do something about it, made me proud of her. And again, despite how difficult it was, I felt some relief. She was still seeing Pat, her therapist, and that seemed to help, but Riley never told me what they talked about. It was all part of her trying to find her own way, to find her path. It worried me, but I was her mother, and it was my job to do everything I could to get her where she needed to go to have a healthy, happy life.