Choosing Hope

by Ginny Dennehy

  When death steals the promise of your future and destroys nature’s ordained plan, there is no getting over it. Although memories and photographs provide an ethereal connection to the past, and you are thankful to have them, nothing fills the void of not being able to hug your child again. Nothing prepares you for the reality that you will never again hear the sound of your son’s laughter echoing down the hallway or kiss the light sprinkling of freckles across your daughter’s nose.

  I will never again curl up on the couch with Riley, a bowl of popcorn balanced on our knees while we watch her favourite shows, House and America’s Next Top Model. I will never again sit on the sidelines in a cold arena, my breath visible, my hands warm in woolen mittens, cheering on Kelty while he skates like a dream for whatever hockey team is lucky enough to have him. Kerry and I will never get another little note from our kids, handwritten with their distinctive flourishes, like the note Riley wrote to us when she was ten, with all its glorious misspellings. “Happy 17th Anavercery,” it said on the front, and, inside: “To: Mom and Dad, Hope you have a gret anavercery and I hope you have good trip! From Riley. Roses are Red vilots are blue sugar is sweet and so are both of you.”

  I won’t be able to laugh at Kelty’s silly but amazing imitation of the William Wallace character from his favourite film, Braveheart. I won’t be rolling my eyes as he describes the antics of goofy Adam Sandler, who never made a movie Kelty didn’t love. I will never dance at my son’s wedding or feel tears of joy as my daughter tries on her wedding gown for the first time. I will never hold Riley’s hand and whisper encouragement in her ear as she gives birth to her own babies. I will never know what it’s like to have a son-in-law or a daughter-in-law, to have the privilege of welcoming a family of in-laws to our fold. Kerry and I will never be blessed to hear a precious grandchild call us Grams or Gramps, a child of our children, who is all sticky kisses and tiny bear hugs. We won’t be turning one of the spare bedrooms in our empty nest into a nursery or a playroom so that we have a good excuse for sleepovers.

  We will have none of this.

  When my children died, I became a different person, and people began to look at me differently. I was a social alien of sorts, one of those poor mothers who had tragically lost a child, and then tragically lost the other. People, well meaning as they are, are afraid. They are afraid that by mentioning the loss, much less your children’s names, it will make you relive everything; they are afraid to talk about their own children and grandchildren, to show photos and brag about their accomplishments; they are afraid to say the wrong thing. They worry that if they tell me about how their teenager is getting into trouble or not living up to their expectations, I might be thinking, well, at least your child is alive, and I would give anything to have my children back, even with all the hardships a parent goes through. As difficult as it’s been for me to engage in some of those conversations, because I do have those thoughts, I know it’s difficult for them, too, especially those closest to me.

  In the first few weeks after both my children died, it was easier just to stay home, cloistered in the safety of the family net. I couldn’t face the world. I didn’t want to see people. I didn’t want people to look at me differently.

  As she had done when Kelty died, my sister Cath came to stay after we lost Riley. My best friend, Clare, who has been with me through everything since our school days in Winnipeg, came and stayed with me, too. She was such a comfort, and we would spend hours curled up on my bed talking.

  I realized soon enough that even if my life had twice stood still, I needed to pull myself out of the darkness and find a way to live without Kelty and Riley. I made myself go out for the occasional coffee or drink with a girlfriend, trying to establish a new routine. I found much peace in walking alone, lost in my thoughts, along the paths and trails in the glorious Whistler wilderness.

  After Kelty died, I met a wonderful woman who told me something I often think about. Stephanie had lost a daughter in an accident and a brother to suicide. Those of us who have lost a child speak a different language, she said, and I knew instantly what she meant. It is not a language you want to learn, but grieving parents understand each other.

  When suicide takes your child, the bond among grieving parents is about more than the loss. It’s about the stigma that exists around the topic of suicide. Despite the devastating statistics, despite its ravaging of every age group and every social strata, depression is still too often whispered about, treated more like a shameful aberration than the crippling disease it is.

  Kerry and I felt we had a duty to reverse that stigma, to educate. That was one of the reasons we handed out Kelty’s suicide note at his service—and one of the reasons we started the Kelty Patrick Dennehy Foundation. There is nothing to hide. The more we learned, the more puzzled we were. In an age in which communication and information are so powerful and pervasive, why aren’t people talking more openly about youth and depression-related suicide, especially since suicide is the second leading cause of teenage deaths in Canada, and the incidences of both attempts and successful suicides have increased by 300 per cent in the past three decades? Why, we wondered, have less than a third of those who commit suicide been identified by medical experts as suffering from depression? Why do so few of those sufferers receive treatment, and why are there so few places for them to get information and immediate, hands-on help?

  We wondered, too, why there wasn’t more universal discussion on the medical front so that parents would have a better understanding of the symptoms, just as they do for measles or chicken pox. The majority of suicide victims show signs of their intentions in advance of the act, usually overtures of love for family and friends. And the sad truth is that the stigma surrounding suicide means the statistics we have may only scratch at the surface of the problem.

  After Kelty’s death, I know some people thought I should have done something to stop him from taking his life. It was as if I could hear them thinking, “What kind of a mother is she? How could she not have seen the signs? How could she not have saved him? That’s her job.”

  But I knew that Kerry and I had done the best we could as parents. Once we understood that our son was suffering, we did everything within our power to help him. We did research, grilled the experts, consulted doctors and therapists, and made sure he took the prescribed medication. We talked to him and monitored him, marshalling every resource at our disposal as we desperately tried to pull our boy out of the darkness and help him to understand that depression wasn’t the end. But he was too young to understand that what we were telling him was true, too young to have the strength to go on.

  I have never felt angry about Kelty’s death, nor have I felt guilty. I know that he was just too wrapped up in his own pain to stray from his plan. We know now he had a plan to end his life, a carefully laid plan, from the moment he convinced me to go on the business trip to Florida. He said his goodbyes to his friends, his sister, and his dad on the day he died. He planned to hang himself in my office, in our house, because that’s where he felt safe. He carefully moved a favourite family photo so that he could see it before he died. And he planned his loving, poignant suicide note, telling us not to worry, that his life in heaven would be better than it was on Earth.

  If I beat myself up over anything, it’s wishing I had known more about depression-related suicide among teens. There were signals I didn’t recognize as signals until it was too late. What would I have done differently? I would never have gone away. I don’t think Kelty would have taken his life if I was at home. I think he felt I couldn’t handle it, but his big strong dad could. Kerry talks about how he shouldn’t have gone skiing that day, but that isn’t realistic. If Kelty wanted to kill himself, he was going to kill himself. He could have thrown himself in front of a car or found another way to achieve his goal.

  When Kelty died, I wanted my life to be over, too. I felt the same way when I lost Riley. I wanted to be with my children and nowhere else. I didn’t feel strong enough
to go on without them. Kerry understood how I was feeling, but it upset him. He was worried about me and angry that I was selfish enough to think of leaving him behind.

  Some marriages fail after the loss of a son or daughter. Tragedy can lay waste to a family unit and exacerbate already unsettling issues between spouses. Too often, blame goes looking for a home. Even if there is none, the memories and the pain that come with staying together often cannot be surmounted by the parents left behind to grieve. In her book, The Bereaved Parent, published in 1977, author Harriet Schiff estimates that 80 to 90 per cent of marriages end in divorce following a child’s death. Recent studies put the figure closer to one in five. Many of those who divorce do so for reasons other than their loss. But no matter the numbers, the truth is that the intimacy between a husband and wife can become strained as each parent struggles to cope with the loss of their child. That Kerry and I have survived the untenable—losing both our children—is a testimony, I think, to our ability to find comfort and strength in the kind of person each of us is. We may have lost our cherished children, but we have not lost what we have long cherished in each other. In many ways, we have become stronger, both as individuals and as a couple. What gets us up in the morning is that strength and our mutual respect. We need each other more now than we ever did, and we need to preserve the memory of Kelty and Riley. With our loss has come a new closeness. Our love and our children are what bond us now.

  People say things will get easier as time marches on, but they don’t. The loss of Kelty and Riley is with me every single moment of every single day. No matter how distracted I get—and I work hard at being distracted—no matter how I feel, whether I’m down in the dumps or having a great time on vacation, my kids are with me. Every night before I go to sleep, I go over the next day in my mind: how I’m going to get through it, what my plan is to keep busy, how I can face another day without them. The first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning is my children, and how I’m going to honour them that day. That is what gets me out of bed. I manage because I have to. For them.

  But it will never be easy.

  The month after Riley died, my nephew Rory, Cath’s son, married his girlfriend, Brooke, in Hawaii. Riley was supposed to be part of the ceremony, and Kerry and I decided we needed to be there. Everyone had rallied around us during a sad time, and we needed to do the same for them in this happy time. The day was clear and beautiful, and watching Rory and Brooke exchange their vows on the beach was good for my heart. The reception was lovely, but at some point, I hit a wall. Thrilled as I was for them, it was overwhelming to realize that I would never see Kelty or Riley exchange vows. Kerry and I left early.

  I had been invited to give a speech at the November Crystal Ball, the B.C. Children’s Hospital annual fundraiser, and whenever I needed distraction during our time in Hawaii, I returned to our hotel room and immersed myself in preparing it. Up to that point, my public speaking had always focussed on Kelty. This was the first speech that would be about losing both my children. The hospital had kindly offered me an out after Riley died, but I felt I needed to do it. Writing words that honoured both my children seemed to help.

  The speech went well, but talking in public about the loss of both of my kids was rough.

  Why do I share this painful story with you? Well, like my children, who had the power of giving back, I hope that by sharing what I have learned about my children it could be a gift for you... Kelty and Riley have helped me realize what is important in life. They have helped our extended family bond together even more tightly. Over the years, I have learned so many things. I have learned to be thankful for the things that you have in life and the things that you don’t have or have lost. As I always said to Riley, everything happens for a reason.

  To this day, every time I get up to give a speech, Kelty and Riley are right there with me. I can feel them, beautiful angels sitting on my shoulder, proud of me for doing so much for others in their name.

  A month after that speech, we had to face Christmas: the first Christmas in twenty-three years without one of our children to celebrate it with. Kerry and I decided to spend the holidays with our families in Winnipeg. Kerry’s mom hadn’t been well, and my dad had been sick, too. We needed to see them. A few weeks before we left, Kerry and I went skating on Green Lake. He laced up his hockey skates and I dug out the old ice skates I hadn’t worn for ages. We skated all the way to the end of the lake and back, the sun on our faces, the snow-draped mountains a breathtaking backdrop. After a time, I headed back to the house to do some baking. Kerry stayed behind to play a bit of hockey with the families having fun out on the ice. I was up to my elbows in flour when the phone rang. “Gin.” It was Kerry. “Come and get me. And bring the car.”

  He had fallen and broken his hip. The same hip had been operated on years before and was held together with a metal rod. Once the clinic in Whistler determined it was broken, they referred us to Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver. It was late, so we went home, planning to head to Vancouver the next day. But in the morning, Kerry could barely get out of bed. It took me forty-five minutes to get him into the car, and it was only when I conscripted the help of our friend Garry that we managed at all. The Lions Gate diagnosis was simple: there was nothing they could do because of the rod. The hip would have to heal itself, and that meant that Kerry couldn’t do anything except rest for a week. I trundled him back into the car with the aid of some doctors who happened to be in the parking lot, and drove him to his North Vancouver place.

  By then, Kerry was working as chief executive officer for the Pacifica Treatment Centre, a job he had taken in the spring of 2009. An oasis of residential drug and alcohol treatment in the heart of east Vancouver, Pacifica offers an extensive three-level program, including out-patient counselling, and it has helped more than ten thousand people deal with their addictions since it opened in 1977. Since the job would have meant a daily commute from Whistler for Kerry, which was out of the question, he lived during the week in North Vancouver, heading home to Whistler for the weekends. Janice, the family friend he stayed with during the week, was fantastic when I delivered my hip-damaged husband to her, and she promised to keep an eye on him.

  Confident that my husband was in good hands, I went to Winnipeg as scheduled. Kerry joined me there a few days before Christmas. We had a lovely dinner at Cath’s, a wonderful family gathering around the dinner table. With Kerry on crutches and Dodie using a walker, it was a bit chaotic, but the distraction of helping them somehow made Christmas bearable. When we returned to Whistler before New Year’s, though, the reminder that Christmas would never be the same for us was stark: the house was so big and empty. There was no tree, no stockings filled with surprises and treats, no echo of my delighted kids ripping open a gift.

  Throughout it all, Kerry was wonderful. He knows me like no one else and can sense my moods, tell when I need to be alone or when encouraging words will boost my spirits. “Gin, they are no longer suffering,” he would say. “They are no longer in pain. You don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  I try not to feel sorry for myself, but there are times when I get lost in sadness, missing Kelty and Riley so much and wanting them with me. Anniversaries, birthdays, and vacations are the worst, vivid annual reminders of what has changed. When I wake up on those days, it’s good to have focus. I get up and head to my spin class, go for a walk, or spend all day working on foundation business. I have learned that you can’t just stop. As much as you want to shut down when you lose a child, you can’t.

  As when Kelty died, we had Riley cremated. Britt took some of the ashes, and we buried the rest in an urn beside Kelty’s, with simple plaques marking their resting place. I visit their graves often, and it brings me a kind of contentment. I feel they are with me there. I talk to them about everything, not just how much I love and miss them but what’s going on in our lives and the lives of their friends. When spring comes and the wildflowers bloom around their graves, I am reminded of li
fe’s beauty and promise. In winter, deep, soft snow covers them like a protective blanket. Their ashes are safe in the earth, and their spirits are free.

  The fall after Kelty died, the high school asked if they could plant a tree on the school grounds in his honour. Today, it has grown straight and tall, fresh and green in spring, dropping a thick layer of leaves every fall onto a rock near its trunk that’s embedded with a small plaque: “In Memory, Kelty Patrick Dennehy 1983–2001.” I often walk the path my children walked every day to school to visit the tree, feeling its strength as its branches spread and reach for the sun.

  Kerry had a memorial bench installed on the edge of Green Lake, on the public walkway close to our back deck, the summer after we lost Kelty. The plaque reads “Our Beautiful Boy, Kelty Patrick Dennehy, Nov. 23/83–Mar. 2/01.” When we lost Riley, he added “Our Sweet Babes, Riley Rae Dennehy, Jul. 3/86–Oct. 8/09.” I sit on that bench on many days, taking in the thickly treed mountains, the still waters of the lake, and the scudding clouds that envelop the valleys beyond. My children, I know, are there with me. Sometimes when a stranger is sitting on our bench it unsettles me, as if there is a sacredness about it that is for the Dennehys alone.

  My days are filled with a different routine now. Exercise in the morning, meeting friends for lunch or coffee and, of course, foundation business. For a time after Riley died, I pursued a diversion she had encouraged me in: selling jewellery as a home sales business. Riley always said it was the perfect side job for me, and she was right. After she was gone, it gave me a reason to get up in the morning and get myself out of the house, to be with people and talk about things other than losing my children. The jewellery parties were great fun, and I reconnected with a lot of people in the community.