by Renee Rodin
I went about my daily life, returned a tool to a neighbour and told him, told others too. Very matter-of-factly I said, “My son’s fiancée has just been murdered.” From a distance I watched as people gasped, as if I’d delivered a kick to their solar plexus.
Soon Noah was home and I held him in my arms, held back my tears. He needed me to be strong for him; I wanted to rock him as if he were a baby. If only I could soothe him, “It was just a bad dream.” But he could not awaken from this nightmare.
I am his mother. I was supposed to protect him, but I had no idea how to guide him through this wanton waste—I struggled for words. All he wanted was that it had never happened; all I wanted was to make his hurt go away. The shock that had been such a blessing was wearing off. The pain was getting in.
Noah’s sister Joey, his brother Daniel, and Daniel’s girlfriend Kelly, all of whom live in New York, came to Vancouver. Our family rallied around Noah. At times we fell apart. It is difficult enough to cope with natural loss due to sickness, accident or age, when there is no one to blame. How were we to grapple with the knowledge that some person had deliberately caused such suffering?
In the warm air I felt old and cold. I pushed my leaden body out of the house only when necessary. The sunlight was too bright for my eyes. The slightest breeze battered my skin. Social events were out of the question; I didn’t know how to make small talk, could only talk about the murder. Small violations became huge to me. I felt hideous, as if strips of flesh were hanging off me. I was crazy with grief. To be shunned. Stay away. Stay away.
Jeab’s daughter had just turned two years old when her mother was killed. Noah told me after one of his many trips to Thailand that even months later, every time Cherie heard the phone ring she asked, “Is that my mother calling?”
I kept going over the details of Jeab’s death, wondering what her last minutes were like. Was there a point at which she realized she was losing a battle for her life? We know she fought back; there were scrapes of skin under her fingernails. I vacillated between disbelief and disgust about the freedom of the man accused of her death. Injustice really is burning; it released corrosive acids that swilled around in me. I lost trust.
Some people were creeped out by me, as if I were carrying a contagious disease. Others pretended that nothing had happened, out of their idea of politeness, and so the burden was on me to bring it up or join in the pretense. Some prescribed how long it would take “to get over this” or what to do “to feel better,” as if I were ill. Their reactions came from simply not knowing how to respond and their fear that I might spiral out of control. All strong emotions are frowned on in our society, but especially anger and sorrow. Restraint and control are the order of the day.
But there is no correct or incorrect way to grieve. No right or wrong way, no time line, no limit. Nobody can tell you how to feel or when to feel it, or for how long. Grief is totally individual, totally personal. Emotions are not to be legislated, not subject to logic; they are their own universe. Closure is a myth. You learn to live with the hole in your heart.
Waves of grief came at me at unexpected times, in unlikely places. I went down, under, then resurfaced. It happened over and over, only the intervals and intensity varied.
Old friends extended themselves in soft, sensitive ways with words and gestures I could absorb. New friends came to me. Secrets were revealed as if previously kept in shame; I was amazed by the number of people who have been touched by violence to their close friends or family members.
Because I couldn’t stand being so self-absorbed, trapped in my own misery, I forced myself to go downtown for a demonstration about the plight of Afghan women. After the bus ride, while walking over to the protest area, I spotted someone I’d just seen as a subject in a TV documentary on homeless people in Vancouver. She’d changed her hairstyle and I thought she looked good. As we passed each other, she punched me hard in my belly. I doubled over and screamed, “Fuck you. Why?” while she sauntered away. But I knew why. She’d seen something in my face that showed I was too vulnerable to be out in public. I jumped back on a bus and hurried home.
My one ritual for the newly dead is to light a candle—I have no spiritual framework, nothing to bolster me. Jeab was Buddhist. I googled the Bardo, which means “gap.” It is a description of the journey you take, the transitions you make, right after you die. I clicked on “violent death,”“enlightenment,” and “rebirth” for a person who has been killed. Then I explored what happens to the killer. Buddhism is pragmatic; it has an answer for everything. But blinded by “an eye for an eye,” I could find nothing of comfort to convey to my son, and his comfort was the only thing that would comfort me. The umbilical cord is a magical material, a substance that lies dormant, ready to stretch when needed over time and distance.
I carried the murderous stranger within me. Someone else’s child had become part of me. I abhorred him, wished he were dead. Somewhere, very deep inside, notions of forgiveness skittered resentfully through me. But I expelled everything that threatened to dilute my sorrow and rage. These feelings I had to hang on to, or I’d disappear.
Explanations were meaningless, experience nothing. There was no sense to Jeab’s murder, no way to understand Van Treeck’s actions. I knew only that the shape of my son’s heart had changed forever. I could promise him only that his life would go on. On the radio I heard another mother and son discuss the Yiddish term kine-ahora. It is meant to ward off the evil eye, to protect those you love. I berated myself that I’d never said it too.
I put on the bracelet Jeab had given me, an exquisite amber bead on a braided rope. I wore it constantly, its consistency and weight a reassuring presence. Every time I thought of her, a hundred times a day, I held on to the bead.
My three kids are close in age and close in spirit. After spending time with me in Vancouver, Noah joined Daniel and Joey in New York. There he was able to find work to pay for lawyers in Thailand to represent Jeab’s family.
Though he was holding down a full-time job, going back and forth to see Jeab’s family, stopping en route in Vancouver to see me, he remained solidly involved with the case. But I took on the full-time job of dealing with the media, politicians and authorities.
I researched law, fielded phone calls and monitored e-mails from different time zones in North America, Asia and Europe. This meant staying up late into the night and waking up early the next morning. Always I received opposite messages from those in the know about international murder cases. Some advised me to continue seeking media coverage. Others urged me to leave it to quiet diplomacy. The only consistent message from everyone was never to use “emotional” language, state only the facts. Otherwise I was likely to provoke and alienate authorities. All my writing; my press releases, my pleas to politicians, my requests for legal information and help from international agencies, became an act of repression.
Along with being concerned for Noah, for two years I tangled with officials in Canada, Thailand and Belgium. The stress, frustration and exhaustion built, and one day I ended up howling in the bathtub: overwhelmed by helplessness, in despair at the tragedy of Jeab’s death and the futility of all my efforts to bring the accused to trial. I had failed to reach the “right” politician, failed to reach the “right” press.
As a temporary measure my doctor put me on anti-depressants, and the first time I smiled, after about a week, my cheeks ached—it had been so long.
Slowly my energy for life returned. Our entire family danced with joy at Daniel and Kelly’s wedding. Joey and Craig’s new baby, Henry, has brought all of us great happiness.
Noah continues to support the Kobrams in every way possible. Cherie lives with her doting grandmother and her aunt Jha in her own culture, rich with tradition, and she is thriving. She is being raised to honour her mother’s memory and will grow up knowing that Jeab counted.
Noah has found new love with a woman in New York, and they recently went to the remote village in Buriram so that Sarah, no
w his wife, could meet Cherie and the Kobrams. Our family is continuing to grow. Kelly and Daniel now have a baby son, Jack. Sarah and Noah now have a baby daughter, Navi.
Mostly I accept there’s little more within a legal framework that we can do about Jeab’s murder.* Part of me still resists letting go. I wonder whether I’ll retain the lessons I’ve learned about grief or if I will disappoint people in the future as I’ve no doubt done in the past. It is hard to be consoled and it is hard to console.
* In June 2009, Belgian law enforcement arrested Sam Van Treeck. He is once again out on bail and to date there has been no trial.
Walking
for Henry, Jack and Navi
I’m in Brooklyn for my first grandchild Henry’s first birthday, rushing along a main street in Greenpoint, where he lives with his parents, Joey and Craig. I’ve just left yet another optometrist who says he can’t replace my lost contact lens unless I plunk down cash for a complete eye exam. Though I have a recent prescription from my doctor in Vancouver, it doesn’t include a recommended name brand like the Americans require.
“There’s got to be a way around this,” I think, slightly blind with more than mere frustration. It’s noon, the streets are bustling with shoppers, and I’m going as fast as my clogs will let me. I’m late to babysit Henry.
Just when I start to think about how he’s on the verge of walking and that I hope he doesn’t fall too much in the process of learning, I hit a patch of black ice on a corner ramp and go flying on all fours, to land kissing the cement.
Suddenly I’m a baby again. Even if I can’t remember what it was like originally, now it feels humiliating to fall—to quite possibly be seen as drunk, clumsy, old and helpless. I want to lie there bawling about the indignity of it all and from the searing pain that shoots through my ankle and my wrist.
Within seconds a construction worker from a nearby site appears to give me a hand up. He says, “Yesterday, exact same spot, someone else fell, imagine that, two people in two days.”
“Full moon,” I say and force myself to walk away with a straight back as if nothing had happened.
Craig searches in the freezer for a couple of bags of vegetables, which I apply to my wrist and ankle and after ten minutes I’m fine enough to take care of Henry for the afternoon.
That evening I’m walking with Joey, who is pushing Henry in his stroller along the same main street, and I fall again. I wish I could say it was in the exact same spot as before, because then I’d make sure to tell the construction worker about it the next day. But it’s at another ramp at another corner, with another patch of black ice and the street is now packed with people shopping not for lunch but for dinner.
I feel the same twist in my ankle, which was probably weak from the first fall, the same impact to my wrist, trying once again to break my fall. Joey has never seen her mother sprawled out like this and is in a flurry to help me up.
I try to laugh it off and when I get back to my apartment in Carroll Gardens I put ice on my hand, which seems the only thing still hurting this time. Within an hour there’s a furious egg sitting on my wrist.
The next morning, remembering all the Canadian cautionary tales about American medical costs, in particular the legendary five-hundred-dollar bill for an Aspirin someone was given at a hospital, I call the company from which I bought traveller’s medical insurance. After stipulating what they’ll cover (x-rays, yes, casts, yes, surgery—call first), they instruct me to go to the nearest hospital, which they say is twenty miles away.
Noah calls from work and tells me about a hospital which is only a few blocks away. A minute later Sarah phones and suggests I take a taxi. But I decide to walk and by the time I get there my ankle is throbbing. I try to call the insurance company again to tell them my ankle might need some medical attention too, but cellphones don’t work in this part of the hospital, the emergency room is packed and I don’t want to risk missing my turn by leaving the area.
At “Reception” I’m told, “It won’t be long.” An hour later at “Triage” after listening to the nurse calmly tell her colleague about the patient who had just tried to kill her, I notice she’s wearing the same clogs I’d had on when I’d fallen. I’m in rubber boots today. She smiles knowingly: “Clogs are good for indoors only, never on ice,” and points to the cast on her hand. She’s half my age; this doesn’t bode well for me.
After taking my vital signs, she tells me I’m being fast-tracked. Maybe it’s because it looks like there’s now a ripe tomato sitting on the top of my hand near the egg on my wrist—with a couple of slices of bread it would make a full meal. I sit down beside a couple who are fuming about their long wait. They tell me, “For our next emergency we won’t come back here again.” An hour later, I’m called to “Registration” and after being asked for the standard information, the next question is, “What religion are you?” I’m too rattled to ask why it matters. Maybe I’m looking really old, really sick, on the verge of dying. I mumble, “None.”
A half an hour later I see a doctor who is wearing a yarmulke. “I’m here because I’m a klutz,” I tell him. “In all my years of practising I’ve never heard anyone say that.” I’m glad to give him a new experience—he looks, like his colleagues in Emergency, exhausted and bored, as if they could all use something new.
I’d really like to talk with him about another emergency today, about how Israel is pounding the hell out of Gaza City in these final days of Little Bush’s term in office. But he pre-empts any real conversation between us with his curt question, “Are you pregnant?” and then, sensing my delight that my recently cut hair must have taken years off my looks, he adds, “I have to ask men that too.” I’m speechless.
An hour later after a series of x-rays I’m back in his office and he tells me, “It’s only a bad sprain.” “I’m supposed to have osteoporosis, but look I fell twice and nothing broke!” I boast. The doctor says, “Maybe you just didn’t fall the right way.” This doctor is a real downer. He puts an arm brace on me to keep my wrist immobile and gives me a tensor bandage for my now very swollen ankle, but promises not to mention it in his report because that might invalidate the original claim. (In the end the hospital will bill the insurance company twelve hundred dollars just for my wrist.) Thanks to the fact that the woman in charge of “Discharge” is missing from her desk I’m spared another procedure that would have taken another hour. I have indeed been fast-tracked: the whole thing in only four hours. I’d been sure I’d be there all day.
I hobble happily out of the hospital, work up the nerve to scribble a brand name on my contact lens prescription, and try at yet another optometrist. This one looks at the brace on my arm, squints at the prescription, and then gives me a couple of samples. I’ll be able to see properly again—maybe I’ll even be able to see the black ice next time.
On the radio at my apartment I hear there’s been a plane crash in Manhattan. My first thought is “another 9/11,” because that possibility still beats palpably beneath the surface of New York City. But this time the blame goes to the geese that had flown into the motors of a jet airplane.
A little boy who’d witnessed the incident from his mother’s car is interviewed. He’d said, “Look Mummy, a plane is landing on the river.” The extremely skilled and self-possessed pilot, “Sully” Sullenberger, had apparently instructed his passengers, “Brace for impact,” and then smoothly landed the plane on the Hudson River.
I turn on the TV to watch as the 115 people emerge from the plane and stand on its wing waiting to be rescued by nearby ferries. It’s the coldest day of the year so far, eighteen degrees Fahrenheit, and everyone is shivering. But no one has died, and there was only one minor injury.
From their speakerphone, Kelly says, “Already they’re calling it a ‘miracle.’ Soon they’ll be selling holy water from the Hudson River.” “They were terrorist geese,” Daniel comments. With my good hand I wash out a pair of wool socks and fall asleep listening to them steaming on the radiator.
Even if my ankle weren’t sore and I could dart in front of them, I’m chicken to do it. But the woman wearing the “Wrestle Mania” logo in big sequins on her jacket hears my timid “excuse me” and says, “Oh, sorry for dawdling, it’s just that I’m so excited. My husband’s being inaugurated.”“Your husband? He’s mine!” I pitch back. “We’ll share him,” she says.
By the time I get to Henry he’s had his morning nap. Except for “hi” and “duck” he speaks in his own language, but today everything he says seems to be “Obama.” He still crawls, but likes it when we do our tentative stroll around the room. I walk slowly behind him, my knees almost touching his back, his arms are raised above his head, his hands firmly gripping mine. There’s no chance of him falling without my rescuing him first.
At noon Joey puts the TV on, and Henry, agog at the flickering images, leads me over to it and clings to the small set for support, barely obscuring it, he’s so small himself. Henry’s a friendly soul and likes to engage with everyone in sight. Seeing Obama’s hand on the screen he reaches out to hold it.
When the band plays “Hail to the Chief,” clutching the TV set Henry starts to sway and bounce up and down. He’s dancing. If we’re fearful that in our hopes of him we’ve raised Obama too high and don’t want him to fall, we’ll all just have to hold him up. We’ll all learn to walk together.
Wealth
Before Joey was born in London, England, we bought a beautiful wicker baby basket for her on Portobello Road. After we moved to Vancouver we used it for Noah and Daniel. Since then I’ve lent it to many friends for their children and these days for their grandchildren. The basket stayed on the West Coast until 2007, when it was sent to Brooklyn, New York. I marvelled at my babies in the basket and now I marvel to see their babies in it. The basket still has tucked under its mattress a list of all the babies who have been part of its history. In November 2009 I began asking people who had been in the basket, or their parents to tell me on their behalf, a little about their lives to this point. Here are the responses as of July 2010.
