I was painting a watercolor when my brother, Terry called with the bad news. Mother had just died.
The next morning, May 26, 1993, I drove Yoshiko to Kennedy Airport where she and Naomi boarded a plane to visit her sister who was being treated for cancer. Then I picked up Renée from her kindergarten class, in Wood Ridge, and headed out for Canada with her and Leon. On the way I explained that my mother had just died and that everyone who loved her would come to the funeral home to see her; then she would be buried in the ground. I told them that everyone would be sad, so that they had to be very good, so that they didn't disturb anyone. Over and over again they said, "Are we there yet?" It was almost midnight when we drove over the Burlington Bay Bridge and saw the lights rimming Lake Ontario all the way to the CN Tower, my old stomping grounds.
Thursday I left the kids with Kim's friend and went to McHearsey's Funeral Home in Milton, just two blocks from the white frame house where we used to live. Kim and his son Dylan drove with me through ten miles of farmland to Milton, to pay our respects. My mother had left our hometown and bought a house up on Georgian Bay in Meaford and had been living there since my father died in 1981.
Walked down Main Street with Rick and Dylan and had dinner in the restaurant that had been made out of the old post office. The same post office where Rick had taken me when we got picked up in and orange school bus to go cherry picking, when I was five.
A couple of our neighbors came; Mrs. Jones who lived across the street, and Mrs. Bell, who was mom's best friend. In the evening the will was read at Kim's. Since I lived so far away I got only little things, plus her journals, which was to me the best thing to have. A great deal of discussion went on about the house, and how to sell it.
I drove to Danny's house, where he lived with his girlfriend. Bob, Sue and Kelly were also there. Bob told me about the last days with mom, how she was on oxygen, and how she told him the story behind meeting Fern. He said she was six months pregnant when she got married, but I had already known that from piecing together the story. I had to endure a lot of smoke because Danny and Bob were heavy smokers.
Friday, Kim took Renée, Leon and I to the funeral. On the way Kim tried to correct what I was saying by telling the kids that mom is, "Sleeping."
I said, "Tell the kids she isn't going to wake up. You and I can talk about her being at rest. I told the kids that her spirit is alive and is going to heaven. There was a brochure at the Funeral Home that advised telling the kids about the death of a loved one." Leon and Renée were well behaved. A lot of relatives came.
Before the service I walked downtown with Leon and Renée to Main Street and Martin, taking the path through the willows beside the Mill Pond. It was the same route I walked so often when I was in High School. I took a picture of the kids from behind just before we reached the green bridge. Walked through the Rotary Park and passed the Smithies place. I told the kids about the anvil and the horses and the Yellow Caterpillars, but they were unappreciative.
We returned and the service began. Aunt Glad, my mother's only living sister stayed close to the door; for there had been a heart attack at one of the funerals she had attended. Aunt Glad was 75. Mom would have been 68 on June 11. Renée Leon and I went up and said a little prayer. Victor, a pastor friend of Terry, gave the eulogy. Kim stood up and read the poem If by Rudyard Kipling. I had memorized the poem as a child. The six sons were the pal bearers.
Joyce des Lauriers was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Milton beside my dad. Renée and Leon threw roses on the coffin. Renée kept two of them. She often asked me if cut flowers would grow, and tried to plant them in the earth.
In the old courthouse, across from Victoria Park, just up the street from our childhood home we met for coffee and sandwiches. The building had been converted to serve as a community hall. I talked to Deanna, and told her about the girl in the window in my song Sugar Heart. It had been over ten years since I last saw Deanna and her sister Tracy briefly at dad's funeral. DeAnna was a single mother with two children, Tracy was studying biology at Waterloo University. Deanna showed me a picture of her two children as we stood by the old horse trough that had been presented to the town in 1899.
Inside, Grace Bell, my mother's best friend reminded me that mom had been looking forward to August when she was planning to visit again. I drove past my public school and high school on the way back to Kim's.
On February 12, 1994 I
went to Jin A for two hours and did snow shoveling with some other volunteers.
The day before had been a big storm and I had shoveled my own driveway for five
hours. Sunday I woke up short of breath, with a sore leg. I went to Yaohan in
Edgwater, and to Bob Klawiters' but was out of it. Monday was worse, when I
registered Renée and Leon at Saint Phillips School in Clifton. I could hardly
walk.
That evening I went to Heights Medical and Dr. Orr put me on pain-killers and Augmenton. Through the night I had trouble breathing and hardly slept. When I vomited my breakfast violently across the room I heard Leon say, "Did you hear that?"
I called Heights medical office and told the receptionist that I was vomiting my medicine and she told me not to take all the medicine at once. On the afternoon of the sixteenth I was admitted in the hospital. My leg was red, and most of my body had a red rash. They put a catheter on before sleeping, but during the night I produced no urine. Next day Dr. De Groot cut a hole in my leg, and I was sent to intensive care. They tilted me back, covered me with blue paper and inserted a tube into my chest to monitor my vital signs.
In the evening Mario Michelle, a photographer I shot weddings for, came by to see me. I was on oxygen and my mouth felt freeze-dried with a coating of frozen mucous. It was almost impossible to eat; I had to wash every mouthful with water. I tried to sleep at night but couldn't.
Hundreds of images floated through my mind; beautiful abstract images of a phantasmagoria. I tried to altar them in with my thoughts. On that evening I must have been the closest I'd ever been to spirit world, except of course that time Kim and I were returning from a saddle-washing excursion at Mohawk raceway, when we were almost hit by a speeding locomotive. My kidneys failed; I was put on dialysis for four or five days.
Rev. Patino and his wife came and "holy-salted" the room. They gave me a picture of True Parents. That was Saturday. I had called the church saying that my wife needed help, and they offered a Spanish sister named Josephine. Robert Klawiter helped Yoshiko do some errands and got about 300 people praying for me. One sister wrote a letter stating: "The reason that Stefan is dying is because he doesn't know his value." Yoshiko did not give me the letter. I have come to learn that when you realize your true value you become immortal.
During the night when I could not sleep I would watch the Olympics on TV. Some evenings Robin, who lived in the apartment downstairs from us, would bring Yoshiko and the three kids. My sister Sue, Terry and his friend Carol, who was a nurse, came to visit arriving just after midnight. I felt like I hadn't slept for five days, and was given a giant sleeping pill. I talked to them for 45 minutes. Terry told me not to worry about the fifteen dollars I owed Kim.
In the morning while I was groggy it took two attempts to put a tube down my nose. My chest was like a hard shell. I was tense. That night the nurse took two hours to get all my intravenous lines connected so that she wouldn't have to wake me at three.
My daytime nurse was Mara who gave me a lot of TLC. I had brought a sketchbook to draw some pictures to the story of Soliloquy of a Worm in a Candy Apple, but had no energy to do it. I wanted to tell her the story but couldn't.
Finally I was out of the ICU and in a regular room. My kidneys were working again, but my white cell count was bad. A friend came to visit me, and smuggled in a piece of pizza supreme. Dr. French said I needed a transfusion and a trans esophical echo cardiogram before I could be released. On March 4, I was discharged.
That evening I went to Heights Medical and Dr. Orr put me on pain-killers and Augmenton. Through the night I had trouble breathing and hardly slept. When I vomited my breakfast violently across the room I heard Leon say, "Did you hear that?"
I called Heights medical office and told the receptionist that I was vomiting my medicine and she told me not to take all the medicine at once. On the afternoon of the sixteenth I was admitted in the hospital. My leg was red, and most of my body had a red rash. They put a catheter on before sleeping, but during the night I produced no urine. Next day Dr. De Groot cut a hole in my leg, and I was sent to intensive care. They tilted me back, covered me with blue paper and inserted a tube into my chest to monitor my vital signs.
In the evening Mario Michelle, a photographer I shot weddings for, came by to see me. I was on oxygen and my mouth felt freeze-dried with a coating of frozen mucous. It was almost impossible to eat; I had to wash every mouthful with water. I tried to sleep at night but couldn't.
Hundreds of images floated through my mind; beautiful abstract images of a phantasmagoria. I tried to altar them in with my thoughts. On that evening I must have been the closest I'd ever been to spirit world, except of course that time Kim and I were returning from a saddle-washing excursion at Mohawk raceway, when we were almost hit by a speeding locomotive. My kidneys failed; I was put on dialysis for four or five days.
Rev. Patino and his wife came and "holy-salted" the room. They gave me a picture of True Parents. That was Saturday. I had called the church saying that my wife needed help, and they offered a Spanish sister named Josephine. Robert Klawiter helped Yoshiko do some errands and got about 300 people praying for me. One sister wrote a letter stating: "The reason that Stefan is dying is because he doesn't know his value." Yoshiko did not give me the letter. I have come to learn that when you realize your true value you become immortal.
During the night when I could not sleep I would watch the Olympics on TV. Some evenings Robin, who lived in the apartment downstairs from us, would bring Yoshiko and the three kids. My sister Sue, Terry and his friend Carol, who was a nurse, came to visit arriving just after midnight. I felt like I hadn't slept for five days, and was given a giant sleeping pill. I talked to them for 45 minutes. Terry told me not to worry about the fifteen dollars I owed Kim.
In the morning while I was groggy it took two attempts to put a tube down my nose. My chest was like a hard shell. I was tense. That night the nurse took two hours to get all my intravenous lines connected so that she wouldn't have to wake me at three.
My daytime nurse was Mara who gave me a lot of TLC. I had brought a sketchbook to draw some pictures to the story of Soliloquy of a Worm in a Candy Apple, but had no energy to do it. I wanted to tell her the story but couldn't.
Finally I was out of the ICU and in a regular room. My kidneys were working again, but my white cell count was bad. A friend came to visit me, and smuggled in a piece of pizza supreme. Dr. French said I needed a transfusion and a trans esophical echo cardiogram before I could be released. On March 4, I was discharged.
Saturday we drove to my hometown of Milton, taking back roads so that I could photograph the pretty farmland. I shot some photos of Renee sitting on a railing offering a Granny Smith apple to some reluctant horses. We stopped at Springridge Farms, which was the cherry farm where I had a job with a shotgun as a human scarecrow. Went up Rattlesnake Point, which was difficult because my clutch was slipping. We made it down the steep escarpment onto Givens Road. Drove to 49 Mary Street, the house I grew up in. We pulled up beside the old chestnut tree which still had some of the original boards from the tree-house that Kim and I made in 1967. I pointed to the room over the veranda and told my kids that for punishment I was told to stay in my room, but I locked the door from the inside and escaped by jumping off the roof.
We then drove up Thomas Street past the Fairgrounds and the High School. Then we bought some flowers and set out for the real purpose of our journey, to visit my parent’s grave at Evergreen Cemetery. The plot was exactly as Kim had mapped it out. I took photos of Yoshiko bending down to place the flowers with little Naomi hugging her back. Then I said a prayer for my parents, that God could bless them in heaven.
Renee and Leon on the Mill Pond Path 
Start at Springridge Farms and proceed to Rattlesnake Conservation Area via Appleby Line [to traverse the steep winding road.
funny, jumping out the window - I'll keep that in mind in the future.
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