Thinking about Rick...

I’ve been thinking about my cousin Rick lately. On February 19th, 2005, he lay down in front of a train and killed himself.

He wasn’t my cousin by blood but a very close family friend. My sisters call him the brother we never had. He has an older sister, Sharon, and five of us grew up together. I would like to say that we all hung out together but that wasn’t exactly the case. They were all significantly older than me when we were kids so I was often a bored bystander to their teenage ways. (Ok, I’ll face it – I wanted to be older so badly so they would include me!) I probably watched cartoons when we went over to their house. The four of them were five, seven, nine, and ten years older than me.

Rick and his sister were like us; brown kids growing up in a white town. They were the only other brown family with kids like me and my sisters: Coconuts; brown on the outside, white on the inside. I grew up listening to the hard rock of the 80s. It’s just what brown kids growing up in smallish white towns in Ontario listened to. If you don’t believe me check out Rupinder Gill. I remember all of them listening to Platinum Blonde and Sharon’s room was always painted red or black or both. And their mother, Bakshinder Aunty (brown people call friends of the family aunty and uncle) was so beautiful! She wore glorious Indian suits and saris, glossy make-up and shiny nail polish. And she was one of the nicest women you’d ever meet.

Bakshinder died from an aneurysm when I was in the 9th Grade. She was the first person I knew to die. My parents are immigrants from India and all of our family continues to live there. I remember wanting to see the body (it was open casket) but my sisters didn’t want to. I was scared to go alone. It was after that when Rick changed. Rick was around 21-years-old and took his mother’s death very hard – it was the catalyst for his bipolarity.

Rick suffered for the next ten years and often self-medicated to soothe his pain. I didn’t know him during this time but my sisters only spoke of him in a lovely light. Whenever they saw him he was happy and glowing and having a great time. They never saw him during the dark times, although they knew he was sick. They loved him so much.

That week in February, leading up to and after his death, was a very strange one indeed. I had just turned twenty-five and was producing a dance show for my final independent project in my undergrad. I got a call one night from my family saying that my father was in the hospital for what they thought was a heart attack. I freaked out and my family reassured me he was fine (my entire family still resides in my hometown which is about a two-hour train ride from Toronto). They told me to sit tight. Finally, after about a day or two of increasingly bad news about my father being in and out of the hospital (even though my family INSISTED he was ok) I’d had enough and got on the train that Sunday February 20th to see my dad. I had to see for myself. I had to work the next day so I was only going in for the day. I went to the hospital and there was my dad, in good spirits. He had yet to get a proper room and was on a gurney in the hallway! I remember him smiling and saying, “I’m glad I’m not in India!” It was great to see a man, in pain, be appreciative of his good fortune. After spending the day with him I was ready to make my way to the train station when the nurse told me I had a call. I went to the nurses’ station and my sister, P, was on the phone. She sounded distraught and told me I couldn’t leave that night. I was with my father so I knew it wasn’t him that was upsetting her. She just kept saying to go to my parents’ house. When I arrived there, my other sister, K, and my Mom were there. We had no idea what was going on. P arrived soon after and through gasping sobs said, “Rick killed himself last night.”

I don’t remember much except the extreme pain my sisters were in. I wasn’t as close to Rick so his death didn’t hit me as hard. I do remember, though, feeling like it was the first time I could be a pillar of strength for my sisters as they had been for me my entire life. I had to go back to Toronto to finishing producing the show – opening night was in less than a week. I was back and forth a lot that week for the wake and the funeral and my show. A few days later my Mom called me and said that she’d been in the hospital all night with my uncle (her brother) because he had broken his hand. I found out later that day from my sister K that he broke it while trying to take his own life by hanging – the rope broke and he landed on his hand. This uncle had no association with Rick and his suicide attempt had nothing to do with Rick or his family.

It was a weird time of death and death-related things in my life. My father is good now and my uncle ended up in the hospital for a while. My uncle still suffers from depression to this day. And Rick is now with his mother but he left behind a sister, a dad, nieces, cousins, aunts, uncles, our family, and a loving life partner. His life partner recently found love again and is now a mother.

Our lives are about constant change and learning. That week was life-changing. It made me slow down and smell the roses. Literally, I would slow my walking pace and take in the sunshine and smell flowers. Sometimes really terrible things happen before you can become awake in your own life. I think terrible times are an opportunity to rebuild from the wreckage to be stronger than before. That’s easy for me to say about Rick’s death because we weren’t that close but my sister P had a really tough time getting through her grief. You can’t just get “over” or get “past” it – I think you need to go through the pain. It’s the only way to truly deal with the obstacle or you will find yourself tripping over it again and again.

Think of someone right now who is no longer in your life, dead or alive. Think about something you’d say to them if they appeared right in front of you. Send out that silent message to them right now. If you didn’t say I love you, say it now. If you need to say sorry, say it now.

Thanks for reading about my cousin Rick who would have been 38-years-old next month.

This is a picture of Rick as a boy. That's my Mom in the background with her eyes closed and sitting to her left is Bakshinder Aunty. This was probably the late 70s.

HIPPODROME FROM HELL and 360 DEGREES OF AWESOME!

Please ignore the terrible grammar. I am trying to write with flow and while I do edit my work before posting, I am trying to spend less time (right now) on that technical stuff and focusing on getting the writing out. Please stick with me.

I’m in Montreal with my family. This should be enough information to explain a lot of frustration and fury. I’m joking. Sort of.

This is the first time my sisters and I have gone on a vacation together, all three of us. Those who know me know my sisters, P and K, mean the world to me and we are very close. Along with us came my brothers-in-law, S and C, and my three nephews, K, L, and Little Z. Needless to say there have been some awesome ups and some aggravating downs. But that’s family, right? You love ‘em. And you can hate ‘em.

The main reason we came down to Montreal this weekend (I write this from my hotel room) was to celebrate P’s upcoming 40th birthday. U2 and Montreal? Let’s kill two birds with one stone! We have been looking forward to this for weeks. And so has the city of Montreal. For those who don’t know, the Hippodrome (the venue U2 was playing at) holds 80,000 people. Yes, you read the correctly. 80,000 people!!!! The only other time I’ve been to a concert venue that large was when I saw Dave Matthews Band at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo in 2001. We’ve been hearing U2 played everywhere: cars, t.v, stores. There are even large banners on buses and in the subway! This city knows how to party and get revved up. Also, the city shut down the highway to deter people from driving to the concert. There is not enough parking to accommodate 80,000 people so the only way to get to the concert was le metro. Montreal transit even printed off special U2 passes!

We leave with ample time and it still takes over an hour to reach a destination just 30 minutes away; le metro stopping for approximately seven minutes at every station. It was nuts! Finally, we arrive and people look like cattle being herded; droves and droves of people obediently following one another. We get closer and closer to the venue and the energy is vibrating. You can feel the love and excitement. And then I get a closer look at the stadium…Fear slowly creeps in.

*I will interject here by saying I have a fear of unstable and smallish heights: ladders, scaffolding, etc. Very tall and stable heights are no problem: balconies, glass floor of the CN Tower, etc.

Back to the story.

I look up and I don’t feel so well. The Hippodrome is an old racetrack (at least that’s what my sister, P, said) and is a large structure made of interlocking steel piping. Imagine a high school stadium, only bigger. And scarier. Each step up the metal stairs creaks and bends. I am slowly starting to freak out. I’ve never been in a stadium like this before. We get to our seats about ten minutes before U2 comes on and my nerves are becoming shakier. I tell my sisters I’m not loving this feeling and they proceed to tell me that I will die when I’m meant to die and if I die tonight, what an awesome way to go.

*I will interject here and say that my family and I are pretty zen about death. We talk about it and are not afraid of it. My Eastern parents have everything to do with this. So them saying the things they were to me in that moment were not insensitive or glossing over my fear but just trying to calm me down and to help me gain some perspective. It was out of love, not malice.

Ok. Back to the story.

U2 comes on and starts playing their first song of the evening “Even Better Than The Real Thing” and everyone starts freaking out (in a good way) and I start freaking out even more (in a bad way). You see, this structure is meant to bend and sway. It’s actually safer this way (which I knew already and my engineer brother-in-law, S, reminded me of this morning). But try telling that to a person in the moment of fear. I didn’t know this fear was this bad until last night at the concert. It’s two minutes into the first song and there I am, perched atop a crazy bending and swaying giant scaffolding. I tell my sisters I am REALLY scared and they tell me to stand in between them, that maybe that will help. I do as they say, and while it did help a little, I begin to cry uncontrollably. I am shaking and near hyperventilation. P tells me to hold onto the railing which strangely provides comfort and fear at the same time; the railing feels strong but now I can feel every movement even more. I’m paralyzed.

K stays with me as P starts to troubleshoot my meltdown. She runs this way, she runs that way to find someone who will tell us we can go further down, all the while missing the first four songs of the set. I cry even more because now guilt is also setting in. My sisters drove ten hours to get to Montreal! (Little Z is only five months old – driving a long distance with an infant instantly adds two hours to the trip.) Finally, P comes back and tells K and I to follow her. I peel my white-knuckled fingers from around the railing and hold both my sisters’ hands as they guide me down the frightening stairs. We reach the bottom and I can breathe again. I cry some more as both sisters hug and hold me tightly, not an ounce of resentment flows in their bodies. I feel only love and protection; two things I haven’t been feeling these last couple of weeks with the whole liar situation.

P managed to find a grassy area off to the side where there were few people and an amazing view of the stage. You see, this tour is called the 360 Tour because the stage is 360 degrees and you can see Bono and the boys from all angles. We enjoyed the show from our new impromptu “seats”. The last song, “Moment of Surrender” is a solemn song and in the last sixty seconds of the song, it began to rain. It was beautiful, haunting, and symbolic. And then, just as Bono was saying his final goodbyes, the winds picked up in a swirling motion and blew up all the sand and gravel we had been standing on all around us, accompanied by torrential, horizontal rain! This all happened in a matter of two minutes, no exaggeration! I look up and see all the fans in the stands and thank every spiritual entity for blessing me with the ground. 80,000 people are now RUNNING down from the stands and thundering across the field toward le metro. I am wearing only a t-shirt and shorts and Birkenstocks. It was so incredibly unbelievable and magical that all my sisters and I could do was smile, laugh, and be grateful of our amazing luck to have this remarkable memory. It was an evening of a very low low and very high high. I am still shaking my head and smiling about it.

I am SO lucky to have such amazing sisters who drive me crazy some of the time, and love me all of the time. No matter what they are always there for me. We have our ups and downs, like any family or relationship, but when I need them most their love is steadfast and unconditional. Recently, I have seen some of the ugliest and darkest people can be (I honestly didn’t think it could exist so nonchalantly – I’m talking about the liar here) and am renewed in my faith in humankind and in true love. True love, romantic or familial, always cares for you, never intentionally hurts you.

Really, all I’m trying to say is my sisters are the bomb diggity. And I’m so lucky.