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.
