The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to let go of yesterday. ~ Steve Maraboli
This is a story of the unexpected turns that life takes and the journeys that lead us to new resting places.
Pender Island was home to my husband and me for three-and-a-half years. We came as a newly married couple and left as parents to a eight-month year-old boy. The island has a timeless, unchanging quality about it, comforting and reassuring. Our days there are cherished and held closer to our hearts than can be often expressed.
We really felt we would be on Pender, well for good. We were looking at properties to potentially buy only weeks before we left. We were well established in the community, had good friends and a thriving business. Our sudden move came almost out of nowhere. Our main reasons for the decisions were feeling that running a business was taking away from our time together as a family and also thinking ahead to what we wanted for our futures (career wise, opportunities for our children, etc.). But I realized only a few weeks ago that there was another reason I was unaware of.
I want to share this story because I feel that it is a continuing of the healing process that I have been undergoing for the past two years. I have heard other people share their stories of challenges faced, pain suffered and the love therein experienced. We all have our stories and the world becomes a smaller place it seems when it is realized that we’re all on our unique journey of learning and finding joy and peace within our circumstances. I hope that my story speaks to your own untold tales in which you may be still seeking understanding and peace.
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Pender is one of those places you can leave your car door unlocked with the keys still in the car. The slower pace and small community suited Jesse and I just perfectly. After our first year there, we were familiar faces in the community. I worked at the grocery store and Jesse was one of the few plumbers on the island. We dove right in to getting involved that first year and spent every Friday night of our summer there at the pub, singing and competing in the Gulf Island Idol competition. Go ahead, you can laugh. We acted in a comedic theatrical production and swing danced in one of the talent shows. Jesse would join the Ultimate Frisbee games whenever he could and I took up pole dancing with a private instructor. There was so much to be a part of and there was a sense of kinship amongst island folk. We all had to deal with the ferries, we all hunkered down with candles and the wood stove during power outages and we all basically knew each other on some level or another.
Jesse and I found out we were expecting at the end of August, 2010.We were among some 11 other couples who also eagerly awaited their bundles of joy. I was the happiest and fittest I had ever been when I got pregnant. We taught dance lessons while I was pregnant and spent many happy hours dreaming of our future with our little one. We would take our child to the Medicine Beach to play, he or she would be friends with so-and-so’s baby and go to Pender Elementary School.
I didn’t realize the week before I went into labour that my baby was growing sicker and sicker within me. A day or two after suffering from the flu and being bedridden with a fever for two days, I went back to work at the grocery store. The day I went into labour at 32 and a half weeks, I fretted over the phone to my mom about whether I should go on mat leave early. I didn’t want to put out my co-workers but there were many different sickness bugs passing through the store and I didn’t want to put anymore strain on my baby and my body. Too little too late. By the time I realized the contractions I began to experience following my phone call with my mom could be the real thing, we were minutes from missing the last ferry out. And miss it we did. By this time, labour was in full effect and I was hunched over in pain. We waited at the clinic on island for the on call doctor to arrive. The clinic did not have the amenities for delivering babies so it was determined that I would have to be helicoptered off the island. An ambulance raced us over to the helicopter pad and as I was wheeled out, I called for my husband.
“He can’t come, it’s too risky in this wind,” said one of the paramedics. “He will have to come on the first ferry over.”
“I’ll call your mom,” said my husband as the helicopter doors shut.
By the time I arrived at the hospital, I had gone from two cm dilated to about six. I was not managing the pain well at all and asked for an epidural. After a failed attempt at correctly inserting the needle, I finally got my injection. But I never got to feel the relief because shortly after, my baby’s heartbeat started to dramatically drop. Amidst the delirium of pain that I believe must have been compounded by the realization that my birth plan was going completely wrong, I just figured that their equipment was just malfunctioning. To this day, I still wonder if the blindfold of denial had already blanketed my conscience as it was apparent that something was dreadfully wrong with my baby. As they wheeled me down the hall for an emergency caesarean section, I cried.
The series of painful memories that followed waking up from surgery came home with us to our island home. In the weeks that followed, I sat in our house, reliving every moment, replaying the movie reel over and over in my mind until I had compact snapshots of memories that still haunt me today. I thought about waking up from surgery and asking where my baby was. I thought about holding her stiff body for hours after, not even believing that she was actually gone. I thought about watching her being wheeled down the hospital hallway, away from me forever. I thought about that first night as the devastation of what had happened finally sank in and my body heaved with wrenching sobs and cries. It was the beginning of the heartaches that followed once life had “resumed” on Pender. I watched each of the other expecting parents have their baby. As time went on, I watched my friends with their little ones chatter about what their babies were up to. Every time I saw them, I couldn’t help but imaging that my Shaely would be be learning some of the same skills or as time went on, have little play dates with them. The beautiful spell under which we had glowed and thrived on Pender had been broken. As life began to come back to me and I experienced the birth of my son, I found a place to rest my sorrows and focus anew. But when you have a baby 10 and half months after losing one, there isn’t much time or room for healing to happen. I realize now that this is part of the reason that I needed to leave Pender. For all the beauty, good friends and enriching life we had there, it had become a place of deep sadness and depression for me.
So here I sit in my home in Gibsons. My little boy runs around the house, amusing himself with a whisk, a play station controller, a link roller, anything and everything. My belly is starting to tighten as my third baby in three years grows within me. I am happy and feeling myself finding little bits of understanding and peace with passing time. But it is that time of year when I am reminded from where I have come. This Saturday marks two years since losing our Shaely. How much has happened, how much I have changed. I feel ready to go back to Pender for a visit although I am also nervous for the feelings that might await me there. It too must be part of the process and the journey I am on to find peace and understanding.
You write with clarity and honesty. I completely understand this post. My deep love for you remains steady.
Thank-you, Amanda. It means so much to me that you understand. I wasn’t sure how this post would come across…Looove you!