As noted, my mother was much fonder of drama than of reality. Many people have stated that my sister Fiona's death was a defining moment for our family. This may or may not be true, for various values of "defining," but it was definitely true that it has a massive, and often very weird, effect on our family, generally through my mother.
Mom was fond of saying that when Fiona was born, the doctors did not expect her to live to be six months old. When she was 6 months old, the doctors did not expect her to live to be two. When she was two, the doctors did not expect her to live to be three, etc, etc.
I don't remember all the specifics of Fiona's hospitalizations and illnesses. I do remember that she had some strange, and regularly occurring, problem with her eyes. She would wake up with her eyelids swollen, and some exudate encrusting her eyelashes, gluing her eyes shut. I remember that she found some of these earlier episodes quite frightening. Eventually it became simply a regular occurrence, and hot washcloth compresses were used to soften the encrustations on her eyes so that she could see open her eyes and see again. I don't remember there being any particular treatment for it, and I don't remember it ever being diagnosed as anything specific. That's what I remember about her medical condition up until she was about nine years old.
In those days we made regular trips, around Thanksgiving (which we, in Canada, celebrate at the *right* time, around the harvest period), to visit our paternal grandparents in the interior of BC. Shortly after Fiona's ninth birthday, on one of these trips, as we were preparing to depart for Vancouver anyways, our return trip was interrupted by a visit to a hospital for Fiona. This was the beginning of what was, eventually, a diagnosis of liver cancer. About a half, or two thirds, of her liver was removed at that time. I was twelve at the time of that initial hospital visit, and about thirteen when she had her operation. In my mind that was that: she had been treated for cancer and the episode was over. However, two years later, she had a recurrence of cancer. Mother reported to us, in later years, that this cancer was angiosarcoma, and there had only been seven cases in the world up until that time. Angiosarcoma is, supposedly, a cancer that spreads through the blood to metastasize to different parts of the body. Given Mother's predilection for drama, I don't know how much of this is true. But it was true that Fiona got very sick. She was treated with chemo, and lost her hair, and, as was the case with girls at that time, was issued with a wig. She didn't seem to care very much and treated the wig very cavalierly.
At one time Mother told me that all of us children in the family had higher than normal IQs. Once again, I don't know how much of this is true because, apparently, she reported different levels of IQs to my other siblings. In any case, whether Fiona really did have an outstanding IQ, or simply because my father worked in the educational system and knew how to apply for it, at the time of her death Fiona was enrolled in what was referred to as the Major Work Class. This would now be considered a program for the talented and gifted. It did mean that Fiona was not going to our local school, and was taking the bus most of the time to go to a school, rather more distant, where are the Major Work Class was held. I mentioned this Major Work Class because it explains why my memories of Fiona, just before her death, are of her coming home from school, walking down the street from the bus stop, twirling her wig on her finger.
While the chemo held the cancer at bay for a while, eventually the cancer won. Fiona died in November of 1969. She was twelve at the time. I was fifteen. As noted previously, I didn't really know how I was supposed to feel. I was quite confused by the whole situation, not least because Fiona had been in and out of hospital, and, in my mind, this was simply another visit, and I had absolutely no expectation that she would, actually, die. Also as noted, absolutely nobody would talk, at least to me, about Fiona's death. And I remember, very strongly, wanting to talk to somebody about it.
Mom and Dad decided that, with the death being so close to Christmas, the best thing to do was to avoid Christmas altogether. Any Christmas celebration, so soon after Fiona's death, would be a major problem. So, instead of staying home and doing the regular Christmas routine (whatever that was) Mom and Dad decided that we would take a car trip to California for two or three weeks. So that's what we did.
Dad was a teacher, and subsequently administrator, and Mom had been a teacher briefly before they got married. Mom had also inherited a recreational property on an island in Howe Sound near Vancouver. Therefore vacations were not generally trips, but were spent on this island. Any trips that we did take, did tend to be car trips, like the trips to the interior to visit our grandparents. So car trips were not a rarity. Indeed, during 1967, we spent the summer traveling across Canada. All the way to Cape Spear, Newfoundland, and back.
So, the trip to California would simply one more car trip. I remember that we visited a number of the theme parks for which California is famous. I don't remember all of those that we visited. I do have a vague recollection that one of them was SeaWorld. I do specifically remember the visit to Disneyland. However, I remember the visit to Disneyland more because I had a boil on my leg, and was carrying my then baby sister on my shoulders for most of that day. A day or two later that boil burst, and I still have a scar on the back of my left calf, that looks something like I've been shot with a .22.
Mother has reported, at least to me, that Fiona's death nearly broke up their marriage. I don't know about that. What I do know is that the outcome of the decision to take an unusual trip during Christmas meant that the family seemed to encounter the trauma of Christmas without Fiona all over again the year after.
I do know that a number of people in the church gave my parents a really hard time about Fiona's death. A number of people said, and apparently quite openly to my parents, that Fiona would not have died had my parents had sufficient faith.
When I pass various milestones in my own life, I tend to think about Fiona and wonder how she would have turned out, had she lived. I wonder what career she would have chosen, had she chosen a career. I wonder if she would have been a wife and mother, and what kind. I wonder whether we would have been close friends, or whether our lives would have taken different directions. I consider the women I know who are slightly younger than myself and therefore the same age that Fiona would have been and consider what she might have been like at this age.
Possibly Mom wondered the same questions. At one point Mom commissioned a portrait of Fiona by one of those painters who promised to give you a picture of your loved one as they might have become. All of us in the family find the portrait more than a little creepy. It looks similar to how Fiona looked when she died at 12 years of age. It's based on a picture that Mom gave to the portrait painter. But it also has odd characteristics that are more mature than a girl of 12 years of age. As I say, we all find the picture creepy.
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