worm their way in. You realize that
everything has changed, and the way
you thought the steps and stages of
your life were going to develop have
suddenly been upended. I thought
there would be someone to whom my
mother’s silver and china would go—
someone to whom I could pass on my
wedding rings and other special things
I’d long ago envisioned giving to our
daughter before I died.
In retrospect, I’m not quite sure
whether our hastily arranged flight
from Montego Bay back to Toronto was
the shortest or the longest trip of our
lives. I don’t remember much, other
than the kindness from the flight atten-
dant who offered Rob and me privacy.
At home, we haphazardly unpacked
our beach and party clothes and threw
together what we thought we would
need for who-knows-how-long in
Ottawa, where Lauren lived. After a
sleepless night, we were up at dawn the
following day. We headed into the sun
for the long and tearful journey to be
with Phil and our seven-month-old
grandson, Colin.
Rob and I checked into a hotel room
that became our home base for making
arrangements and fielding calls and
emails from concerned friends and
co-workers. It took four days for the
coroner’s office to release Lauren’s
body to the funeral home; the coroner
was completely at a loss to explain
how an otherwise healthy 24-year-old
woman could simply stop breathing. On
Friday of the same week that had begun
in Jamaica, we found ourselves in a
funeral director’s office, holding a paper
bag containing the pyjamas our daugh-
ter had been wearing when she died,
along with a dryer sheet they had tossed
in; funny, the things you remember.BEFORE WE HAD even had a chance to
hold Lauren’s first memorial we began
searching for answers: how could a
seemingly healthy 24-year-old simply
die in her sleep? The word why became
a mantra that ran through my brain
with what seemed like every second
thought; I screamed it into a pillow and
sobbed it onto Rob’s shoulder within
moments of retreating to our Jamaica
hotel room. From May 11, 2015, on, I
could almost see that one-syllable word
hanging over our heads. I heard it in
my restless sleep like an earworm, a
pervasive melody that refused to cease.THE WORD WHY BECAME A MANTRA
THAT RAN THROUGH MY BRAIN WITH WHAT
SEEMED LIKE EVERY SECOND THOUGHT.rd.ca 95