Erin's Journals

Ah, April 1st. April Fool’s – and a day when radio people traditionally have gone out of their way to play tricks on listeners. I was never really good at it, not being great at keeping a straight face or telling a lie. (I’m the proverbial dog whose tail wags at the poker table.)
 
There are legends, of course, in the business, but none that stands the test of time quite as well as that of my former partner Mike Cooper and the 1976 stunt that had police officers flying down to 1050 CHUM’s studios on Yonge Street at 2 am, thinking an intruder had broken into the radio studios and shot Mike. It darned near cost Mike his job, but saner heads prevailed and he’s still standing – in more ways than one! Here’s a blog post I found with the details. Read on for producer Bruce Marshall’s insight as well. Like I said, legendary.
 
Mike was never one for looking back; when CHUM had reunions – on the air or off – he was reluctant to go and reminisce with co-workers or fans of that era of radio. He would always say to me that the best days are right now…and truly we both subscribed to the line from Carly Simon’s song “Anticipation”: “These are the good old days.” For the longest time, they were.
 
The trick to it all is recognizing the good days when you’re having them. As Rob gets set to mark another milestone-ish birthday this week (the one where the government starts sending cheques…gulp), my much older husband is staying positive: he’s continuing to take good care of himself, takes a lot of pride in his appearance and plays hockey every chance he gets. If turning 65 gives him pause in any way, he looks at, say, my dad who’s going to be 86 in two months and thinks what Dad wouldn’t give to be 65 again. It’s all perspective.
 
And if we just keep remembering that there’s a moment in every single day to cherish – even if it’s just that especially good cup of coffee or the sun shining through some April snow – then whether these truly are the “good old days” will be irrelevant. We can’t go back, so we look around and find gratitude. That’s a choice, no matter what life throws at us, right? (Can you tell I’ve taken up meditation again?)
 
Have a great day. Enjoy the moments.
 

For someone who doesn’t work Monday though Friday, I sure am glad to see a weekend here. I won’t lie to you: it’s been a heavy week. It began on Sunday with what should have been Lauren’s 28th birthday. For Rob, she’ll always be 24, as he can’t bear to contemplate what should have – could have – been.
 
As for me, I look at where I was at 28 (pregnant with her) and wonder if she’d be expecting another child by now. I wonder if she’d still even have her job, with cuts being as rampant as they are at the Ottawa radio station at which she did midday news. Few people she worked with are still there; a couple of sweet young men came to see me when I was in the building in late February for TV interviews. They remembered her and wanted to wish Rob and me the best. Maybe she’d have moved to television, although she never had that “bug.” Who knows…?
 
It’s rare weeks like this one – perhaps a deeper reverberation of the silence that follows a frenetic, fantastic whirlwind book tour and joyous time at the top of the bestsellers’ list – that make me feel a bit of a hypocrite. It’s why I’m always trying to stay positive here, without lying to you. You don’t come here to be brought down or depressed; I try to find different ways to look at things or stories to share that will make you think or feel. The last thing I want is for this to be about “poor me.”
 
After all, part of the title of my book is “…love, loss and reclaiming joy.” I know you can do that – and we strive to do it every single day. How I wish the joy was all-encompassing and never-ending, but you’d have to admit there would be something seriously wrong with me (or right with my meds!) if I didn’t slip into the crevices – or craters – that accompany the kind of loss that we’ve experienced. Add to it losing our cousin’s family this week – the sweet hugs and laughter and screams of little people playing with us – and it’s been, as I say, a heavy one.
 
I’ll be out of it by Monday and will work this weekend on pulling through. Moving forward. Counting blessings and saying our own “at leasts.” I’ve lots of writing to do while the Blue Jays play on TV: I’ll be preparing Walmart stories (which I hope you’re enjoying) and doing lots of advance work on journals that I want to make sure are up for you when we’re in Amsterdam in just over a week.
 
I am excited to tell you that there are now more than a few book dates that are being lined up for the first week of June: I’m coming to Southern Ontario for events big and small and definitely in areas that weren’t on the agenda in late February (not that Mother Nature would have cooperated anyway). So I’ll keep you posted on that front and hope that if we missed each other last month, we’ll have a chance to chat or hug (or both) in two months.
 
In addition to the travels we have ahead, it is truly something I’ll be looking forward to. And as anyone who’s suffered a loss will tell you, having something to anticipate on the horizon can mean the difference between the light and the dark.
 
In the meantime, thank you for being here. I wish you a peaceful weekend filled with light and I promise I’ll do my best to have the same. All we can do is try, right?
 

And so, another farewell: this time to my cousin who’s leaving this Saturday to live in Calgary. I told you about Karen and her family yesterday; it was a wonderful few hours of games and play and laughter and silliness with her four-year-old daughter and two-year-old son. We tried to make a lot of memories, as we don’t know when we’ll be seeing their sweet family again.
 
Something happened in their house sale that I heard of earlier this year and I started to realize that it’s become a thing: writing a letter to accompany your offer. In a market as tight as Victoria’s, where there was literally only a handful of homes in the lower price range at which Karen and Joe’s was being offered, you do whatever you have to do in order to get a foot in the door.
 
Before the house was actually even officially listed (without a sign going up or an open house), there were multiple offers. One was accompanied by a heartfelt letter expressing why the house meant so much. This couple (and their toddler) had apparently already lost out in a bidding war and they were playing to win this time. They offered more than was asked, they came through with a super fast close and they wrote a heartfelt letter.
 
I’d heard of this before when, a few months ago, my sista-friend Lisa Brandt and her husband sold their home in Byron, near London, Ontario and moved to Wallaceburg (where they’re thriving and happily reWired). While they were entertaining multiple offers, they, too, received a letter imploring them to accept the offer a couple had made.
 
So, I wondered, when did writing a letter to the sellers become something potential buyers do? I don’t have an answer for that, but I did find a number of articles referring to the practice. This one from Redfin, for example, has several pointers to home-buying hopefuls:

Format your letter to make it stand out
 
Tell the sellers what you love about the house
 
Make personal connections (See a Blue Jays bobble head? Talk Jays. Spot a litter box? Mention your love of cats.)
 
Rather than risk it getting lost in an inbox, print a hard copy of your letter and leave it with the sellers.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that writing a letter in hopes of winning in a competitive market is something people do now. In fact, I think I would do the exact same thing, if I thought I had a hope in heck of swaying someone to my side in a tough bidding situation. A house purchase, in addition to being a huge monetary commitment, is also an emotional decision. You see a place where you’re going to live out your dreams. Your family will grow. Your future will unfold. Why not highlight the feelings you have about the place you want to live?
 
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
 
Lisa was touched by the sincerity and tone of the letter but, alas, another offer came in that was accompanied, not by a note, but a bunch of notes – of the monetary kind, in the form of a much higher bid – and Lisa and Derek had to set aside emotions and go where the money was.
 
Happily for the young couple who sent the impassioned note to Karen and Joe, their offer was accepted. Soon their new life will begin in this townhouse in Langford, just as, in a new development some 30 kilometres from Calgary, it will start fresh for Karen, Joe, Regan and Owen. They take a bit of our hearts with them, but we’ll always be grateful for the time we got, the hours and hugs that have helped us to heal.
 
Talk to you here tomorrow and, in the meantime here’s a link to my newest Walmart piece, Cycling Into Spring. Enjoy! 
 

You guys are just the best. No, seriously. Yesterday as I sat for literally two hours staring at a blank page (or computer screen) I decided to put it out there and posted on my Facebook page that I was at a loss as to what I should write about today.
 
So here we go – some of your ideas. And thanks! I don’t often run out of ideas and, when I do, sometimes the actual physical act of putting my fingers on the keyboard helps. Muscle memory? Reflexology? I don’t really know. But yesterday…nope. I think it’s a hangover from the sadness of Sunday, to be honest. But we power through and you helped a lot.
 
Spring came up in several suggestions. I don’t write about the weather out here in Victoria because it’s been so wintry in Ontario (where many of this journal’s readers are) and so darned pleasant here. Last week when I was sitting in the car getting chocolate all over my lap, the temperature on the MINI readout was 28C. I’m not kidding. (It was actually in the low 20s once we got out of the sunny parking lot.)
 
So that’s why I don’t tell you that the daffodils and pansies are out and that the trees are a riotous mix of pinks and whites. I wouldn’t dream of including a picture like this, taken near “our” bench on Sunday! Oh, no I would not. (I just heard Keith Morrison’s Dateline voice there, did you?
 

 
Baseball for the Blue Jays begins tomorrow afternoon versus the Detroit Tigers. How I miss those heady years, even as recently as 2015, when we had post season hopes. Of course, nothing’s impossible, but…we’ll see how it goes. And no John Gibbons this year, either, huh? I always thought he had a bit of a Brad Pitt look to him….
 
I’m so glad that the Jays are “Canada’s Team.” Last week when I was tweeting about the Leafs, someone from a western broadcast site said, “You’re still cheering for the Leafs?” and I couldn’t help but think that there’s no way I’m giving up on them now! We are in a better spot than we’ve been since the early 90s. Our Stanley Cup memories are in black and white. Why would we give ‘em up now, right? And Rob still puts on his Leafs jammie pants when they play, as he will this afternoon.
 
Fortunately, there are no superstitions about washing them, etc.. And yes, I said afternoon: they usually hit the ice at 4 pm our time. I LOVE that we can watch a game and still have the evening to watch other stuff. The west coast time zone ROCKS. In fact, that afternoon baseball game tomorrow is going to happen in our lunch hour.
 
That’s just one of the great things about having made this move. Sheila asked me to write about the best things. Well, by far, it’s been a chance to start fresh, to look out at the ocean every day and see sails and gulls and mountains and a view that is ever-changing.
 
One of the best parts has been to be around my favourite young cousin and her husband and two children, but that’s about to change. Tonight, we’ll go to dinner in nearby Langford and say good-bye to Karen, Joe, Regan and Owen, as they get set to leave Vancouver Island and move to Calgary. What’s great news is that Karen’s two siblings already live in the Stampede City, and the children will get to know their cousins. It’s a terrific career move for Joe, who is truly one of the brightest people I’ve ever met.
 
We love this little family and, as hard as it is emotionally on Karen’s parents (who live here and were a big reason we set our sights on Victoria to begin with), we know that it’s for the best for Karen and Joe. We wish them love and luck and will sorely miss having little people in our lives. But that’s life, right? Like the old song goes, somebody’s always saying good-bye.
 
I’ll come back to many of your ideas as the weeks and months go on, but thank you for chiming in and lending a hand to help me move a great big block.
 
Hugs,
 

A quick update on the book for you (which has been out one month, as of today): as you can see on the banner on my FB page and on Twitter, there is now a release date for the audio version of Mourning Has Broken. I’ll have more about it, and the story of how it came to be, next month, but for now, I’m getting a lot of inquiries as to whether I voiced it. In two words: heck, yes! I honestly cannot imagine letting anyone else do this. And Rob produced it. That’s all I’ll say about that, right now, except that it is available for pre-order.
 
And if you’ve already read the book, please take a moment to leave a review either at amazon.ca or at chaptersindigo.ca and let other potential purchasers know what you thought. I so appreciate that and am grateful for the reviews that have already been left. And you don’t have to have purchased the book through those two websites or their stores in order to have your voice heard. Something else I learned through this entire process!
 
Speaking of the learning process, there is something that I touch upon in Mourning Has Broken but that I’d like to take a moment to shine a light on today. It jumped out at me on the weekend and I wonder if we could discuss the verb we use when we talk about suicide. (Look, I gave you a few laughs last week, stick with me here!)
 
The terminology I refer to was brought to my attention on the weekend thanks to a Miami Herald article about a second Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school student who had committed suicide, one year after the Parkland, Florida attack that killed 17. Then I read yesterday of a parent of one of the children who died in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting also committing suicide.
 
And that’s when – apart from the horror of the trauma that caused these three deaths – something jumped out at me: the fact that we are still using the outdated and offensive terminology “commit” when we talk about death.
 
I realize these stories emanated from the United States, but I wanted to look into it a little bit here on our home turf. Suicide in Canada has not been a crime since the early 1970s. (Physician-assisted suicide was decriminalized in 2015.) Before 1972, dying by or attempting suicide was a criminal offence. But that is no longer the case. You may think that to take your own life is a sin, and that’s up to you and your belief system.
 
But a newspaper like the Miami Herald – any news publication of note, for that matter – should know that the terminology has changed. That second student died by suicide or completed suicide. Saying “committed suicide” carries with it a whole set of implications and judgments of which many of us are still only becoming aware. (I still hear those two words together on Law and Order: SVU and I wonder how it is that writers on a prominent show such as that have yet to get the memo.)
 
You may be sighing, “Oh, what next?” or decrying some sort of political correctness or lack of logic in the ever-changing landscape of our lexicon. But hear me out.
 
First off, what some see as “political correctness” can often be an effort to alleviate the pain and offence that some antiquated terms and phrases have carried. So let’s get over that. Secondly, I’ve been in communication with a great many bereaved parents and family members who have lost loved ones to suicide. Only one, a fairly recent email from a widow, used the word “commit” to describe the loss of someone close to her when it came to dying by suicide. That did not escape my attention. Most chose not to.
 
Here are a few paragraphs that can sum up the reasoning behind this gentle plea for a change to the way we talk about this, still the most (unfairly) stigmatized form of loss of life. This comes from BeyondBlue.org.au, an Australian website. And I think it applies no matter where in the world you are:

…There is one simple thing all of us can do to help reduce the stigma around suicide. That is, stop using the ‘c’ word. People don’t commit suicide.
 
It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when suicide was considered a crime. It’s even harder to believe that it wasn’t that long ago. In Victoria, it was only with the Crimes Act of 1958 that attempting suicide was no longer recognised as a criminal act. Before this, if a person took their own life, they could be refused a funeral or even have their possessions confiscated. Not to mention the scrutiny their family or friends were left to carry.
 
The criminal associations with suicide might be gone, but using the phrase ‘committed suicide’ is still common.
 
So why shouldn’t we use the ‘c word’ when it comes to suicide?
 
Susan Beaton, a Suicide Prevention Adviser in her research report on suicide and language, sums it up well: “We now live in a time when we seek to understand people who experience suicidal ideation, behaviours and attempts, and to treat them with compassion rather than condemn them. Part of this is to use appropriate, non-stigmatising terminology when referring to suicide.”
 
Instead of saying the word ‘committed,’ try and use phrases like ‘took their own life’ or ‘died by suicide.’
 
Beyond Blue research shows that people at risk of suicide want those close to them to listen and show they care. Having conversations and understanding their situation – or at least trying to – is key.
 
Mental health literacy has come a long way in the past few decades. If you’re still using the ‘c’ word, it’s time to update your vocab. It might seem like a small slip of the tongue to you, but it can have a serious isolating impact on someone going through a difficult time.

Losing someone to suicide, or coming from a place where you were ready to die by suicide, is hard enough. Can we perhaps find the compassion to change the way we talk about it? Maybe that, too, will help to throw just a little more light on depression and mental health issues.
 
Thank you. I just wanted to share that with you. I know many of us have never, ever considered how “committed” may land on the heart of someone who’s been touched by suicide. But how do we learn about anything if we keep so much in the shadows, right?