Merry Christmas Mum, 2021

Dec. 25/21

Hi Mum,

Christmas Day has come and I have been thinking of you all day. Kim is spending Christmas with me and Grace this year, and we’ve planned a number of visits with childhood friends, and trips down memory lane in old neighbourhoods. I feel so lucky to be with her over Christmas this year. You’d be so proud of her and her beautiful daughters, Christina and Meaghan. They are two strong, sound women, raising their own sons and daughters with love and in healthy lifestyles.

Christmas Eve day was a big day to revisit the times when you were in Riverview, and to remember your life with us. Kim wanted to go there to think of you and maybe to get some closure by walking on the grounds again. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to return, but I knew how much it meant to her.

Riverview Hospital is now a mix of old, run-down buildings that represent 120 years of evolution in mental health practices, as well as some new facilities that promise a much brighter future. It was painful to see how decrepit, rusted, and overgrown some of those old buildings have become, especially West Lawn with its cracked and chipped pillars and giant rusted steel front door. That building is spooky as hell. It was practically empty and closed back in the 80s when we went to see you, and I never liked it.

Centre Lawn, where you were for a little while in ’73 and ’79/80, is in much better repair. It now gets used as a shooting location for movies and TV shows. We took pictures of me and Kim standing on the stairs. Centre Lawn was the first ward you were in.

To me, being at Riverview again was uncomfortable. At first, I felt like I didn’t belong there, like I was trespassing in my old neighbourhood and seeing my childhood house with some other family now living their lives there. I relaxed and settled down after about fifteen minutes, and my curiosity got the better of me as we walked around behind the large Centre Lawn building to explore the lane behind it.

After that, we drove up the hill to the North Lawn Unit, where you’d spent most of your time in long-term care. We took photos from those steps, and came back down to the car to admire the beautiful view across the highway. I admired the snow covered mountains and remembered many visits to you from the top of that hill.

The last step in our visit was to find the Riverview Cemetery. Kim was very keen to find it, but I was not. We did wonder if we’d manage to find a grave of your grandfather Isaac Ernest Marks, who died at Essondale in 1948. The hospital has undergone many names in its long history, from Colony Farm, to Essondale, to Riverview, and recently , the lands were renamed “The Place of the Great Blue Heron”.

There’s a kind of line of mental illness that runs from Great-Grandpa Isaac, through your Mother, to you, and then on into the next couple of younger generations. As we walked all over the puffy, mossy cemetary grounds, pulling deep mounds of mud and leaves off of neglected grave markers, we didn’t find any graves older than the 1950s. Few people ever come out here, I decided. Seeing a marker for “Jane Doe” stopped me in my tracks and brought me to tears. It was the idea of being nameless and possibly forgotten that overwhelmed me. Standing on that little hill, in a cemetary only about 2000 square meters in size, I couldn’t stop thinking about the sadness of lost or maybe even unfulfilled lives. I couldn’t stand to be there anymore, and I lost interest in finding my great grandpa Isaac. He must have been cremated and scattered somewhere else, I reckoned.

I can’t stand the idea of one of dead loved ones becoming forgotten. I expect this happens to all of us in time, but I never wanted it to happen to you Mum! That was my big worry for you, but I’m grateful for the friends and family who visited you there, and for those who always remembered your birthday and christmases. You have always had friends and family who’ve thought of you and loved you amidst living their daily lives. As long as Kim and I are alive, your memory will stay alive too.

Hope for the future

On the way back from the cemetery, we passed the two new state-of-the-art buildings for native and youth mental health care. Seeing their bright, open, modern design made me feel so happy for the future of mental health care. It was such a huge lift up from the rundown look of the old buildings.

A couple of month ago, I got in touch with your old Nurse, Anna Tremere. She was the head nurse, and also the only person who knew you better in your Riverview times than your own family. Anna was bright and energetic in her remembrances of her long nursing career, and spoke warmly of you, your piano playing, and your sense of humor. Anna gave me a more optimistic view of the care provided at Riverview, and we talked about the new facilities in operation on the grounds, and how that gives one a reason to be hopeful for the future of mental health care in BC.

Mum, in our last brief talk back in 1994 or 1995, I asked you if you minded being at Riverview, and you just said that it was your home now. You’d been there for over 14 years at that point, which was a very long time. I felt sad for you at hearing your resigned acceptance, but also a little relieved by it. I felt like if you’d accepted your circumstances, then that was like permission for me to let go of some guilt too.

We’d gotten glimpses of how scared you were in the beginning on our first visits, years earlier. It was torture for us to see you crying and pleading as we left you behind the big door in that Centre Lawn ward, and saw your teary eyes through the door’s little window.

After that, we went back to Vancouver, and Kim and I visited you and Dad at Mountain View Cemetary. We found your spot on the Rose Wall, and said what we could in spite of light snow and some bitterly cold winds.

We’ve been a long time away from each other now (over 26 years) and I always wished I could get out to visit you more often (especially in your last few years).I do pray that you knew that your family always loved you and missed you.

I still miss you, Kim misses you, and we think about you all the time.

John.