It was just 8 years prior to this celebration we received a call offering us both jobs in Vancouver. Erin was a mere 6 months old and we had just had her christening attracting British, Canadian and South African members of our immediate and extended family to a joyful celebration. I remember on receiving the offer of the job feeling as though the world was closing in on me. I had reached an equilibrium of peace, fulfillment and joy – the miracle of the perfect nuclear family - a boy and a girl; good friends; Mamgu in Wales just 4 hours away awaiting her grandchildren with open arms 4 to 5 times a year; and a satisfying job. I remember consciously thinking that this cross-roads would shape the course of our children’s lives – were we to raise our children as Canadians or Brits? And I had an unsettling intuition that this move could either help or harm our children’s futures.
The family and I arrived on August 10th 2008, a year after Mike settled in Vancouver; I had had a year of bobbing back and forth between the 2 countries while resolving Erin’s kidney problem, deputizing for my Head of School, selling our house and completing my Doctoral thesis. I cannot claim to have embraced joyfully my new homeland on first meeting. The first year was tumultuous; the second to fourth years as challenging as we shifted and adjusted expectations and renegotiated our career paths and plans. I wrestled with the best school choices for our very different children. And as all parents do, we explored the myriad of options experimenting with activities, sports and music extra-curricular options. The investment of energy, commitment and saturation of love and attention yielded finally in September 2014 the prospect of equilibrium, of stability, of steadiness. The children were settled happily in to their respective schools, sport passions, had wonderfully chosen friends and activities. We loved our respective jobs and roles. We looked forward to a more fallow time with less striving to arrive and more soaking in the profound joys of family life. In September at a Leadership Training session I led I stated that my career aspiration was simply to ‘grow our family’.
How life changes in a few seconds.
In the aftermath of Erin’s accident we consciously chose to shut off coursing down the path of ‘what ifs’. The outcome is the same and the replay becomes a torture of the mind and soul. But in our initial reflections, there were so infinitely many innocent decisions that would have led to a different outcome – to our child peacefully sleeping in her bed rather than domiciled dust-to-dust in her jewellery box. A holiday in Hong Kong a week later; a trip to Vancouver island cancelled; a music performance not attended; a Christmas carol concert attended; a call down to Erin on the walk to wait up; a photo not taken…
For it seems as though the universe aligned a myriad of things for her to be on that meager half-meter unstable patch of dirt in the infinitesimally gargantuan range of the mountains. And all those decisions and choices and intentions swirled and spiraled and coalesced in the same way as the millions of decisions, choices and intentions knitted together to secure her conception in that precise miraculous point in time 9 years ago.
The decision to come to Canada could be viewed as the most significant decision we have made in our lives. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and knowing what we know now, of course we would have chosen a different path. But which path, which crossroad, which decision, which adjustment would we have made to secure a different outcome? 8 years ago or 8 minutes or 8 seconds before her accident? Changing coming to Canada would have meant that we would be living different lives - a concertina of sliding doors and endless different possibilities. And our Canadian homeland has offered us such a richness of experiences, people and opportunities. We as a family had in September reached a new equilibrium of happiness, contentment and peace. It felt like settling into a new leather chair - we had broken the stiff resistance and we finally were rested comfortably. We claimed that happiness – joyfully, wholeheartedly, intentionally.
So as we celebrated Canada Day this year with the Lion’s Bay community at the much-frequented Lion’s Bay beach, there were no regrets in embracing our new homeland. Yes, Erin’s absence was profoundly felt – we imagined her swimming to the dock; running joyfully; swinging on the beach monkey bars; flitting from one friendship group to another as the children built sandcastles, collected shells and poked at the fish under the searing sun. But if things had turned out differently, our happiness, peace and fulfillment in our new homeland would be complete. We cannot blame or live with regrets with a decision made a decade ago.
Each of us has significant epiphanies in our lives – critical moments; sharp turns of destiny or nuances that have seismic consequences. Our seismic consequence is overwhelming but it is how we choose to embrace it that allows us either hope for the future or crushing unhappiness. We choose life – even though the journey is unbearably difficult. For we miss our girl with an indescribable ache...
And we still need you as part of our journey as we tip-toe step by step into a new undefined reconstructed future in our not-so-new homeland.