Passing through the doorway

80

Today was a bittersweet day.

It was my birthday.

But I am also heartbroken.

The dichotomy between the amazing number of messages wishing me a happy birthday, contrasted against the phone call I received early on in the day… left me vacillating between smiles and tears for most of the day. I so appreciate all the wonderful greetings. And I was in tears most of the day, while receiving them.

I spent a period of time just sitting at my computer trying to figure out who to tell, and how, that a very special person in many lives had lost her several year’s long fight with a malignant monster.

The world lost a special person, a beautiful human being, overnight.

Knowing her was a gift, and I think that is what I will hang onto this birthday. Academically speaking, she was my younger sibling. Sometimes we think that being older makes us the mentor, but she was a mentor to me as well. Through our debates on various biological topics, she taught me much about science. But she also taught me lessons in life, in friendship, and, over the last few years, on the inexorible eventuality of death.

Our lives first intersected at UBC, in grad school. Though we didn’t see each other as often after our degrees were completed, we were still near to each other, ended up working for the same larger organization, and we were finding ways to collaborate a bit across programs. Sometimes she’d be at the hatchery sampling, and sometimes I’d be at the research lab for various reasons, but we’d always connect and find time to talk a bit.

Today I should be happy, and I really, deeply, appreciate all the loving messages I’ve received, but it’s also a sad day filled with loss. But even within that loss, I have spent the day revisiting some happy memories.

• Spinning blood samples on the wheel of an upside-down bicycle because the power went out int he middle of an experiment
• She and other labmate having to do wet exits with the marine station kayaks because…well…they were using the station kayaks and the station docks and that was the policy…while I stood on the dock and laughed because I had my own boat and refused to get wet…because…I had my own boat. The station staff threatened me and said I had to do it or I couldn’t use the station dock…I just argued that I’d walk my kayak off the premises and paddle up to meet them… they relented.. I stayed dry
• Kayaking on the west coast out of Bamfield and looking over our shoulders nervously because we were being followed by a massive adult male Stellar’s sea lion for about 20+ minutes and not knowing what the thing was going to do
• Her donning a wetsuit and jumping in the water off the dock at the Bamfield Marine Station at midnight because she wanted to swim in the bioluminescence
• Arriving in Halifax at an obscene hour with a third (male) labmate and discovering that the hotel didn’t correctly understand that we were arriving at the hour we were and having to share a one bed hotel room between the three of us
• Travelling with her for conferences and always bringing my professional blowdryer because she’d used it once and stopped bringing her own because mine was better (I was a hairdresser at one time). Even when I’d stopped blowdrying my hair regularly I always packed it, despite its weight, because I knew she wouldn’t bring one
• Visiting the brewery market in Halifax and buying a stupid expensive rolling pin because she sold me on purple heart wood…..and ending up collecting rolling pins because of it
• Her baking some stevia sweetened baked goods and bringing them to the lab when we were down to three because my other half had decided to try the Atkin’s diet and I was trying to be supportive
• And…related to the above, she and our other remaining labmate giving me a look of horror when I announced I was going caffeine-free cold turkey…..which I think precipitated the baked goods offerings…..
• Hand feeding giant boisterous smelly loud baby Stellar’s sea lions that were in quarantine at West Van Lab before being moved to the Vancouver Aquarium, where her best friend worked
• Making plans to take her to one of our SEP hatcheries a few years ago and deciding to connect on the ferry since she lived on Bowen…and then almost NOT making the ferry because no one told me that an empty liquid nitrogen dewar was still considered dangerous goods….and then having her laugh and ask why I didn’t just throw a blanket over it… “Because I didn’t KNOW that I’d end up fighting with the ticket agent that the giant empty thermos that normally holds liquid nitrogen was still a hazard when empty and no one TOLD me to throw a blanket over it!!!” But which also resulted in me being first vehicle after sweet talking my way pas tall the paperwork…and also got us off the ferry first so we missed all the traffic
• A funny little coloured pencil drawing of me on my scooter with a giant sperm on my back and the caption “Paige’s Milt Mule Service” because I’d sometimes take salmon sperm to a cryopreservation company outside of Campbell River for her lab
• A stupid little purple octopus made from Fimo that she gave me for Christmas over 20 years ago and that still lives stuck on the top of my computer monitor
• And so many more memories

I think we sometimes probably neglect to truly appreciate the people who weave in and out throughout our lives. Or maybe we appreciate them and then lives drift apart. It doesn’t make the relationships less meaningful, lives just change, time passes, and we realize that there are oceans between us…sometime s literally, sometimes figuratively.

I am not a particularly good friend, and I don’t have many friends, probably because I am not a particularly good friend, I am typically distant…but she was a friend, and that loss leaves me feeling bereft ❤️

I am heartbroken today, maybe not exactly the birthday anyone expects, but the memories were also a strange sweet gift sorts. I am grateful to have had her in my life.

The world lost a special soul, and some colour; she has passed through a door that we will all eventually walk through, but it was far too soon for her.

Raise a glass to each other, raise a glass to Ros.

And maybe…maybe send a message to someone you haven’t reached out to for awhile and tell them you think of them. It will probably mean a lot on both sides.