She’s not afraid to die
Halifax woman prepares soul and self to depart
“You’re talking to stoned Audrey,” the woman joked, opening her door for what we both knew would be the last time we will ever meet.
The cannabis, you see, helps with pain that by then was so blindingly intense that a recent bone marrow biopsy “tickled by comparison,” and that it felt like her “body would break” during the short walk from her bedroom to the front door.
Audrey Parker’s time on this Earth was down to a few precious days last Thursday, when I arrived at her apartment, where her days will end.
But there were still things that she had to say and do.
When you read this, she will be only hours away from looking at — for the final time — the faces of her mother and her close friends, who have helped her on this journey that began with her 2016 terminal cancer diagnosis, and waiting for her caregiver to start the first of three injections that will end Parker’s anything-but-tragic life at the age of 57.
When you read this she will have stopped seeing the visitors who have been so frequent
that she had to schedule Friday night open houses, just to fit in everyone who wanted to say goodbye.
She will have also conducted the last of the media interviews that became a deluge when Parker announced she was moving the date of her passing up to Nov. 1, because medically assisted death requires that a
person be mentally competent and able to communicate their wishes just before the desired act is to occur, and she was worried that might not be the case.
“My death is still a sacred thing,” she told me, lying in the bed where she will leave this life. “I have to make myself and soul ready to depart.”
The hard-core details of her passing — what she will have for her last meal, who gets her treasured Chanel bags, the writing of her self-penned obituary — were ironed out long ago.
There’s an irony that this self-described queen of materialism now wants people to know that “trying to make all this money, to be in the right schools … to own the nice house and car and all this material stuff” is folly.
Instead, she says, “slow down and have less. Savour it.”
She tells that to her friends and on the pages of the end-oflife guide that she is hurrying to finish so that it will be ready for the next person in her circle who needs it.
While she can, she is passing on other things too: be kind to people just because you can; be that spark to create some positive change in the world; instead of running from death, embrace it as part of life’s journey.
She has lived by the latter, packing a lifetime of experiences, parties and living into the months since learning she had terminal cancer.
When the former television makeup artist, businesswoman and image consultant says that she is “dying as her best self” she doesn’t just mean the startling way that she has remained positive throughout her illness.
As much as anything she means her ability to make peace with her lot and to reclaim control over her death, along the way “embracing every aspect of life’s journey.”
You will notice I did not write that on Nov. 1 she will be gone.
Because Parker was all about the future.
How she has never been afraid of death, perhaps because she nearly drowned at the age of 12, but also because the lapsed Catholic is simply excited to see what happens when she dies.
How her biggest worry is for the friends that she leaves behind, in part because she just wants them to enjoy life the way she has after having had this taste of what is best about it. But also how, perhaps, they shouldn’t worry.
Parker has a thing about nickel coins, among other reasons because the number five figures so prominently in the merchandise from her beloved Chanel brand.
“I tell my friends that if you start seeing a whole lot of nickels around to know for a fact that is me.”