Emersons still taking first steps after losing Anna and Charlie
The Emerson family takes it day by day, nearly eight months after losing mom Anna, and newborn Charlie. A benefit concert for the kids will be held May 5 at Bishop Ryan high school.
SOMETIMES
IT HAPPENS in the shower, when Howie Emerson feels a wave of sadness, for himself, and the kids, and then anger and fear, over losing his wife and mother of their children, and his newborn son.
He remembers that morning last September when Anna, seven months pregnant with their fourth child, collapsed as the kids — Grace, 9, James, 6, and Katie, 4 — got ready for school. Howie was driving to work when he received a call from a police officer, then rushed to St. Joe’s hospital. She died from a pulmonary embolism. Two days later, the newborn they had named Charlie died.
“It hits you again, the shock of it,” he says. “But then you go on with your day. Because there’s three kids to get out of bed and feed and take to school.”
Family and friends and community kept them afloat through the fall. That first stage was a blur. Howie can barely remember anything. He would buy groceries and leave bags full of food in the store.
CHRISTMAS SEEMED to go reasonably well. On Dec. 29, Grace turned 10. And then the long, cold winter set in.
“I never particularly liked winter anyway,” says Howie. “For me I’ve always enjoyed spring, then fall, summer, winter.”
The second stage these last few months has in some ways been the toughest: the reality that Anna is gone, and ongoing practical matters of making meals, driving to swimming lessons, doing laundry and getting the homework done.
Howie read articles on coping with loss, and he attended counselling.
“There’s no magic button. I mean, I think I’m doing OK. But there’s no benchmark, right?”
The take-home message from the advice? “Just that it takes time. It’s a
process you can’t rush, you just have to go through it, I guess. But I don’t know.”
The kids are getting solid report cards at school. He wonders where they get their resilience. “They lost their mom, it’s a huge deal. James has probably been the most emotional. Well, I have, then James. The boys.”
Grace has had counselling, but James isn’t interested. And Katie is still just four and rolls along. The kids are Howie’s only source for what happened in the house that terrible morning. It was Grace who called 911. He does not push her to talk about it. Sometimes, out of the blue, James will say something about the scene.
Howie is a software consultant who often works on the road — but not since that day.
His company has been great, he says, supporting him working at home. He feels he should force himself to get out, have more human contact, but all he wants to do is stay in the house that backs onto Gage Park.
Most of the time he’s tired. After the baths and bedtime stories, he usually ends up falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV.
He has dreamt of Anna twice. In one of the dreams, they are in a seaside villa, caring for a baby. And in the other, it’s just Anna: she smiles at him, and Howie tells her that she’s dying, but she just keeps smiling.
As a family they talk about her a lot and the memories bring smiles, not tears. And then it is always James who says: Don’t forget about Charlie. Their brother.
The kids got to meet him when he was on life support in hospital.
“Charlie isn’t part of the memories, so that’s probably why James keeps bringing him up,” says Howie. “Charlie, yeah, his brother. So that ... ”
Howie stops, his voice catching. He ends his train of thought by quietly cursing in disbelief.
Anna’s family lives in the Maritimes. They suggested Howie uproot the kids and move out East, where he would have more help. It made some sense, and he loves Anna’s family, but he decided not to.
For one thing, the kids, who were all born at McMaster hospital, had no interest.
“They are Hamiltonians. I’m a transplant but they are the real deal.”
He will take them on their annual trip to New Brunswick in August to visit cousins and aunts and uncles. They will stay in the same cottage as last summer on Oak Bay.
But first there is the big concert on May 5, a week before Mother’s Day. Howie’s sister, Cheri, and her husband, Don, planned a benefit concert and auction for the kids’ education fund.
(For information and tickets go to www.therewillbejoy.ca.)
The event is called “There will be joy,” a reference to what Howie told the kids last fall: that there would one day be joy again in their house.
Howie is amazed at the work Cheri and Don have put into organizing it. And he has mixed emotions trying to process it all. But he will be there.
Looking back, he wonders how in the days following Anna’s and Charlie’s deaths he had it in him to talk about joy with the kids.
“But I’m proud of how we’ve done so far. It’s not a quiet and sad house. It’s a normal bustling house. We’re still taking our first steps, but we’re doing OK in general, I think. The kids are fed, the dogs are fed.”
The dogs: A few days after the funeral Howie surprised the kids by buying them two puppies. Shadow and Star.
They are part black Lab and growing fast.
“They love to be with you, we love to be with them, it’s a symbiotic thing.”
Before the dogs were trained, they ran away several times. Once, a woman on a King Street bus saw them loose, got off the bus, corralled them, read their tags and called Howie, while another woman stopped her car to help.
“It was awesome. It speaks volumes for what this town is all about.”
Like others who suffer sudden loss, Howie no longer has the reflexive optimism that life goes according to plan.
Still, he’s had visions of one day shedding tears when he drops off the youngest, Katie, when she begins university.
He knows he needs to get healthier, and quit smoking once and for all. If he can get in another 15 years and at least get them all off to university, that would be good.
“And it’s gravy after that.”
For now, there is appreciation for more immediate, small blessings.
Last weekend it finally returned: the sun, and warm air that felt like a lingering kiss on the skin.
The Emerson family played with the dogs in the park, and Grace biked to the corner store with friends for the first time.
The event is called “There will be joy,” a reference to what Howie told the kids last fall: that there would one day be joy again in their house.
“But I’m proud of how we’ve done so far. It’s not a quiet and sad house. It’s a normal bustling house. We’re still taking our first steps, but we’re doing OK.” HOWIE EMERSON