‘Sadness under Christmas tree’
Homicide support group holds vigil during season
For 18 years, there has been an empty spot at Jane Orydzuk’s table. It is the place her son, Tim, used to sit, before he was murdered in a double shooting in 1994. Nearly two decades later, it still feels empty. And never more so than at Christmas.
While many people struggle with loss over the holidays, losing someone to homicide can be especially isolating. It is so sudden and violent, and there are other unique aspects to the death, including whether a suspect is ever arrested, and court proceedings that can stretch on for years.
Martin Hattersley, one of the people who helped to found Edmonton’s Victims of Homicide Support Society in the mid-1990s, knows first-hand that dealing with the violence of a homicidal death is different than other kinds of deaths and losses.
“I don’t think people always realize that,” said Hattersley, whose 29-year-old daughter, Cathy Greeve, was strangled to death in the washroom of the Churchill LRT station in 1988 by a stranger who had just been released from prison.
“It’s so unexpected, and the death is so violent and final. Nobody can be prepared for the change of life that’s involved in that.”
The Victims of Homicide support group holds monthly meetings in Edmonton throughout the year, but the December meeting is always replaced by a candlelight vigil to help with the struggles of the holiday season.
“Christmas is definitely a very dif- ficult time when you have this loss,” Hattersley said. “The commercial world is all about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, but it isn’t the season to be jolly for most of us. We’ve had a serious loss, and you can’t just blot it out.”
About 50 people attended the group’s candlelight vigil at St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church this week, lighting candles for those who were slain, and speaking the victims’ names aloud in the quiet chapel. Pictures of those killed were displayed in a memorial by the altar, and a Christmas tree glowed warmly in the corner.
An Edmonton Police Service homicide investigator sat in the pews among the families.
Some of those who took part in the ceremony are preparing for their first Christmas in the wake of a homicide in the family. Others, like Gloria Vallette, are still struggling with their loss many years later.
Vallette brought a photo of her son, Darren, to the memorial: A framed picture of the smiling young man taken at his sister’s wedding, just months before he was killed in a random encounter at a convenience store in April 1998. Vallette says she misses her son the most at Christmas.
She said the Victims of Homicide candlelight ceremony helps, in part because it brings together people who have suffered the same kind of loss, and who better understand each other’s pain.
“I think it probably lightens the sadness,” she said. “It’s a lonely time of year for some people.”
Every year, Vallette and Orydzuk spend Christmas Day together serving meals for underprivileged people, their own holiday tradition forged in the wake of their losses.
Orydzuk said Victims of Homicide has been holding the Christmas candlelight ceremony for about 10 years. It’s a tradition that none of them would have chosen to be part of, but one that helps.
“This is a time when we all have an empty chair around our tables,” she said. “There’s sadness under the Christmas tree.”