Sugar

My sister, Torey, is addicted to this cooking program on the Canadian Food Network called, Sugar. As you might guess it covers sweets and mainly baking, which Torey enjoys. She’ll call me up and tell me about some amazing thing she has made and I’ll ask, “You get that from Emeril?” “No!” I can see her shaking her head with a smile, “From Anna Olson, you know, Sugar!”

She is so demented she doesn’t even know I am joking. Sometimes I will take it further and ask, “Doesn’t she say, ‘Pow or Bam!’?” Torey gently corrects me but it is clear she thinks Emeril is beneath her…and Anna.

She is a bright girl with an amazing array of accomplishments so you may be wondering why a Canadian TV host is her new best friend. It’s rather a long story.

It started with her marrying a Canadian, my brother-in-law, David. They wanted to wait several years before having kids as David was in grad school, but Torey became pregnant three months after they married. This would have been enough stress on a new little marriage, but a month later it was discovered that the bronchitis my Dad had been fighting for some time was actually congestive heart failure. When she wasn’t driving 9 hours to visit him in the hospital she was busy working, until she got laid off.

A dear friend was already bailing on her marriage and then another one did. For those of you in the audience contemplating stepping out on your marriage, it’s not just you and your mate and whomever you are contemplating cheating with; it is your whole world. Just so you know, your kids will not bounce back as they are children, not balls. Nor will your friends as they lose you to selfishness and denial and most of your spouse to pain and grief…but I digress. All that to say, Torey had another hobby when she wasn’t at the hospital or driving there or looking for a job.

Then they got evicted by their crazy landlord for requesting a month by month lease. Although this was one more burden, they were OK with it once they found out she had thrown a dead cat on the lawn of someone else who had ticked her off. They needed to be out two weeks after the baby was expected. So looking for an apartment was added to the list of fun things to do.

Meanwhile my Dad was dying the slowest death. He was on every sort of life support and slowly being killed by infection. It was just terrible, exhausting, and so painful. I don’t have it in me today to tell you the ups and downs, the confusion, the different reports, the actual miracles ,the crashing relapses and the prayers for more miracles that didn’t come. He was in the ICU for almost three months. Two of those months he was across the state. Torey drove 9 hours almost every weekend to be with him. At the end they moved him to a hospital here. Torey finally decided to come up and stay with me, which she did for weeks.

When he was finally removed from life support he sort of rallied. Torey was fast approaching her due date and the time where she would be under travel restrictions. It is a weird thing to be concerned that your dad die in time for you to go to his funeral. And then still praying that he would somehow be healed.

We were at his bedside most every day and my brother, Tanner, stayed with him every night. Two days after he had been taken off, I awoke to an early morning phone call. It was Torey, which confused me as I thought she was in the basement sleeping. She was sobbing.

“He’s gone!” There were voices in the background and she turned away. “Wait, he’s not dead.”

“What!”

“I gotta go, I’ll call you back.”

She did, about 5 minutes later, this time she was angry. Mom had relieved Tanner early that morning. Torey had awakened around 5 and drove to the hospital to be with Mom. The night before Dad had been moved off the ICU as he was nolonger an ICU patient, but someone who they were waiting to die. I still don’t get it. So he was down in the regular part of the hospital choking on fluids in his lungs while my sister and mom helped nurses try to fashion something to suction him with. It was terrible, so terrible. Finally he gave a shuddering gasp and was gone. Mom summoned the nurse and Torey called me. The nurse checked him and said he wasn’t dead yet then left the room. Mom and Torey stood by the bed and stared at him for several minutes. Finally Torey said, “This is stupid. He is dead. What do you think?”

“I think he’s dead.” Mom said.

Torey got the nurse again who determined that yes, in fact, he really was dead and Torey called me back seething. It was just insult added to an injury so profound.

So we had the funeral and then Torey stuck around to make it through her birthday which was two weeks to the day after Dad’s death. It was days after this that her husband, David, got a call from his sister, Allison, with the news that she had leukemia. Later, he found Torey crying. He was crying himself and asked, “Are you crying about my sister?”

“At this moment I am crying about my Dad…who died three weeks ago.”

And a week after that the baby, a girl, named Ren, was born.

Two weeks later they moved.

Two weeks after that David went back to grad school. Fortunately his sister was in excellent health, apart from having cancer and responded well to treatment. Soon she was in remission.

Ren- well she is her own little story. Let me summarize. She had reflux but it took many trips to the doctor and some poo pooing by the doctor to finally get a diagnosis and some relief. Just imagine how you would feel if everything you ate turned into acid that burned its way back up your esophagus. In case you can’t, just know one of her nicknames was Hisser. Now imagine how you would feel if you were the primary care giver of someone who felt like that.

A few months after the baby was born Torey began to study under a woman who was trained in Authentic Pilates. This means this woman trained under the woman trained by Joseph Pilates himself and to whom he gave the business. Sadly, he didn’t trademark it. Torey helped this woman set up her studio and began working like crazy to train and work, either bringing the baby with her or arranging for David to be with her between classes. This continued for a very chaotic year.

About the time David graduated he was realizing he didn’t want to be a professor. This was a little frustrating for Torey as that was the reason they had been poor for a year and lived in Illinois, well that and 24 hour access to corn fields. He got a job and began considering another future outside of teaching. Unfortunately they had told their landlord early in the year, when they thought Torey would be done with her certification by summer, that they wouldn’t need to renew their lease so he rented the place out to someone else. They found another apartment and moved yet again. Torey continued taking care of Ren and working to complete her Pilates program.

And then Allison’s blood work started looking funky. It wasn’t automatically problematic, but David said, “If the leukemia is back I want to move home.”

The leukemia was back. While Allison waited for a bone marrow match, Torey and David packed up their life, found another tenant for their apartment and wrapped up things at the studio. Torey though only a couple of months away from completing her program, was going to leave it. The plan was for them to drive up to Michigan for Christmas where Torey and Ren would stay for a couple of weeks and David would leave soon after to drive the truck to British Columbia. The day before their move he felt that he should just go straight to B.C.

David is really good at holidays. He likes to cook and gets the whole family involved in all day culinary projects, but he wasn’t there, nor were my brothers who both got stranded in airports on Christmas day. It was the second Christmas without my dad and harder than the first; there were so few of us.

Before we knew it the visit was over and they were gone. David had quickly gotten a job in construction and was working long days then stopping off at the hospital to visit Allison before coming home. Her father-in-law, Neil was working or at the hospital and her mother-in-law, Cathy, on a leave from work, was always at the hospital and only came home to shower and maybe eat. Ren wasn’t allowed at the hospital and it would have involved so much backtracking to get Torey there, so most days she was home alone with Ren. She tried to find her place in the household and kept feeling like she wasn’t doing anything. I would remind her that the care and nurture of her daughter, a.k.a, The Hisser, was a huge something.

Every member of David’s family loves to cook, but with everyone coming and going Torey felt the logical answer was for her to take over, except cooking for her was a daunting prospect in general, let alone starting out cooking for a house full of amazing cooks. Don’t get me wrong, she can make an amazing salad and her spaghetti is out of this world, but…did I mention her amazing salads?

So she was feeling a little stressed and blue and then guilty that she was even thinking about herself when her sister-in-law was fighting for her life. We talked on the phone a lot.

“The thing is,” I told her, “you just figured out you are a stay-at- home mom, which is quite the realization for anyone, but you don’t even have a home. You live with your in-laws.”

“Right.”

She started learning how to cook and everything was received with enthusiasm and gratitude. And then Allison had the bone marrow transplant. Because she had rallied so quickly the first time around, the assumption was sort of that she just needed to get a match, have the transplant and then recover again. The transplant went well, but she got an infection and things did not look good. The hospital had already been the center of everyone’s lives, but now it became the only thing. Torey and Ren started camping out there with David’s parents. Everyone took turns staying in the waiting room with Rennie while the others took care of Allison who was intubated.

For Torey it was all terribly like our experience with Dad. Allison was a talker so even though she couldn’t actually speak she would try desperately to communicate. She was heavily medicated as well, so meaningful conversation was pointless, but they had to try. She would be gesturing emphatically, pointing and trying to talk while Torey and her mother-in-law, Cathy valiantly worked to understand, guessing, suggesting anything, praying. Allison would get frustrated and slap her hands on her legs in resignation, pass out for a little bit then unexpectedly come to and start in on another round. As Torey said after one especially exhausting day,

“It’s like playing Wheel of Fortune without the prizes.”

Thankfully, Allison came out of the danger and began the slow road to recovery. The household normalized somewhat and Torey started cooking again. She had a talk with Cathy that she was never ever to make spaghetti as that was a solid Torey meal and not to be taken away. They began to get more of a schedule and Torey found she was actually beginning to enjoy preparing meals and really loved baking. That was when the calls started for real.

“Hello,” I would answer the phone.

“Hi. It’s me. I just made the most amazing lemon bars. I was going to make chocolate chip cookies but I didn’t have…you should really try…now you know you have to use unsalted butter and kosher salt”

This to someone who had been buying kosher salt before Lot’s wife, back when she only knew how to make salads. I teased her but I was happy for her that she was feeling good and finding her domestic way and she is right, Anna Olson does make a mean chocolate chip cookie, the secret is…oh, sorry.

I wrote all this down because I wanted it in black and white, everything she has faced in the last three years, her time as a newlywed and young mother. I want to tell her I am proud of her and that I know God is too, that He has seen and that she needs to be told “Well done.”

Well done, Torey. I am proud of you and so grateful that you are my sister. You are a great mom, an excellent wife and a dutiful daughter. You have fought passionately for both sides of your family and your little nuclear one. You have sacrificed and given and loved. I know you get tired at times and a little fearful about the future, but I am adding my faith to the truths that:

He will never leave you nor forsake you.
He gently guides those with young.
He has loved you with an everlasting love.
He will strenghen you and help you: He will uphold you with his righteous right hand.
He set your feet on a rock and gave you a firm place to stand.
He exists and He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.
He alone is your rock and your salvation; He is your fortress,

You will never be shaken.