WHEN THE END HAS MORE QUESTIONS...

I'm always working on something as a writer. This is an excerpt from a book I'm currently working...if you've ever had to read a coroners report maybe this will resonate.

"It should have been super easy, I half expected the answer. I pressed the send button and sat back in my chair. I could check "coroners request" off my list of things to do this month. Another chapter closed, or so I thought.

My biological mother Sandy had died 30 years ago, but I had never had a concrete answer as to how. I speculated all the possibilities that came with her line of work; overdose, suicide, murder. In my 10 years of being back home in the lower mainland, even the possibility of the infamous pig farm crossed my mind. Serial killer Willy Pickton had been trolling the streets of the down town east side at the same time Sandy walked them. Did she meet her demise that way? Maybe I'd get a report back that said she had been identified through DNA from the scattered bones picked out of the soiled ground. The thought made me nauseous.

When the report came back 2 weeks later I was barely coherent from a late afternoon nap. I had managed to swing my feet over the edge of the bed and click the link to read the opening response.

"Thank you for your email.  As requested, please find attached a copy of the Coroners Report.

 On behalf of the Coroners Service, I extend my sincere condolences for your loss."

Something about reading those words made it very official. It hadn't been a mistake, there was a record, this did happen, she was dead. I think at times I had secretly hoped for a typo. I chance to reconnect. That sliver of hope. This confirmed those hopes were dashed. I quickly closed the email app and text my local bestie. I wasn't prepared to read what was in that email without a second to catch my breath. I knew this was a door that once opened could not be closed again. No matter what this report said, my life would change after reading it.

"Open it!" her text read.

The results came as not a huge shock. It turned out to be an accidental overdose of heroin and cocaine along with trace amounts of alcohol. Time of death had been undetermined since she was found the following day in a dumpster fire of a rooming house in downtown Vancouver. What bothered me more that the cause of death was the possibility that she had died alone and discarded. All clues I've discovered since receiving the report have pointed to the fact that she was likely prostituting that night and was a guest of the person renting the room. Questions remain...did she die before or after the said renter left the room? Had they come back and found her and left her there? Who discovered her? She had no ID on her, she was identified by her criminal record when the finger printed her. How did no one know her? She had worked those streets for 2 decades.

To add more mystery to an already chaotic chapter, when I spoke to my youngest brother about the rooming house, he said he had once spotted Willy Pickton in the bar on the main floor of the rooming house. Had Sandy ever crossed his path? Had she survived one of his attacks? Did she know any of his victims? Had she been warned?

I will probably never have the answers to any of these questions, but at least for now I have answers to some......."

This is the type of ending that's never really over. I have no idea where this goes, but I'm sure I'll post on here as it develops. There is one thing that stood out more than anything to me about this report. It came a few days later when I was trying to find a silver lining to it all and that's this: "This was a preventable death". If there is one thing I can take is that I don't ever want my 3 kids or grandson to read a coroners report on me and think "preventable death". I'm definitely not acing my health choices right now, and that's one thing I need to correct before it's too late. This will not be my children's legacy. Sandy has given me a chance to change it.

-S