In the spring of 2007, I climbed into my little blue Ford Escort GT and drove West to destroy my wife’s heart. The day was bright and sunny, filled with the buzz and bustle of ordinary people going about their lives. I drove neither fast nor slow, the bleak black bad news riding shotgun with me.
I found parking. I locked the car. I walked up the stairs into the classroom and asked my wife to pack up her things. She saw my face and was instantly filled with dread.
“It’s Emily,” I choked, as she collapsed, “Emily is dead.”
—–
It was a hard time in our lives. Newly married, we were still learning the rhythm of togetherness, the dovetailing of love and duty. Then, tragedy swept our carefully assembled set-pieces off the table. A young and blooming joy shriveled in the face of the fire that took the life of my wife’s younger sister; Emily Longworth died in a hostel fire while travelling in Chile in 2007. She was 25.
Emily Longworth, left, with sister Katie.
Supplied, Helen Schnare
And I could do nothing. Nothing. Time would be the only salve for the raw red wound on my wife’s soul; I couldn’t help her, not really. We persevered. We survived. We came through the other side of it and found a new way to live.
I spoke — indistinctly, muddled — at the celebration of Emily’s life. When I stepped down, my brother was there. Kieran hugged me tightly, each of us feeling not just the loss, but what it would be like to have our own bond severed. There is a time in our early twenties when we are so busy escaping from youth that we forsake our family somewhat. Later, the circle closes, and brothers and sisters reconnect. Emily and my wife Katie were just at that stage, lives beginning to overlap once again.
I think about that morning in the Escort from time to time, the shock and the anguish of it. After I drove Katie home to her parents’ house, we never rode in that car again. I sold it some weeks later.
High in the mountain passes of my home province of B.C., hundreds of miles beneath our wheels already, my brother sleeps in the passenger seat of a bright yellow Ford Mustang. The V8 throbs contentedly, a hearty rumbustious rumbling, and the big muzzle of the car out in front of us eats up the distance.
Brendan McAleer stands next to the yellow Ford Mustang he and his brother took on a recent B.C. road trip to the oldest Ford dealership in Canada.
Brendan McAleer, Driving
Lord knows how many miles my brother and I have passed in silent company. When we were kids, it was war over the armrest in the back of Dad’s BMW. Home from piano lessons in the Land Rover. The long run up the hill in the school bus, riding rows apart.
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Once, my father let us both sit on the front fenders of our old Series III Landie as it rolled over miles of gravel road. I remember it well — the biting cold of the air, the persnickety rattle of the 70-horse four-pot, hands gripping the spare tire on the bonnet.
But then we both grew up and left. Any bond bordered on irrelevancy — we were simply operating in different worlds. With easy complaisance, we knew the other was out there if needed, but there was no need. Christmas and birthdays, perhaps a rare visit to the ancestral manse; we were each on our own path now.
Brendan McAleer, knelling, poses with younger brother Kieran in front of their father’s BMW.
Brendan McAleer, Driving
The last few years though, we’ve started riding together again. This time, the Mustang ferried us up to Vernon via back roads and canyons. When we close the loop, we’ll have run nearly 800 miles together in a single day, stopping to shoot photos and video. The story is a roadtrip to the oldest Ford dealer in Canada, but really, it’s just an excuse to hang out.
We’ll spend 10 hours in the car, much of it without speaking or turning on the radio. There’s no need: the big broad landscape of British Columbia unfolds out in front of the Mustang’s windshield, and we sit in companionable silence. I expect that, like myself, my brother, now 34, is thinking of his loves, his worries, his troubles and his joys. Work and play, sorrow and laughter, life and death.
I am reminded of my interview with Darrell Fox a few weeks ago. Brother to Terry Fox, he told me two stories that looped before my eyes like a film reel. Terry Fox, as we all know, ran partway across Canada in 1980 to raise funds for cancer research after osteosarcoma took his leg. The audacity of the endeavour beggars belief: living out of an old Ford camper van, Terry ran a marathon every single day for months on end, until the cancer invaded his lungs, forced him to stop, and killed him.
Doug Alward, Terry Fox, and Fox’s brother Darrell stand in front of the Ford camper van during a stop on the Marathon of Hope.
Handout, Terry Fox Foundation
Darrell tells me about finishing his high-school exams early and flying out to join his older brother in New Brunswick. He tells me about seeing Terry on the road for the first time, seeing the dogged look on his face. I can see the surprise and delight, the brothers hugging in the middle of traffic on main street.
He also tells me about the long days on the side of the St. Lawrence River, a vicious, knife-edged wind coming off the water and twisting the blade in your ribs. Darrell sat in the back of the van for hours, legs numbed from holding the door open as a windbreak. The van crept along, mile after mile, the fumes sucking in behind it.
Read more: Iconic Terry Fox van endures long after Marathon of Hope
By this point, Terry had already changed, face weather-beaten by the elements, body reduced and focused by the constant toil. And all Darrell could do to help his brother run was watch and hold the wind at bay — he couldn’t shoulder that terrible burden. In the end, we run the long road alone.
But not entirely alone. I know this is not the only time death is going to reach out for my family. I don’t like to dwell on it, but I know that at some point, my father and mother will go West, into the setting sun. When that happens, I know one man who will feel as I feel, who has lived the same childhood I have, who understands. When that day comes, somehow, we will walk the path together, supporting each other.
Brendan McAleer and his younger brother Kieran pose in the snow in front of their father’s BMW.
Brendan McAleer, Driving
Somehow, I remember the first day I met my brother. He came in the night, in the thunder and rain, and in the morning my father collected me from the elderly neighbours’ and we went shopping and I bought my new playmate a little Matchbox hovercraft.
Before meeting him, I washed my hands in the steel sink — I can still smell the strawberry soap — and I went in and saw my brother, shrivelled and pink and wrapped up tightly. I remember thinking how useless he was at playing.
And then the long river of childhood, Hot Wheels in the sandbox, sledding on the front hill, dogs that died and sneaking a listen to my dad’s Derek and Clive Live LP. “Dumbass” means “I love you.” The treehouse. The waterfall. The old pond with its muddy banks.
The Mustang snorts along among the mountains and memories. The car’s broad yellow snout is covered in dead bugs and purplish flecks like it’s just taken its nose out of a feedbag filled with blackberries.
Beautiful sights greeted Brendan McAleer and his brother during a road trip through B.C.
Brendan McAleer, Driving
No, we don’t go alone. Not me, and not my wife, who still sees the echoes of her sister in her family and friends, like the clearly defined outline of a missing puzzle piece formed by the shape of those that surround it. We have pictures in the house of course. My daughter knows her Aunt Emily, though the two never met.
We head West, my brother and I, time and distance flowing quickly. In my wife’s belly, my son or daughter stirs, a little bomb, a little explosion of life and noise that’s nearly ready to go off.
When he or she comes, it’ll change everything again — eliminate sleep, crap on the shower-curtain again, spit-up on my shirt. It’ll be eight times the work and I’m going to lose my mind entirely.
The road of life is narrow and long. But we don’t have to drive it alone.
Brendan McAleer, Driving
This is my gift to you, my daughter. Very shortly, you will have half the attention you are used to. A squalling infant will shake your world apart. Your parents’ attentions will be halved, though our love for you remains full and constant. Everything is going to change for you.
But you won’t be alone. As your little running legs grow stronger and you outstrip your old man, heading out to find your own path, you will someday look to your right and see your brother or sister beside you, pacing you, matching you, stride for stride.
For this is the only true defence against death, the love made flesh that is family. In the Mustang, our journey done, I drop my brother back at his apartment and drive the last few miles home alone in silence. The passenger seat is empty, but my heart is full.
After Emily’s death her family set up a memorial fund supporting student teachers. For more information or to donate, visit http://tiny.cc/VancouverFoundationEmily.
