For me, no book is worth devoting a year of my life to
writing and editing unless it speaks to issues I hold dear.
Where the Ice Falls is the second in The Falls Mysteries. It takes place 6 months later than the first and – amid the crimes and the Christmas crush
in malls and markets – deals with some recurring themes as well as new ones:
step-parenting, medical assistance in dying (known as MAID in Canada), and whether the
human spirit can communicate from beyond the grave.
When the Flood Falls touched on domestic violence, first-responder
PTSD, financial precariousness for women, and chronic illness as well as topics
even more closely related to the string of crimes (trying to avoid spoilers).
Today I’m going to talk about MAID, but first some
orientation to the world of The Falls Mysteries.
Like Flood, Ice takes for its geography the landscapes
of the Rocky Mountain
foothills west of Calgary.
Familiar locations include the hamlet of Bragg Creek in the south and the town of Cochrane further north. The story moves further west as well, grazing the Stoney-Nakoda First
Nation and the hamlet of Waiparous before penetrating the near-trackless
forests of the Ghost River Wilderness Area. There's a purely fictional ski resort carved onto the northeastern shoulder of Blackrock Mountain, should you wish to examine the region on satellite.
The opening of Ice in
mid-December finds our three Bragg Creek women not only surrounded by snow but
in slightly altered personal circumstances than they were at the start of
‘Flood’:
Lacey – still working part-time for Wayne, still waiting for
Dan to sell their house in Langley, BC, still living at Dee’s where she’s doing
all the driving and most of the household chores; she’s even learning to cook!
Dee – slowly recovering
from her devastating injuries of last summer and trying to re-start a career
that barely resembles her old job as a high-powered real estate vice-president
so she can keep on paying the two mortgages on her lovely log chalet.
Jan – still has ME/CFS and is trying a life hack she heard
about in an online support group: going someplace warmer through the coldest
month of the Canadian foothills’ winter. If this works, she'll go into next summer less depleted from trying to make an energy-starved body run both its heater and its immune system at the same time.
There are new women characters too: Dee’s
artist mother, Loreena; Zoe, a mom/stepmom/administrative trouble-shooter for
oil companies; her spirited daughter Lizi, who tumbles over the first body
almost the instant she and her mother appear on the page; Zoe’s current boss’s
ex-wife Arliss; and an acerbic accountant/cross-country ski instructor
named Marcia. Each of those women has their own challenges to face, but today
we’ll stick with Lacey and Dee.
Into Lacey and Dee’s recovery-focused life comes a new
complication: Dee’s mother’s cancer is back,
and it’s terminal, and she wants to spend one last Christmas with her only
daughter. It’s going to be enough of a challenge to add another invalid (and
her nurse/friend/travel companion) to the log house but Loreena soon springs
another complication: she wants Dee’s blessing
on her application for Medical Assistance in Dying.
Truth be told, when I first began planning this book,
assisted dying was not even on the Canadian government’s radar. My father,
however, had always wanted assisted dying and never been hesitant about talking
to me about his determination not to linger in a state of advanced physical or
mental decrepitude. Assisted dying was popping up on my radar every family
holiday, whether I wanted to talk about it or not, and naturally I paid close
attention to the gradually changing attitudes in Canadian society and
governance. By the time I was ready to write what was sure to be an emotionally
challenging book, Canada’s
first Medical Assistance in Dying law was already passed.
What I didn’t know then – what my father didn’t know then –
was that he was terminally ill already. Much of my writing life that year was punctuated
by phone calls home to see how he was feeling as his physical body gave out bit
by bit. His mind was still strong and he was determined to have all his affairs
organized before he went. He was enjoying his Facebook time every day, often
surfing while asking me how my book was coming. His impending death, and the
logistics of applying, were always there in the background but rarely came to
the fore because we both knew how he was going. We laughed often, and enjoyed reading the same books in our different provinces.
Here we are holding Tim Hallinan's 'In Fields Where They Lay', a Christmas crime tale that Tim graciously sent us autographed copies of. It was to be our final shared read. Dad always enjoyed a good killing, and he said Tim's novel reminded him of the Dortmunder books by the late Donald Westlake.
Dee’s process with her
mother is not my process. There is less laughter and more uncomfortable conversation. Dee didn’t have
those years of prior discussion to let her work through her own emotions about losing
a parent, much less to face the harsh reality of her parent choosing to die
weeks or months earlier than a natural death might occur.
Unbeknownst to me
until almost the end of my writing, my earliest crime-writing mentor was working through dying discussions with her family. Another friend was also
struggling with a terminal diagnosis; she and her daughters spoke extensively
of the option for assisted dying. Their processes are not Dee’s either. Dee’s mother lives
three provinces away and the brutal fact of her impending death doesn’t hit
home until she arrives in a wheelchair, with a nurse-attendant, and towing an
extra suitcase filled not with Christmas presents but with medical supplies and
comfort items. You can imagine the shock.
This theme winds from the earliest pages through to the
last: how do you face death - a parent’s dying too young or a child dying
before its parent, and what are the emotional, psychological, legal, and
societal obstacles to one’s ability to access a ‘good death’ in the manner of their
choosing?
I’ve tried not to let that one theme take over the book. It is, after all, a
crime novel, with a dead body on Page One and several suspects – some of whom
are red herrings – all weaving their own tales through a wintery western Alberta landscape.
But
via the characters named above and the secondary characters who come and go
through the pages, we see perspectives from dying people, their family members,
medical and religious individuals, as well as touching on differing
attitudes to MAID across Canada and across age groups.
All of those
perspectives flowed freely to me as soon as I showed willing to listen to people
– friends and strangers alike – confide their hopes and concerns about
end-of-life issues. I was surprised to find that acceptance of assisted dying
is far higher than politicians seem to believe. Almost everyone knew of someone
who had lingered far longer than they would have wished. Many had walked a friend or relative along that path. Most spoke of wanting
the law made more flexible, not less. There was strong
support for a change to allow for advance directives; people wanted the
option available to them even – or
especially – if they were not mentally competent to consent to the medical
procedure when the time came. There is more work ahead for governments and
communities and families to integrate this new option into the medical and
social frameworks of our nation.
To learn more about Medical Assistance in Dying - the state of the law, and the stories of those who have walked loved ones on that path,see Dying With Dignity Canada
My father? He didn’t live to see the book published. In
fact, he died a few short weeks after our last Christmas together, only a few
months after I’d written Dee’s final Christmas
Day with her mother.
His application went smoothly thanks to support from local
Dying With Dignity volunteers and a devoted medical team who helped him with
the paperwork, guarded his dignity well, and provided all the comforts possible
during his last weeks of life. He went out happy, with a joke on his lips.
I believe he, who taught me to enjoy books almost as soon as I could wrap my tiny fingers around one, would have been pleased with the
way this book turned out. I raise a glass of his favourite ginger wine to his memory each Christmas.
