My mom passed away the year Rob [Dyer] and [Skate4Cancer] did their first trip, from LA to Toronto. I found out about what they were doing, bought a shirt and mailed a little note about my Mom in with the money. When I got the shirt there was a response note that Rob and the Skate4Cancer crew had written for me, telling me to never give up and that this shirt was a symbol for the change he was trying to bring. Rob’s changed my life and is definitely my biggest inspiration. Thank you so much!

This quotation is a comment that my brother, Nick, left on the Skate4Cancer Short-Documentary Official Trailer #2 on YouTube three days ago.

I had met Rob in passing a handful of times while I was a student at Ryerson; he was a server at the campus pub when he wasn’t out skating the world and repping Skate4Cancer. I knew who he was, but I didn’t want to bug him while he served my friends and I food and pitchers of beer. It also seemed like the wrong time and place to talk about cancer and loved ones dying, even in a positive way, which Skate4Cancer is known for.

But I had always wanted to tell Rob how much he and Skate4Cancer had inspired Nick. Whenever I saw him on campus, it was all I could think about.

So when I found out I would have the opportunity to produce a video blog for work featuring Rob, of course I had to jump on it. And I had to do something for Nick.

Even though I knew Rob is possibly the nicest, most humble person on the planet (not exaggerating at all), I was a bit shy about asking him for this favour. Talking about my mom is still very difficult for me, and it becomes even harder at work where I like to feel very in control of everything.

Luckily, Kate, who pitched the video blog to me, was able to bring it up and getting it rolling. Rob was totally into it and helped us set it up.

Kate wrote on the whiteboard while I took down the equipment from the shoot and moved some furniture around. Rob took my picture.

Rob wrote his own text and I took his picture. He also hugged me countless times and seemed genuinely happy to hear the story and to hear how one little thing like that note could make such a difference in a kid’s life when he’s dealing with the loss of a loved one from cancer.

Nick loved the photos, so a HUGE thank you to Rob and Kate for being open to making this happen! It means so much.

This week I also bought Nick and I tickets to the Skate4Cancer short documentary premiere at the Mod Club on Feb. 19. As I’m writing this post, tickets are still available for sale here.

You can also support Skate4Cancer (and the future Dream Love Cure Centre) by following the organization online on Twitter and Facebook, buying t-shirts at West49 or buying t-shirts and other cool merch online (the prices are super reasonable), volunteering, and, eventually, donating money when they get the whole charity thing sorted out.

Continued…

*I wrote a much longer post and realized I should probably just get to the point at the top instead of the bottom (I guess that’s my journalism training kicking in), so the rest of the original text is below if you want to read it.

When our mom died from cancer in May 2004, he was 12 years old. Not exactly a child but not quite a teenager yet either. I was 18, and her death was the hardest thing I had ever endured. If I’m lucky (and I don’t say that lightly), it will end up being the hardest thing I have to experience in my entire life.

So I can’t imagine how difficult it was for him.

While I can say with confidence that it brought us closer together in some ways – we were the only kids we knew going through this horrible thing at that time – it was also the beginning of a somewhat unnatural sibling relationship where I became responsible to him as a sort of substitute parent. I felt responsible for continuing to raise an amazing kid into a smart, caring, productive member of society – to pick up where my mom left off. I didn’t want to let him down and I sure as hell didn’t want to let her down.

However, less than a year and a half later, I left home to attend Ryerson University in Toronto and, aside from spending two summers at my dad’s house after first and fourth years, never really looked back. I worried about him a lot, about what kind of person he would grow up into with neither me nor our mom around to guide him.

For both of us – for our entire lives, no matter where we lived – home meant Mom. And once she was gone, it felt like something was missing. Her lack of presence has lingered more strongly than the presence of the people in our lives who are still living, even in places she had never been. They’re not kidding when they say dead loved ones will always be with you.

I was worried, and many people in our family were worried, that her death would have such an impact on him that he would never be “normal.” He refused counselling while she was sick in the hospital and after her death (as did I, until I sought it out when I experienced emotional breakdowns for a brief period during university), and no one pushed it on us.

Today, though, he’s in his second semester at Conestoga College studying something that he loves. He’s known as a great guy. He’s kind, he’s intelligent, and he’s going to have a great life. Everyone, including me, is so proud of him and I know our mom would be too.

A lot of his ability to cope and overcome that experience has to do with the solid foundation that was laid by my parents when he was a child, but I also know that he’s found a lot of inspiration elsewhere – in friends, in girlfriends, in music, and in people who make a difference in the lives of others in one way or another.

His biggest inspiration in that respect has always been Rob Dyer, the founder of Skate4Cancer. Rob lost his grandmothers, mother and best friend to cancer within a year of each other, and in early 2004 set out to skateboard from Los Angeles to his hometown, Newmarket, Ont., to raise awareness about cancer – and has done so through various initiatives, including other skates, ever since.

My brother always loved skating and he was inspired by Skate4Cancer from the outset. He probably would have been interested in it as a normal kid who loved skateboarding, even if his mom hadn’t gotten sick and died, but it made it that much more important. Once he received that note from the Skate4Cancer team with his first t-shirt, he held onto that connection and will probably cherish it for the rest of his life.

While that first t-shirt was probably trashed long ago from wear and tear (he would wear those tees until they were full of holes and coming apart at the seams, like any self-respecting teenage boy), he still has that note. He still beams about Rob, whom he’s met at various events over the years. He’s bought countless t-shirts since; I just gave him one as a gift for Christmas and he loved it.

Rob is one of his personal heroes.

Well, I’d like to add a third item to that list: How to protect yourself from bad things!

I was awoken by my BlackBerry’s alarm at 7 a.m. one morning this summer, shortly after which I clumsily dropped my phone into about four inches of ice cold water. I pulled it out and jumped out of bed to turn on the light. My entire apartment was filled with water.

Both of my cats were using my bed as an island. My laptop was on the floor, under water. I grabbed it and opened it onto a towel on my bed; the towel didn’t do much good because water gushed out of the laptop casing, soaking my bed.

That day, there were a lot of frantic phone calls and tears and hyperventilating. It was seven weeks before I was able to live in my apartment again and, although I was able to recover the data from the laptop’s hard drive, my laptop was toast.

I didn’t have insurance.

Sorry, I should specify. I have insurance on my credit card and line of credit, and I have health and life insurance through work. But I don’t have tenant’s insurance. (Do you?)

My gutted powder room

So I had to suck up the losses. I wasn’t charged rent for the seven weeks I wasn’t able to live in my apartment, but I had to spend more money than normal to commute from Mississauga every day. I ate take-out a lot more. And I bought a netbook to replace my laptop.

I was lucky that I had family in Mississauga that I could stay with, and I was lucky that more of my stuff wasn’t damaged. I’d heard of tenant’s insurance, but I had never seriously considered it. What could possibly happen, right?

If you’re renting and you don’t have tenant’s insurance (sometimes called contents insurance), run, don’t walk, to the financial institution of your choice to apply for it. It’s not super expensive. Hopefully you’ll never need it. But I did.

I was inspired to track some of my goals here on my blog after seeing Rebecca Thorman do the same over at Modite earlier tonight (check out her post for the “rules”). I think it’s a great idea to establish and track goals in a such a public forum. I’m not a To-Do List person at all, but I like this concept a lot.

To start this on the right foot, here are some goals I had for August – some of which I accomplished and some I didn’t:

• Negotiate for a raise so I can move back to the city and not have to live in a cardboard box
• Go to the gym 3 times a week (I left my gym shoes in my cousin’s car and I haven’t seen her again yet, so…)
• Get a new cell phone and get on a plan instead of doing “pay as you go” (got a BlackBerry!)
• Start looking for an apartment for October 1st (found a cheap apartment in a good neighbourhood for September 1st, but with half price rent for September – score!)
• Go to Montréal to visit family (this is long overdue, but it had to be postponed because I can’t afford rent and such an expensive trip at the same time)

Life and career goals for September:

• Move into the new apartment, get all nest-y and finish painting over Labour Day weekend
• Go to the beach a few times before winter sets it since I live right on it now – I already took my first early-morning beach walk last weekend when I crashed at the empty apartment to begin cleaning and painting
• Get the Internet at home (!!!)
• Throw a house-warming party
• Hire an intern to help me with all the insanity at work
• Actually trust said intern enough to delegate tasks to him/her

Also, I don’t like blogging about how much I hate parts of my life. I did that for years as a teenager, and while I still have plenty of teenage angst inside of me at age 23, I stopped writing in my livejournal for a reason. I used to feel better when I spilled out all my negativity into a space like that, but now it just makes me feel worse. If I don’t write it down, then I can just forget about it.

But now, things are starting to move again. I’m moving again, literally. I got a cute one bedroom in The Beaches and although it requires a lot of TLC, it’s worth it. It’s cheap and it’s small, but it’s just me so it’s a good size. The lake, the beach and the boardwalk are one block away. The neighbourhood is full of families and dogs and ridiculously in shape people who all seem very relaxed because they live by the water. I like it.

I took it even though I promised myself I wouldn’t paint another apartment for a long time, and even though it needed to be cleaned from top to bottom. I’m tired of painting and the walls in particular were unbelievably dirty.

But as I scrubbed the walls of their grime and wiped away the cobwebs, I realized it’s a good experience to go through. It’s like a ritual that allows me to see every centimeter of my new home up close and personal. I’m a nester by nature, so painting everything the colours I love and putting my things just so are very important to me.

And I’ve moved so many times that it takes such a ritual for a space to feel like home. This will be my 13th move and more than half of those were just in the last five years. It took me along time to allow any place feel like home because home always meant my mom was there, and she wasn’t. She wasn’t anywhere. But I’ve come to terms with that now.

So, I move in next weekend. And I will have a life again, with friends and actually going into work every day and living in a city that is a living entity all on its own.

I think this means I can write again. Thank goodness.

In 2004, that month was so turbulent, so difficult, so life-changing, it still affects me now, five years later. Well, it will be five years on Saturday, May 30.

In a lot of ways, I still haven’t really dealt with her death. I’m not even sure what that means, and for all I know I’ve done everything I should have done, but I still cry, I still shake, I still get angry and sad. I still miss her with every fibre of my being and wonder how my life – all our lives – would be different if she was still alive and well today. Although these things lessen or change somehow each year, I’m certain I will experience them in one form another for the rest of my life.

And it’s also at times like these, when I’ve made and will be making big decisions, and when I reach huge landmarks in my life, that I long for her so I can ask her advice, get her opinion. I wouldn’t genuinely ask anyone else if I was doing the right things, but I know I would ask her.

Was leaving my relationship the best thing for me to do? Was leaving the city I love living in to move back home the best thing for me to do?

Are you proud of me? Everyone says you are, but I’d love to hear it straight from you. Am I the person you thought I’d be when I grew up? Would you do my hair and then cry tears of joy at my commencement ceremony next week?

Would you make me feel like the luckiest, most special girl in the whole world like you used to?

What’s it like where you are? Are you anywhere? Can you even hear me…?

If she was alive, she would probably tell me whatever path I think is the best for me to take is the right one, and I might actually believe her when I can’t even believe myself right now.

And although my heart still hurts, and although my emotions and tears sometimes come rushing back like floodwaters at the mere mention of her, I finally agreed to organize something on her Death Day. (I know most people aren’t comfortable with the word Death, but I am and I can’t think of anything else to call it anyway.)

Every year, my aunt has asked me if I wanted to do something on my mom’s Death Day. Every year I said, “No thanks.” Every year, I let the day pass almost like any other for me, and for everyone else. Just more sad. I think was always afraid whatever we did wouldn’t be special enough and it would somehow be my fault.

I also wasn’t ready to step into her shoes as the centre of the family. I’m still not, but no one else has either. My aunt has taken care of a lot of things my mom used to do, both for my brother and me and other members of our family, but she’s only part of our family by marriage, not blood. I don’t love her any less for it, but I don’t think it would be possible for her to unite our family the way my mom did. Nor do I think she wants to.

This week I finally realized that to truly celebrate my mom and everything she meant to all of us, it doesn’t matter what we do, but rather that we all get together and have a good time. Getting together with family and friends, and just enjoying life together, is what meant the most to her in her life. She often spent her last dime just having fun with us, or her friends and extended family. She loved catching up with everyone and she made everyone feel like they were special because she was having the best time with them.

So, we’re going bowling on Saturday. I wanted to go to bingo (I can’t even tell you how much she loved bingo), but my brother isn’t 18 yet, so we’ll have to go next year. She loved bowling too. A bunch of us are going out for dinner and then to the bowling alley, and I’ll make other plans for Monday with the one important person who can’t make it.

I really hope that if she is somewhere, she smiles and says, “Finally!”

I truly am sorry it took this long, Mom. We love you so much and miss your smile, your laugh, your hugs, your heart, your everything every single day.