My child matters.
The coroner’s report and the police investigation called Ula’s time of death between on and ten in the morning on this day two years ago.
She was found at 10 am. But the sighting of a figure over a phone at one in the morning was ambiguous. Outside the building. It could have been the person she was with. No one identified this so called figure.
He had waited and watched her leave this realm. He filmed her lifeless body. And yet the investigators called her death an accident.
There was no media. In case it was a suicide. And they didn’t notify me until I called her in missing later in the day. Even though she was still wearing her hospital bracelet. With her name and date.
They didn’t bother to inform next of kin. Even if it was a mistake.
They mistook her as a runaway. Another troubled street kid. A lost soul. Not worthy of as proper investigation. Because she had some police occurrences. Because there were drugs found nearby which may or may not have belonged to her.
She was none of these things. Not that it matters.
All lives matter. Every child matters. My child mattered.
And she still does.
I didn’t call her in. Not that it would have mattered either. And I waited instead. For her to come home. Because I believe she would. She always did.
And mostly because I was done with authorities shaming and blaming. Those tied hands. I didn’t want to deal with them anymore.
And I trusted that she would come home.
When the poultice finally came to our home twelve hours after they found her. Three hours after I finally called her in. A warm sense of relief rushed over me. They found her. Something happened but she would be ok.
It would take another eighteen hours to identify her and confirm that the girl they found was mine. My Ula.
In my heart she went out and met her perpetrator a subway ride away. She ingested a poisonous substance that would kill her very quickly.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that she was probably dead before midnight.
And the drugs sprinkled around her body. A pill bottle of Xanax or something like that. More than likely dumped by the boy who killed her.
The police said he probably ran in fear.
But here’s what I know:
He made a call about her not breathing to a friend rather than paramedics.
He knew how to save her.
Drugs were dumped.
She was filmed.
Nalaxone was found on site.
One figure was found on their phone not two. At one in the morning. She left our home at ten. None of what the investigators told me has made any sense.
Because they can’t find any time stamps. ‘Real’ evidence. I guess it’s all circumstantial. And they didn’t bother to investigate those involved thoroughly or at all.
None of the friends she was with that night were questioned. The kid on the other end of that phone call was not investigated. I gave the detectives all of the information and names they needed. And yet they didn’t bother.
And that boy on the other end of the phone who told the kid who left my daughter to call an ambulance, he is also now dead.
I wonder if the police had bothered to make a call or talk to this kid or his family he might still be here. No one knows what chain of events that one phone call might have made towards saving a life.
Had they bothered. Had they cared.
So much shame has been thrown in my direction by these authorities. And more importantly towards Ula. The blatant disregard of human life is unbelievable. Of her life.
My daughter’s death was no accident. Yet no charges were ever laid.
Her things a from that night are still in carefully labelled police boxes. Her black North Face jacket. Her Timmies. Her black lululemon tank top. Her favourite jeans. Her neatly folded undergarments and jewellery. All described to me in detail a year later by that gaslight-y detective who refused to do his job because nothing like this would ever happen to him.
Lawyers have been called and long emails back and forth. In the end I can’t and won’t try to negotiate the legal implications of the actions of others. Those systemic barriers that had us and continue to have me at a stand still. Powers that be much larger than what I can manage. Whole systems protected while our children die.
And so many still struggling. Who knows the future strain on our systems due to the pandemic and this other equally terrifying epidemic.
And that is the note I leave on. What would you do if this was your child?
Don’t for a second believe that it would happen to you and your child. I thought this way. And look what happened to my beautiful girl.
My child matters. They should have and could have done better by her. My beautiful girl who should still be here.
Long Live Ula. Forever Sixteen. LLU🕊️
10 December 2024:
A year ago to this moment. A tenant from 2 Keele St. took his recycling to the corner of his building, by the alley that leads to the garage, and found the lifeless body of a girl.
The police would come and EMS would attempt to resuscitate her. But she had been gone for hours. Forensics came and yellow tape sectioned off the corner of a main intersection. A fifteen minute walk from my house. The girl wore a hospital ID bracelet. But I would not hear anything for another twelve hours
Twelve hours before, this same girl would be saying good bye to her friends for the last time. A small group of kids who spent the evening together. Playing cards and video games. They went to a party and she told them she was staying home.
She had made them chicken and my last texts to her were about cleaning up and if she had gotten the internet hooked up. Somehow it had been disconnected and they wanted to play on the X-box. Leave it to the kids to figure it out.
Letting kids figure stuff out has been what we as humans have done forever. When we had safety nets. Before the age of saving them. But as parents swoop in to rescue kids, those of us who still believe children are capable human beings become an archaic breed.
Not that I wouldn’t have done anything to save her. And not that I didn’t constantly swoop in when she needed me. Or anything. But somethings are really left better for the kids to figure out.
But there is no child that can figure out the mess of the poisoning that is happening to our kids. They are being killed slowly. We are killing them. And we wonder why mental health and substance use is at an all time height. A crisis. An epidemic. It’s on all of us and it is in our backyards.
The war is not on drugs. It’s on humanity. It’s on our children fighting to survive in the crumbling institutions they have inherited.
My girl’s last moments with kids who have things going rob for themselves. One working, one in college, one making and creating music. They’ve made it through the hardest part of their teens more or less unscathed. And with tales to tell.
The story of my girl is coming to its end. In these dark rainy end of year days of that day, a year ago.