Three times a charm.

We rode the TTC. We travelled together. With intention. I was a carless mama. So we lived and learned the city by public transit. If you don’t use it you lose it. One less car. So many reasons to travel in a pack. And it was fun together time.

Our system was good. And teaching my kids how to navigate it all was important to me. Sometimes harrowing with younger kids and strollers and gear. But we always made a good time of it. Books and snacks and games always on the ready.

Ula learned to ride the rocket from a young age. To navigate and understand the world around her. To become independent and resourceful. To people watch and to pass the time. To be patient. To be ok with waiting.

One of my favourite teachers of all time from my undergrad, told us everything three times. She had announced this from the beginnings by of term. And it stuck.

Of course she was a professor, but she was quintessentially a teacher. She was passionate about her subject area. And about us learning and making those in-depth and relative connections.

Mythology 101.

I would follow her and complete my degree with a major in classical civilization. It was so much the subject I chose, but the teacher. Not what I learned, but how I learned. A gifted student myself, I struggled with school and repetition and connections helped. Depth and breadth.

These skills I would attempt to pass on to my own children and later my students. I would try anyway, with my kids. It’s not easy being a teacher mama. And Ula also had the gifted designation. Often more a curse than a blessing.

She would want me to homeschool her. And wished I was her teacher. A privilege I couldn’t afford. Or didn’t think I could. And I still believed in our public institutions.

Had I even an ounce of foresight, I would have given up everything to teach her. To homeschool her. To send her to a private school. Where all of her friends went from elementary school. Or the one I taught at. Maybe to even go back to Mexico. Her heart’s desire.

It took a long time for her decide where to go for grade seven. She got into all of the schools and I left it to her. I guided and helped her understand how to make the choice, but ultimately all of the schools had something to offer her.

The arts based programming would be her top choice. It was a close race between two schools. I felt this would be her course. Having to pick between programs. The luck of the draw.

Not only was my daughter uber talented and intelligent and sparkly, she was lucky. She won things and got into things and had an overall luck about her.

Until she didn’t.

Her death has made me think more about this thing called luck. And fate. The fates as it were. And the furies. Some ancient goddess looking down at us from above. Planning and plotting our timelines. A higher order anbove even the gods, controlling our destinies, Our paths, our travels on this plane.

What evil eye cast its spell on her I will never know. Dumb luck. Blind luck. Down on her luck. The wheel of fortune gone oh so wrong.

And I, in my grief, like so many women of antiquity, have become a fury. Painted as a mad woman, determined to find justice for the wrong doing inflicted on my daughter.

But I am not mad. I am not crazy. And my daughter died not at the hands of some measuring goddesses cutting and spinning her fate. Some bad luck I’m sure. And some evil eyes.

But ultimately it is our own societal doing. And our broken systems we watched crumbled when we agreed to political decisions made decades ago. Made a couple of years ago. When we voted for less taxes thinking only of our own needs. This new branding of individualism. We are all complicit.

Somewhere down the road, we forgot about the greater good.

And our children die because of it. I could blame the stars, but that would be like blaming her. And it wasn’t her fault. I never blame the kids.

It wasn’t her fault. She should still be here.

Dec 11, 2015: three times a charm. This photo.

11 December 2024:

She had waited patiently for this little joyful bird to land. It came to her hand three times before stopping enough to feed from her palm. The third time did the trick.

It took three times for the toxic drug poisoning crisis to take her from us. My lucky girl turned so very unlucky swept away by the tsunami wave of a perfect storm. The simple shifting of the wind, a current, a breath. A word uttered. A phone call. The wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person.

She, like this brave, joyful all-season little bird, thought she was invincible. She was idealistic and honest and cared so deeply. She gave to others until they would take from her her very life breath. A real life dementor playing at a dangerous game I’m still trying to understand the rules of.

Ula understood, like every student I’ve ever taught, that in order to coulour outside the box, you have to learn how to draw those lines first. And close the corners. She had that solid foundation yet lived in a world where many don’t.

The police came to my house a year ago to confirm the death of my daughter. They wouldn’t let me see her and kept asking for more details to identify her. Although she wore her hospital bracelet I wouldn’t find out officially until nearly 48 hours after she left my house.

Today I will go back to see those same detectives. For the second time. Phone calls have been had and several email exchanges. Coroners reports have been read and yet their has been absolutely no accountability from those responsible for her death. Justice unserved.

Maybe it will take a third time, but like my girl used to say to motivate herself to get up and at ‘em, I persist. Like the little hearty chickadee know for their adaptability, fearlessness, joy, and communication, like Ula, I will persist.

I write her story every day because I don’t want anymore children to die. Or any other human being for that matter. Because of this unregulated and illegal toxic drug poisoning. This menace that has been created by big pharma and consumerism and released into the underground and into the hands of children. And at their expense.

They may continue to pile other files onto the dust of her case, although they promised to fight for her. And called that video he made of her face down significant evidence. And later laughed off a couple of kids who were just really high. Another street kid. A runaway. What if this has been one of their children?

I ask this of each and every parent. Because, I naively thought the same. This wouldn’t happen to my kid. Especially when she shared with me who it was happening to. And yet it did.

And yet there are so many that continue to live and breathe. Those whom she helped. Those she continues to help. And I am so glad they are all here. And fighting. She made some lapses in judgment that ultimately killed her. But we cannot, institutions and families alike, continue to put a loaded gun in the hands of children, tell them to play Russian roulette, and think that they’ll get through it.

Those beautiful, inviting hands where birds eventually land and peck away at the small bits of feed. But only if you stay very very still and remain calm and patient. Where a wish of a winged one was all that mattered in their innocent and loving hearts.

If only she hadn’t flown out into that dark and rainy night. My little peep. Like a bird. Who now has her wings. And I feel her with each breath and flutter of the heart.

LLU🕊️