My sister Stacie Darnell and I, Leslie Darnell, were reunited after a twenty five year estrangement due to miscommunication. In January of 2015 she finally contacted me on Facebook to let me know that she was dying of an undiagnosed pathology of her spine that she referred to as "the clicks" due to the incessant twisting of her spine which she was certain was a terminal condition. She joked that she was my "twisted sister" and that she was growing like a tree twisted around like a tree but unfortunately she wasn't a tree and that it would come to an end one day. She told me of an unendurable pain that she had withstood for the last two years.
I was ecstatic that my sister and I had reunited and for the rest of her life, which ended on June 10th, 2015, we had the best rollercoaster ride visit any two sisters ever had; from tears of pain to tears of joy, I was her soul sister her twin flame her confessor she said. We reviewed our childhood our time on the family farm our misconceptions from those early years when she was so young and I just a few years older. We spent hours and hours talking on the phone texting emailing photos reminiscing. Then she got around to describing her lifestyle in the most intimate detail the nearer that her death approached. A story of relationships children love travel adventure excitement education learning French upon her move to Montreal a career a passionate woman who loved the rainbow of humanity a woman who knew intuitively at a young age that she would die young. She passed away at fifty which is young as she left behind a young daughter of twelve and a young son of ten. Oh how she cried her tears to me at the thought of leaving them behind at such a young age when they needed her most. I remember when we were students in Japan that she would often say that she just wanted to find a good husband and be a good stay-at-home mother devoted to her family. She loved her children most of all.
Stacie was the first one to admit her flaws. She was imperfect as we all are. She had love for this planet we live on and its environment and every person whose life she touched with all of her colors of the rainbow her art her poetry her light her smile her sensitivity her prose her laughter her openness her passion her loving spirit her strength in being an independent and entrepreneurial woman her love for cats (she had three) and dogs and pigs cows horses and chickens (we had them all) and plants and Nature Divine. Stacie was a pioneer in recycling years before it became mainstream in Vancouver BC. She taught me that. She had a love for movies which we both shared as do her children, children whom she loved dearly but with her disability became less and less able to be there for them. The pain of her undiagnosed spinal twisting which I have come to call aggressive terminal scoliosis for lack of a medical name, began to distance herself from them which caused her much guilt.
Stacie passed away in her home on June 10th 2015 and was found in her apartment the following day by her good friend Sophie who loved her dearly. Sophie Facebooked me on June 12th, merely three minutes before I checked my Facebook account for any news of Stacie as she and I had been so close near the end that after our last call and then text on the ninth of June, I began to miss her with a premonition that something was wrong. It was all so shocking. My sister was gone.
She will always be in my heart now as the twin flame she called us. Now I understand her so much better.
It took me a month to get it together but with help from family and friends I arrived in Montreal on July 18th with the goal of finding answers for my sister. She had sent me photos wearing a camisole where I could see straining in her musculature and unevenness in her skeletal set of her torso. I had studied anatomy for sculpting so my eye is trained in seeing balance and symmetry. She was smiling. She said that her smile was all that she had to give the world and she made a point of smiling with love at all she met as she knew that her days were numbered. Anyway based on those photos I am convinced that my sister suffered from an undiagnosed spinal twisting causing excruciating pain every day for over the last two years of her life.
As the aunt of two young children I believe that no one should be buried without a proper medical diagnosis and a proper medical name for a pathology as severe as Stacie's was. After going through her papers and finding an xray from Dec. 2013 I can see the evidence of what she told me. I have samples of her hand writing shopping lists in a beautiful cursive format a year before that. Her handwriting in her daytimer became progressively worse until she was printing in a style of early an elementary student. Her eyes had become extremely sensitive to the light when "the clicks" were in its active phase of twisting. It wasn't 24/7 twisting but seemed to happen in phases she explained. Her cognitive function was failing. She walked with a cane. She began to fall down from losing her balance. No one assisted her getting on disability income so she suffered the stigma of poverty as well.
Stacie still lays in the morgue here in Montreal two months after her death. I have been told that the coroner has only taken a toxicology sample and we might have to wait for up to a year for the result. I tried to have the coroner call me back for the last two months to add additional facts. Finally the chief coroner called.
I have refused to release her body to a funeral home as Stacie had requested a scientific autopsy for discovering her pathology in her will.
Stacie had an xray of her spine taken December of 2013 nine months after she had called 911 to go to emergency for pain levels which she stated no human being could long endure. As she wasn't yet diagnosed as a pain patient she was treated as a psychiatric patient and didn't receive the proper medical care she had gone there for.
I am here in Montreal to do my best to prove that she was not "crazy" but was and is still a patient without a diagnosis. The coroner has refused to do an autopsy. I have spoken to a forensic pathologist who does autopsies who is willing to do the job even though I've mentioned it might take me another month to arrange the finances to cover $5,000 for an autopsy with the purpose of discovering the cause of her spinal twisting. He mentioned storage fees of her body. Then as she mentioned her love for Jesus and her hope to have been baptized before her death which she couldn't make happen, I would love to give my sister a Christian ceremony for her children to see. I would like to help Stacie gain back the respect of her friends and family that she had in times before she was struck down by this disability. Finally I would like to know what was this pathology of her physiology; was it genetic, was it cancer of the spine, was it multiple sclerosis? This is the human right of any family to know. It is the right of her sister. Most of all it is the right of her twelve year old daughter and ten year old son to know what tortured their mother so for over two years...what stole their mother away from them at such a vulnerable age of their lives?
There are some bills to pay. I was hoping to stay in Montreal until the New Years at least as the children asked me to be here for Christmas. I am looking for a part time English-speaking job as well but they seem few and far between. I paid the rent for August of $600.00 on Stacie 's suite thinking I would return to Vancouver but I feel like my job here has just begun. I would love to spend more time getting to know my niece and nephew who are still in the early stages of grieving the loss of their much loved mother. Their father says that they are much improved with my arrival and interaction with them.
If You wonderful caring people out there on Go Fund Me.com care for this family's story enough to make Stacie's wish for a postmortem with the focus on giving "the clicks" a real medical definition and name, giving peace to our souls we would be eternally grateful.
I am here as my sister's witness and guardian and champion. Stacie wanted me to put together our family story in a book or documentary as well. I am the guardian of her writings and journals and poetry and photographs of an interesting intelligent articulate educated entrepreneurial brave woman mother child who I will not allow to be swept away without her voice being heard.
For all who loved her and for all those who will love her I ask for your assistance with this very human project of laying to rest the body soul and spirit of my forever beloved sister, mother of my dear niece and nephew who are tortured daily by their unanswered questions. I love them so and will do my best by respecting my sister's last request as she wrote in her will, that her body be made available to drs and scientists for discovery and identification of the origin of her illness, not merely donating her body to medical students to practice the skill of autopsy procedure.
Your pledges are divine gifts to this family. Please help me to make Stacie's dreams come true. Thank you all for your sharing and caring.
If money were no object I would also like to help her children with singing and acting lessons they dream of. Stacie was the keeper of my brother's ashes who passed tragically in the heat wave of Toronto a few years back. I have created a Japanese style family altar for them both. It was my sister's wish and mine also of course, that my brother's ashes would be laid to rest in a funerary urn. I have adopted her kitten Caramel, who I like to call YinYang.
This little girl survived starvation for the month between my sister's death and my arrival. She was light as a feather and had survived on tearing through a bag of cat treats called Temptations, then she ate a bag full of Japanese nori seaweed and it had made many attempts at nibbling its way through brown rice noodles unsuccessfully. All these wrappers I found under my sister's bed. Yin Yang drank the water in the toilet to its last drop. She couldn't have lived much longer. What a survivor. YinYang and my dog Chocolate who accompanied me from Vancouver are getting along slowly but surely. Chocolate is also a rescue dog I saved from a veterinarian euthanasia room when he was only one and a half years of age. He is five years old now and enjoying Montreal and his new kitty cat. Meow. Woof.
Most of all your prayers are much appreciated as much strength is needed. Bless you friends of Stacie and her family.
Thank you from Stacie's big sister Leslie on behalf of her children.
I wanted to add that the inspectors and coroner are confident and I would have to agree that the immediate cause of death is an intentional overdose. I have read Stacie's will and she has clearly defined that she did not commit suicide but made a differentiation by writing that she took her life due to the incapacitating pain levels she had endured for more than two years of her life. The thought of her young children kept her going until she couldn't endure it any longer. She left all of her papers and i.d. laid out for easy access and her apartment was in order. She apologized to me and trusted I would understand so I pass this message along to all of her friends who knew her well.
She loved you all dearly and had a passion to live her life and not be separated from her children, not even for the trip to Vancouver we had been in the middle of planning. The plans were changed so that I would come to Montreal but her health had failed faster than I could get there.
She is in my heart forever. She wrote that she is waiting for me when it is my turn to pass. With this I am comforted. I hope you will be as well. She has gone before me, other family members and all of her loving friends that she has left behind coast to coast of Canada.
There will be a big party of reunion on the other side. Much Love,
Leslie Darnell in Montreal
