My father was killed in a home invasion in the middle of the night at our home in Alberta, in the early 1990s. I was eight years old. The intruder stabbed my father so brutally that he broke the knife on a bone in my father’s lower leg. I will never forget the sight of so much blood — not blood spatter like in the movies, but pools of blood that soaked my bare feet as I stood over my father — the strongest man I knew — now fading out of consciousness.
I think about my father every day. Somewhat less frequently, I think about my father’s killer. He went to prison for 25 years after he was convicted of second-degree murder. He would come to mind when we were given news about his parole hearings and when he was finally released from prison. Then came the day last year when we learned of his death. After spending most of his young adult life in prison, my father’s killer walked free for only a few years before he died.
Although I knew I would grieve the loss of my father for the rest of my life, I never expected to grieve the loss of the man who killed him. I didn’t grieve the killer as a person; rather, I grieved the opportunity he lost to make something even remotely good out of the terrible circumstances he caused. He would never make anything of himself or right his wrongs. Although it would never bring my father back, I was sad the killer never got a chance to restore his own humanity. I knew hardly anything about him — not his inclinations or his abilities —and I wasn’t angry at him, as most people expected me to be, because of the futility of anger in the grieving process. But I was still sad.
The night we received the news my father’s killer had died, my sadness quickly compelled me to find some meaning. In searching through old photos and newspaper articles, I came across a copy of my father’s medical record from the night of his murder. “The patient was brought urgently into the Operating Room … stab wound to the right chest … massive bleeding from the upper portion of the right lung … was placed onto the operating table with continued open cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Immediately the pericardium was opened widely … the findings were those of an empty, finely fibrillating heart.” I was struck that among all of the medical jargon was the simple term “empty heart.”
I sat with the report for a few hours and dried my tears that had fallen on the photocopied notes. As an epidemiologist and data scientist, I routinely use numbers to make meaning out of complexity, and as a trauma survivor, I suppose numbers also give me resilience and fill my heart. My love for numbers was inspired by my grade 12 calculus teacher. He gave me integrals and trigonometry and derivatives, and having the keys to find right answers helped restore the feeling of safety that had been taken away from me as a child. I later turned my love of mathematics and calculus into a degree in statistics and biology, which led me to applied epidemiology and a professorship in health outcomes at the University of British Columbia, where I use epidemiology and statistics to study neurologic diseases. To my children’s dismay, my love language remains numbers (I carry multiplication flash cards in my purse).
Little wonder that I turned again to numbers to deal with my complex grief for the death of my father’s murderer. After reading my father’s autopsy report, I decided to start a new line of research, one that examines the epidemiology of fatal stab wounds. I would look at trends over time, geographical distributions, and factors affecting outcome. I would dive deep into how people with fatal stab wounds moved from prehospital care to the emergency department to the operating room, taking the exact journey my father did. I would work with health care providers to design interventions. My personal connection to one fatal stabbing could generate research to make a difference in the lives of others who have lost loved ones in a similar way.
Tomorrow, I will translate my father’s autopsy report into a research question. I will translate his diagnoses and procedures into International Classification of Diseases codes. I will review previous work on this topic. I will apply for a grant. I will use my knack for numbers to try to make some meaning out of my father’s death. None of this will bring him back to us. But maybe, in this way, my grief can honour my father’s humanity — maybe even that of my father’s killer.
Footnotes
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