At the end of February 2021, I received a phone call from Terrace. A call I had feared receiving for 20 years: my sister had been found by a neighbouring friend, alone in her mobile home and unresponsive. She was one of 2,224 deaths by overdose in BC that year and another victim of the increasingly toxic drug supply.
As British Columbia was experiencing a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, I navigated public health ordinances that limited flights to only essential travel in order to head north to the outskirts of the small town where she had found herself in one of her many attempts to chart a new course.
Accompanied by my dear friend Charlie, who knew my sister from our teenaged years, I set out to sort through the artefacts and detritus of her life; clean her modest shelter; deal with the practicalities of paperwork, funeral home and crematorium; and the distribution of objects to thrift stores, recycling depot and landfill, before finally bringing her home along with the one item of real value in her life: her sweet little dog Suzie Q.
What I was unable to navigate were the spiritual rites that mark the transition between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. I was lost and uncertain as to what was required of me. I failed in almost every way. The pandemic and accompanying restrictions around gathering was a convenient excuse to avoid the question of a funeral. But the truth was, my sister kept much of her life hidden from me and I had little knowledge of who her community was, save for a few isolated individuals, so I didn’t know how or with whom to share this loss.
In the Greek Tragedy Antigone the eponymous heroine defies the edicts prohibiting burial of her brother who was branded a traitor and whose corpse was left in the battlefield to be eaten by carrion birds and dogs. Her filial love, moral certainty, and courage have captivated audiences for thousands of years. Antigone heard the gods loudly and her conviction and ultimate self-sacrifice was enough to ultimately change the community’s opinion and see the truth in her belief: her brother, despite his status, had a spirit with value beyond the material world and deserved to be given safe passage to the realm beyond the living.
Epigone is set in a place where the gods are harder to hear, the chorus is discordant and impossible to unite, and the portals between material and spirit worlds have been papered over with studies, policies, prescriptions, op-eds, graphs and budget projections.
Epigone is dedicated to all those who have struggled with the question of how to care for our dead. And who look for companions in the act of reaching for them one more time. And while it is very much a work of fiction and imagination, it has been a collaboration with my sister, Tricia.
Epigone is now playing at the Russian Hall until November 15, as part of the Heart of the City Festival. Learn more about Epigone.
If this note brought up something difficult, these services may be a place to start.