Suzanne was always late. Not sometimes late. Not five-minutes-running-behind late. Suzanne late.
She forgot details. Constantly. But then, just when you thought she hadn’t heard a damn thing you’d said, she’d surprise you by remembering some completely random detail you’d casually mentioned weeks earlier. She was also, according to a T-shirt we once saw and immediately decided had been made specifically for her, an ask-hole. You know the type: someone who asks for your advice, spends considerable time discussing your advice, and then proceeds to do the complete opposite of your advice.
That was Suzanne.
Even her brother agreed.
She would call me and we’d talk something through from every conceivable angle. I’d give her my thoughts. We’d discuss the possible outcomes. We’d arrive at what seemed like a perfectly reasonable conclusion. And then Suzanne would go do something else entirely. Later, she’d come back and tell me all about how badly it had turned out, and I’d listen. Again.
And somehow, I still loved that woman to bits.
Suzanne was one of my first real friends when I moved to Ucluelet, and she became one of the great friendships of my adult life. She was about ten years older than me, and sometimes there was something about our friendship that felt a little like having a big sister. But mostly, she was just Suzanne. And there was nobody quite like her.
We would go for walks together, and I would apparently be under the mistaken impression that the purpose of a walk was to actually walk somewhere. Suzanne had other ideas. She’d stop because she’d noticed something and wanted to take a picture. Then she’d notice something else. Then she’d see somebody she knew. Suzanne knew everybody. Suddenly we’d be crossing the road because she needed to say hello, and there I’d be waiting again. She has introduced me to some of the most wonderful new friends along the way. A walk with Suzanne could take forever, and somehow, I mostly had patience for it.
But here’s the funny thing: eventually, Suzanne got me taking pictures too. I started slowing down. I started noticing things. Her brother had given her little tips about photography, and Suzanne passed those tips along to me. Somewhere along the way, instead of standing there waiting for Suzanne to finish taking pictures, I started looking around for my own.
She taught me to notice. To notice the good. To notice the magic around us.
And now I realize that was one of Suzanne’s gifts. She noticed beauty. She noticed details other people missed. She noticed people. She wasn’t just moving through the world trying to get from one place to another. She was looking at it, photographing it, talking to it, tasting it and participating in it.
And she certainly wasn’t in a hurry.
Suzanne also used to talk about her “little brother” all the time. And then I met her little brother.
There is absolutely nothing little about that man.
He’s a giant. A very gentle giant, the kind you always want one of those great big hugs from. Suzanne thought the world of him, and it was pretty obvious he thought the world of her too.
Then there were our adventures. I don’t think I ever suggested one that Suzanne wasn’t game for. My idea of an adventure isn’t necessarily a nice stroll down a paved path. There tends to be mud involved. Dirt. Sand. Dogs. Trails that aren’t really trails anymore. Occasionally some bushwhacking because I’m convinced there’s something worth seeing on the other side.
Suzanne never batted an eye. She’d just come along.
And so would Lola.
Tiny little Lola, whose legs couldn’t have been more than about three inches off the ground, somehow followed us through mud and sand and bush and whatever else I dragged everybody through. I have absolutely no idea how that little dog kept up, but there she’d be, trucking along with us.
And then there was the time we hit a bear.
Yes. A bear.
We’d been away on one of our girls’ adventures and were driving home in the dark, doing what we always did — talking and laughing and carrying on. Suzanne was driving. I saw it.
“Bear! Bear! Bear! Bear! BEAR!”
And then we hit the bear.
Suzanne was devastated. Absolutely devastated. Her concern wasn’t the car. It was the bear. This poor bear. She was beside herself that we’d hurt it. She stopped the car and wanted to get out and look for it.
In the dark.
On a highway.
In the middle of nowhere.
She wanted to see if the bear needed help.
And that was Suzanne too. She cared deeply. You rarely saw that woman truly angry, and even when she was angry, somehow there was still a softness underneath it. She could be frustrated, disappointed, hurt or completely fed up – along with a whole lot of Scottish gibberish mixed in there – but there was gentleness in her.
Although don’t mistake gentleness for weakness, because Suzanne was Scottish.
And holy hell, was that woman Scottish.
Stubbornly Scottish. Insanely, fiercely, unbelievably stubbornly Scottish.
Apparently she passed that particular trait along quite successfully too. Suzanne loved her three girls ferociously, and she taught them well. Let me tell you, you did not want to cross one of Suzanne’s daughters the wrong way. Any one of them individually could hold her own, but heaven forbid you found yourself on the wrong side of all three of them collectively.
There is a whole lot of stubborn Scottish Suzanne walking around in those three women. That fierceness. That loyalty. That determination. That willingness to stand their ground. She passed it on three times over, and I suspect there will be pieces of Suzanne walking around in those girls for the rest of their lives.
There are pieces of her everywhere.
I got to see another side of Suzanne through her weddings. I worked more than a few of them with her, and Suzanne knew how to do it up right.
Those days could start at eight in the morning and not end until three or four the next morning. Down at Wya Point we’d set up these incredible weddings by the beach, with tents and candles everywhere and the sound of the waves crashing in the darkness. There were tiki torches glowing and enormous sand fleas crawling up the tents and somehow getting themselves into the candles. We’d be standing there trying to pick giant sand fleas out of melted wax while this beautiful wedding was carrying on around us.
It was exhausting. It was ridiculous. And it was magical.
Suzanne always made sure her wedding staff were fed and taken care of. And quite often, by the time the work was winding down, the bride and groom expected the staff to become part of the party. So we’d dance. After working since morning, we’d be out there in the dark, beside the ocean, under the lights, dancing with everyone else.
Suzanne knew how to create something beautiful. She knew how to make people feel cared for. And she knew how to throw one hell of a wedding.
Which makes it particularly funny that I was also capable of testing Suzanne’s patience in one very specific way.
Suzanne was a wedding planner.
So naturally, her bestie eloped without telling her.
I can still remember how annoyed she was with me. Not because she wasn’t happy for me — she was ridiculously happy for me.
But seriously.
Her best friend.
Eloped.
Without telling the wedding planner.
I’m not sure she ever completely forgave me for robbing her of the opportunity to have an opinion about that.
And really, fair enough.
Suzanne loved food too. She was always game for going out for a bite to eat or a bevvy. Or she’d feed us, and she fed us well. Some of my favourite memories aren’t big moments at all. They’re meals, walks, beaches, driveway beers, sitting around talking and laughing.
And Skip-Bo.
How could I possibly forget Skip-Bo?
I taught Suzanne how to play, and after that she was always in. Actually, more than willing. Suzanne always wanted to play Skip-Bo. Bring out the cards and she was ready.
There was nothing particularly remarkable about sitting around a table playing cards together. We weren’t making a memory. Nobody was doing anything important. We were just spending time together.
It turns out those ordinary moments are some of the ones you want back the most.
One of my favorite pictures of Suzanne is from one of those completely ordinary moments. She’s sitting there in her slippers during ‘driveway beers’ at the neighbors place with this enormous, brilliant smile on her face.
That smile.
My God, Suzanne had a beautiful smile.
Brian recently sent me so many pictures of her, and there it was over and over again — that huge, radiant, unmistakably Suzanne smile.
And I got to witness something else incredibly beautiful in Suzanne’s life. I got to watch her fall in love. Really fall in love.
I watched Suzanne and Brian come together and watched their relationship grow. And, of course, I got all the girl-to-girl talk behind the scenes along the way. There is something pretty magical about watching someone you love find someone who truly loves them.
And Brian did.
What a wonderful, kind, loving, smart and tender man she found.
There was a wildness in Suzanne too, a playful, completely uninhibited joy that came out when she felt safe enough to simply be herself. I got to see some of the most beautiful pieces of that when she fell in love with Brian. She was silly. She was playful. She was sexy. She was completely ridiculous sometimes. She was carefree.
She was loved. And she knew it.
Brian seemed to absolutely delight in her being Suzanne. Their time together wasn’t nearly long enough. None of this was long enough. But I am so incredibly grateful that before Suzanne left this world, she got to experience that kind of love. She got to know what it was to be loved that deeply, and she got to love someone that deeply in return.
Then, right to the very end, Suzanne reminded everyone exactly who they were dealing with.
That stubborn Scottish woman fought viciously to stay. She hung on and hung on and hung on. Of course she did. There was still life happening around her. There were still people she loved. And Suzanne had never been particularly interested in hurrying through life — or, for that matter, relinquishing her opportunity to micromanage it.
In a way that feels almost perfectly Suzanne, she waited until just about the last possible minute before finally deciding it was time to go.
Suzanne was always late.
Maybe there are worse things a person can be remembered for.
The end isn’t the Suzanne I want to remember. I want to remember healthy Suzanne. Adventurous Suzanne. Driveway beers and Skip-Bo. Long walks that took forever. Weddings beside the ocean. Food. Bevvies. Pictures. That fuzzy hair and that enormous smile.
I want to remember the mother who loved her girls ferociously, the sister who adored her not-remotely-little little brother, the friend who somehow collected people everywhere she went, and the woman who found a beautiful, safe, tender love with Brian and let her wild spirit dance.
And I want to remember the woman who stopped to notice things until eventually she taught me to stop and notice them too. The bestie who always had my back and encouraged me to grow and put myself out there. And who always welcomed my crazy ideas.
That’s Suzanne.
I have a picture of her from a few years ago, sitting on the beach on one of those incredibly bright, sunny days. She’s wrapped up against the breeze, shaking her head and laughing at me because I had considerably more to drink than she did.
It makes me smile.
She loved her beaches.
And there is one last conversation with Suzanne that I think I will treasure for the rest of my life.
About two weeks before she died, we had this incredible conversation by text. By then, those really present, completely-with-it Suzanne moments had become harder to come by. But for that conversation, she was there. And I’m so grateful not only that we had it, but that because it happened through text, I still have her words.
I’d had a dream about her. It was one of those dreams that doesn’t really feel like a dream. It felt incredibly real. Suzanne came back to me with wings. She was tiny, with this fuzzy little head and an enormous wide smile.
I was quite convinced she was a baby robin.
That great big mouth. That fuzzy head. Squawking loudly for her food.
Obviously a baby bird.
When I told Suzanne about the dream, she told me that someone who had done Reiki with her had gotten fairy vibes from her.
Fairies.
Of course.
Suzanne had loved fairies her entire life.
And somehow my strange little winged baby-robin Suzanne turned into this wonderful back-and-forth between us about fairies, Scottish folklore, wisps, spirits and what she might come back as. We’d had conversations before about dying and death, about what she wanted and what she imagined it might look like. But this one was different. It was playful. Curious. Suzanne was completely engaged.
We were talking about what she might do when she was finished here.
I’m so grateful we got to have that conversation.
And I’m so grateful I still have it.
Because now she’s finished here.
Wherever her spirit takes her from here, I hope the rest of her days are filled with the most beautiful, brightest, magical beaches imaginable. I hope she’s free. I hope she’s laughing. And after all these years of loving fairies, I really hope Suzanne finally gets to have her fairy moment.
Maybe I got the dream right. Maybe she has wings. Maybe she’s still sporting that fuzzy hair. Maybe somewhere she’s still making a whole lot of noise.
I’d like to think so.
I’ll miss you, Suzanne. I really will.
Thank you for the walks and the adventures, the weddings and the photographs, the driveway beers and the Skip-Bo games. Thank you for making me slow down enough to notice. Thank you for the ordinary days, the ridiculous stories and the big conversations. And thank you for leaving little pieces of yourself behind in all of us who loved you.
I’ll always remember you.
And I’ll always love you.
Now go enjoy your wings, my friend.
You’ve waited your whole life for them.
