for Heather
Dec. 14th, 2009 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jawnbcCORNWALL, Ontario - Go slow.
Heather Saaltink, then 20, rode her used, too-big bike alone from university in Thunder Bay to her family's summer cottage in Kingston, 1,500 kilometres in 10 days with only a sleeping bag and hammock.
Looking for a pair of properly spaced trees for the night, she was invited to a party. A few days later, her parents got an e-mail with pictures of their middle daughter singing Happy Birthday to someone's grandpa.
"All my grey hairs," says her mom, Brenda, "came from Heather."
Some appeared, no doubt, when Heather, just out of high school, hiked solo for a week through the Appalachian Mountains. And when she took a year off from her studies at Lakehead University to travel the country, sleeping in orchards in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley, while picking apples for a local farmer, or planting trees on the West Coast. On Vancouver Island, she gave her tent to a couple of homeless kids.
"Except then she had no place to sleep," Robyn, 26, eldest of the three Saaltink girls, says with a smile.
"I guess she figured she could get another," Brenda says.
These are the stories that bounce between the Saaltinks on an early morning in their Cornwall home, memories held close between laughter and quiet tears.
How, afterwards, looking through Heather's things, they found library cards from every small town where she stopped during her year off. Or the pages and pages of doodles - dancing stick figures, sunny mountain scenes, family caricatures - that Brenda, an elementary-school teacher, discovered in Heather's lecture notes.
How she adopted the stray puppy who found her that tree-planting summer, and called him Sitka, after the Spruce tree. That she used the trail name "Canadiana," and biked to school even in winter. And insisted on paying her own way through school - where she was a varsity runner, studying philosophy with honours - so she could come and go on her own terms.
"She was braver than us," says Emma, 21, the youngest.
"She was a seeker," says her father Rik, an engineer. "She had no limits."
Go slow.
"Watch for drunk drivers," warned Rik Saaltink, in the back seat of the family's Toyota Camry. He and his youngest daughter, Emma, from Dalhousie University, had just picked Heather up at the airport for Christmas holidays.
It was Dec. 17, 2008 - she was 22, in her fourth year, fresh from an essay on Simone de Beauvoir that was nominated for an award. She asked for snow shoes for Christmas, the next adventure.
"Come on, Dad," the sisters said. "Nobody does that any more."
On the dark highway 15 minutes from home, the headlights from an oncoming pick-up truck swerved across the centre line.
"What do I do?" Heather asked, behind the wheel, trying to pull the car out of the way. But the truck was coming too fast.
At home, watching for the car, Brenda got the phone call from the hospital. Emma, her eyes damaged by the airbag, was asking for her. Rik was in intensive care with broken ribs and internal injuries. No one had told them about Heather, but they knew. Soon, Robyn was on the bus from Brock University.
"She ended up saving me and my dad," Emma says of Heather.
The driver was charged with drunk driving. But that doesn't change anything: Heather's gone. The Saaltinks get good at faking smiles.
"One minute, we're laughing - telling little Heather stories - and then we're crying," Brenda says. "That's how life is for us right now."
They don't drive on Highway 138, where it happened. Something else: Rik would have been driving that night, but the girls had stayed in Ottawa while he went to a Christmas office party. He had a couple of drinks. Not enough to be over the limit, but he wanted to be careful. Heather was his designated driver. Go slow.
Brenda tearfully pulls Rik into a last hug Monday morning before he leaves for the Olympic torch relay. He's carrying it for Heather, who was chosen by the city of Cornwall to be its official torchbearer, one of a few posthumous choices in the country.
In his hands, for those 300 metres, it will be as if Heather is there - fierce and tall and independent - as if there was no Dec. 17, and no looming drunk-driving trial, as if they could be happy again, instead of just pretending to be so.
When Rik carries the torch on stage, and lights the cauldron for the city's celebration, he will pause for a moment, see Heather's face, say her name. This will be their new happy memory, to get them all through Christmas, into another year.
"Go slow," Brenda whispers to Rik. "Go slow."
[gangked from here]
Heather Saaltink, then 20, rode her used, too-big bike alone from university in Thunder Bay to her family's summer cottage in Kingston, 1,500 kilometres in 10 days with only a sleeping bag and hammock.
Looking for a pair of properly spaced trees for the night, she was invited to a party. A few days later, her parents got an e-mail with pictures of their middle daughter singing Happy Birthday to someone's grandpa.
"All my grey hairs," says her mom, Brenda, "came from Heather."
Some appeared, no doubt, when Heather, just out of high school, hiked solo for a week through the Appalachian Mountains. And when she took a year off from her studies at Lakehead University to travel the country, sleeping in orchards in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley, while picking apples for a local farmer, or planting trees on the West Coast. On Vancouver Island, she gave her tent to a couple of homeless kids.
"Except then she had no place to sleep," Robyn, 26, eldest of the three Saaltink girls, says with a smile.
"I guess she figured she could get another," Brenda says.
These are the stories that bounce between the Saaltinks on an early morning in their Cornwall home, memories held close between laughter and quiet tears.
How, afterwards, looking through Heather's things, they found library cards from every small town where she stopped during her year off. Or the pages and pages of doodles - dancing stick figures, sunny mountain scenes, family caricatures - that Brenda, an elementary-school teacher, discovered in Heather's lecture notes.
How she adopted the stray puppy who found her that tree-planting summer, and called him Sitka, after the Spruce tree. That she used the trail name "Canadiana," and biked to school even in winter. And insisted on paying her own way through school - where she was a varsity runner, studying philosophy with honours - so she could come and go on her own terms.
"She was braver than us," says Emma, 21, the youngest.
"She was a seeker," says her father Rik, an engineer. "She had no limits."
Go slow.
"Watch for drunk drivers," warned Rik Saaltink, in the back seat of the family's Toyota Camry. He and his youngest daughter, Emma, from Dalhousie University, had just picked Heather up at the airport for Christmas holidays.
It was Dec. 17, 2008 - she was 22, in her fourth year, fresh from an essay on Simone de Beauvoir that was nominated for an award. She asked for snow shoes for Christmas, the next adventure.
"Come on, Dad," the sisters said. "Nobody does that any more."
On the dark highway 15 minutes from home, the headlights from an oncoming pick-up truck swerved across the centre line.
"What do I do?" Heather asked, behind the wheel, trying to pull the car out of the way. But the truck was coming too fast.
At home, watching for the car, Brenda got the phone call from the hospital. Emma, her eyes damaged by the airbag, was asking for her. Rik was in intensive care with broken ribs and internal injuries. No one had told them about Heather, but they knew. Soon, Robyn was on the bus from Brock University.
"She ended up saving me and my dad," Emma says of Heather.
The driver was charged with drunk driving. But that doesn't change anything: Heather's gone. The Saaltinks get good at faking smiles.
"One minute, we're laughing - telling little Heather stories - and then we're crying," Brenda says. "That's how life is for us right now."
They don't drive on Highway 138, where it happened. Something else: Rik would have been driving that night, but the girls had stayed in Ottawa while he went to a Christmas office party. He had a couple of drinks. Not enough to be over the limit, but he wanted to be careful. Heather was his designated driver. Go slow.
Brenda tearfully pulls Rik into a last hug Monday morning before he leaves for the Olympic torch relay. He's carrying it for Heather, who was chosen by the city of Cornwall to be its official torchbearer, one of a few posthumous choices in the country.
In his hands, for those 300 metres, it will be as if Heather is there - fierce and tall and independent - as if there was no Dec. 17, and no looming drunk-driving trial, as if they could be happy again, instead of just pretending to be so.
When Rik carries the torch on stage, and lights the cauldron for the city's celebration, he will pause for a moment, see Heather's face, say her name. This will be their new happy memory, to get them all through Christmas, into another year.
"Go slow," Brenda whispers to Rik. "Go slow."
[gangked from here]
