Illustration by Aya Altilbani

Each time I visit, he tells me the same thing: “She is small; don’t sit on her.” My brother Jesse has mental problems. He’s twenty.

“Time is a sign for some. A policy. For some it means nothing at all. Time is cyclical and behaviors evolve to maintain their biological destiny.” This is a sentence I’ve read sixteen times now. It’s a hospital magazine and I regret picking it up—its wrinkly film of sickness and anonymous shame disturbs me almost as much as Jesse’s incessant music. I notice the dead sweat and bits of bacon from someone’s lunch encrusted on the page I’m reading.

The hospital room swells with light. My brother has been here since Remembrance Day. It’s now the third of January. He’s listening to a song I never heard till he came here.

The song indicates a type of narrative masochism; suggesting the love interest is so desirable that the singer invites them to dine on their brain—which is clearly hyperbole, a daring way of celebrating desire and love, but in the setting of this antiseptic realism in which we currently tread, I find it revolting to cling to its imagery. The most used noun in the English language is “time.” The most used word my brother uses is “I.” Which is a letter. And a name. A title?

Jesse is telling me and Ma about the tiny woman who lives with him in his hospital room.

The amount of medication Jesse is on frightens me.

The tiny woman, Jesse tells us, is sitting in a small coffee cup lid. I tap Ma on the shoulder and point to the lid, which is filled with nuts and bits of licorice cut into sunflower-seed-sized nubs.

“She’s talking again,” Jesse tells us. “Shelly, come here! You have to see!” Jesse smiles down at the coffee cup lid. “She just told me how much she loves the food I make for her!”

He’s active, he’s conscious, he knows my name. But how will he ever evolve back into the younger brother I had who joked around, worked part time at Blockbuster Video, went to high school, and played road hockey every chance he could?

“I feel scared,” he says suddenly. “What if I have an elongated ejaculation and it drowns her? I’ll be put on death row.”

I ask the doctor why my brother is having these hallucinations. “What type of medication creates these visions? He wasn’t like this before, you know.”

My brother lifts his hand and looks at it, as if it’s a comet

he’s watching leave the room. I look him in the eyes and feel them quickly rinse away any emotional gauze of vulnerability.

“She’s doing laundry in my pill caps,” he says.

“Listen to him,” I tell the doctor. “He keeps talking about this micro girl living in a small hut beside his bed.”

Jesse stands up, raising his hands above his head. “She is telling me now…she says, ‘Some of the food he gives me I put in this blender, the rest I lug over here to my small bed,’ and now she is splaying herself along a box of matches which she’s fashioned into her bed. ‘It’s so nice here. I feel so lucky to have met you, Jesse!’”

My brother’s voice changes as he speaks on her behalf.

“‘He’s a giant. He made me this way,’ she is saying.”

“Oh Shelly,” he says to me in his own voice. “She loves her life this way. Could you imagine being taken care of like that? She is so very small and says she likes the food, and that she loves the tiny scraps of lint and broken socks to make clothing. She says we are to be married soon.”

“He’s been like this for two weeks?” I tell the doctor.

My mother, who speaks no English, insists I get a straight answer from her this time. “Dr. Selka, please, you have to talk to us. My mother is losing faith. She doesn’t understand what is happening to her son. Are you a mother? She wants me to ask you.”

The doctor looks at us like we’re amateur bandits bumping into one another under a parking lot’s false lighting at three in the morning.

Jesse seems more than pleased with the way his life has turned out. But he’s not the one that has to take Ma on the subway for an hour each way, sign her in and translate every word anyone says, including strangers we pass in waiting rooms.

I try to explain to Ma that Jesse is on the wrong medication. “He shouldn’t be having these thoughts,” I tell her. “He never had them before.”

Ma folds her hands into one another and places them along her chest. She shakes her head back and forth and looks lovingly at Jesse. He walks over to her and gives her a big hug and kiss. He stands her up and takes her by the hands. As they do this, music begins to play from down the hall. The song conjures up bellbottoms and disco balls and the infamous bass and guitar and the womanly vocals the brothers were known for—and of course the Boneroo Horns; all of which are completely inappropriate for the situation we are in. Despite this, we begin to bounce our heads and move as best we can in our poorly choreographed way, much like the way our family has communicated for as long as I can remember. Ma has a big smile on her face; Jesse’s long dark bangs hang down like an arm of fur. He appears to be in good spirits.

The doctor says she’ll return in a few minutes but I’m sure we’ll get a message from a nurse in half an hour that she won’t be back until Tuesday. This is the way it goes around here.

“Hi, hi, are you Jesse’s sister?”

“Hi Ronnie,” I say. He always visits my brother when I

visit. And I always say the same thing. “It’s family visit Ronnie, can you come see Jesse later?”

Ronnie nods and slithers back down the hall in his greasy slippers. Jesse seems indifferent to the interruption.

“I’m just going to speak with the nurse,” I say, and excuse myself.

Maybe I’ll go talk to the vending machine for a while—blend in.

On the long subway ride home, I tell Ma that I want to bring Jesse home but that we need to sort out his medication first. She agrees and says it’s up to me to sort it out. Of course, it is. I don’t want Jesse home in the state he’s in now, though; he must be more independent and less focused on his fantasies.

“Excuse me, but where am I?” The voice is sharp and quiet.

I turn to Ma. She shrugs.

“Excuse me, where am I? Where is Jesse?”

I look around. The voice seems to be coming from my purse. I reach in. “Ow!” Something bit me.

“Excuse me; I know you can hear me. I’m in your belongings. This is a big purse! Hello!” And now I see her face; it’s beautiful. She has black hair, green eyes, a nose ring.

“Why am I here? I fell asleep and suddenly I’m in a purse.”

I cover up my purse with my sweater.

The tiny girl keeps speaking, but at least it’s muffled.

Ma tugs at my arm to indicate she wants to go to market before going home. I ring the bell and help her up. I remind her we can’t get too much because we don’t have the cart. She nods.

It’s cold, so I put my sweater on. “I’m missing the funny shows Jesse and I watch,” the tiny girl is saying. “Plus, he gives me little pieces of chocolate from his treats. Can you please call him to let him know I’m all right?”

In my arms are tofu, celery and tomatoes. I look next to me to see that the old woman I thought I’d been shopping with is someone else’s old world parent. I scan the aisle for Ma.

“I almost lost you,” I scold.

She has spaghetti and bananas.

I take us to the checkout before we get too overloaded.

“For Jesse,” she says, and hands me a bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs.

“He eats too much of this crap,” I say aloud.

The tiny woman in my purse who doesn’t exist assures me that she appreciates the treats as well and that Jesse has a well-balanced diet and gets plenty of exercise.

I put the eggs down on the counter and smile at the cashier.

It’s sunny outside. Beautiful and gentle. Spring is here. In the morning I’ll call the doctor and ask for an update on how Jesse’s medication is working out. I’ll ask to speak to the social worker as well, to see what can be done for him after he’s released.

I poke around in my purse for a mint. The tiny woman bites my finger as I search. It kind of tickles. “You better call Jesse,” she calls up to me. “He’ll be worried sick! How can you do this to him? He’s your brother.”

Illustration by Janie Hao

“The trust is, of course, that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same  time.”

—David Bowie

The Parisian night sky is charcoal grey. Fog rises from the Seine like a lonely apparition and is swept away by the glare of Notre-Dame Cathedral’s lights. At Point Zero, the famous symbol that marks the centre of the ancient city, stands a Christmas tree decorated in purple lights. People crowd around taking photos. Somewhere in the distance a siren blares. The air smells of mulled wine, roasted chestnuts, and wet limestone. I breathe in, savouring it all. It’s the last Friday of 2018 and our last night in Paris.

My husband, Mark, and I are standing in line for the cathedral among a motley group of tourists, Christmas revellers, and worshippers. Around my neck I wear a blue velvet ribbon decorated with a hand-blown glass bead, the exact blue of a Paris sky in June. When we arrived in the city I had five beads. Over the past two days, Mark and I have zigzagged across Paris, leaving beads behind a balustrade in the Palais Garnier, in the Fontaine Saint-Michel, from Pont Neuf into the Sein, and in front of an old tree near the stairs leading to Sacré Coeur.

This is the last.

The beads were custom-made for us by a glassmaker, and each contains a speck of Indy dust—this is what I call the cremated remains of my daughter, India. Each bead is about the size of a gumball. They are decorated with musical notes, birds, and stars—symbols that tell India’s story.

The last time we were in Paris, India was still living. She was 11 and in love with the history of the city. She could still walk and do most of the things healthy kids do. The rare neurodegenerative disease spinal muscular atrophy with progressive myoclonic epilepsy (SMA-PME)—to which she would eventually succumb at age 16—was still relatively controlled.

Mark and I decided to leave our last Indy bead at Notre-Dame cathedral, because my husband remembered he and India climbing the 422 steps up to the tower on that visit. India had watched the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and was eager to see the famous view. I remember waiting outside, looking up towards the tower and worrying. I was afraid India would fall down the staircase or exhaust herself. Instead, she was invigorated, grinning broadly when she returned, as if she’d climbed a tall tree and swung from one of the highest branches.

Since India’s death in 2013, Mark and I have left beads in the U.S., Japan, England, Canada, and Portugal—places she loved or wanted to visit. It’s our way of staying in communication with India and keeping her in communication with the world.

The word bead comes from the old German word for pray. It’s related to the medieval English custom of praying with rosaries to count bedes. This makes sense to me as when we leave a bead, I feel as though I’m speaking with my daughter. To me, India is as close as it gets to a deity.

Of course, I’m not the first to feel this way about a loved one who has died. According to Charles W. King, the author of The Ancient Roman Afterlife, the Romans believed that after death ordinary people became deified and were called Manes. These God-like dead were worshipped by their families and it was believed they had the power to look out for their living relations. Every February, the Romans celebrated a nine-day festival, devoted to their family’s dead, called Parentalia. Families gathered to remember their dead relatives and brought offerings of garlands, salt, and bread softened with wine. They hung out at their relatives’ tombs and ate meals, to reconnect with those they’d lost.

Joseph R. Lee, a certified Jungian analyst and one of the hosts of the podcast This Jungian Life, believes we’d benefit from more such normalized traditions around connecting with our dead, in modern times. In Episode 217 – Death: A Jungian Perspective, he says:

“Certainly we deprive ourselves of the kind of elegant religious ascetic that many more ancient cultures have been able to cultivate. In part because lacking the technology we have in the modern age, they could not forestall death in the ancient world and therefore developing an attitude of acceptance was essential. But also it seems that death was considered an intrinsic and essential part of life. One of the religious shapings around death, was the certitude that the ancestors continued to be in intimate relationship with their progeny—facilitating, protecting, helping, nurturing.”

I envy the Roman’s their public proclamations of grief. These days, I hide the fact I’m a bereaved mother until I’m sure I can trust people. I nod my head and smile as people talk about their kids, pretending I never had any. Grief has made me a liar.

I found a baby’s epitaph on the Vindolanda Trust blog—Vindolanda is the name of a historical Roman auxiliary fort just south of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England. It serves as a poignant reminder of the universality of parental love. To put this in perspective, in ancient Rome one-third or one-quarter of babies died in their first year of life. Parents may have, as Lee suggests, been more accepting of death as part of life, but they were certainly not immune to the pain of loss.

“My baby Acerva was snatched away to live in Hades before she had her fill of the sweet light of life. She was beautiful and charming, a little darling as if from heaven. Her father weeps for her and, because he is her father, asks that the earth may rest lightly on her forever.”

Mark and I are the last two people allowed into the cathedral. As I slip through the great door, I feel as though I’m leaving one world and entering another. The commotion of modern Paris is suddenly very removed. The inside of the cathedral looks as if it’s been covered by a gauzy lavender-grey shroud; lights and candles flicker throughout the building, but behind every pillar and column there’s darkness.

Only the brilliant gold cross and the priest in his crimson robes are well lit. Bells ring, and voices mumble prayers that sound like spells. We sit for a while and take it all in. I watch people light candles and wonder how many of them are talking to their dead.

I talk to my dead daughter all the time. Sometimes, I just tell her that I miss her; at other times I ask her to help me—like when I’m scared walking the dog alone late at night or driving in a storm. I’m aware there’s a good chance that I’m talking to myself. I don’t care.

Mary-Frances O’Connor, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and the author of The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, explains needs like mine like this, “In humans as well, it is because your loved one existed that certain neurons fire together and certain proteins are folded in your brain in particular ways. It is because your loved one lived, and because you loved each other, that means when the person is no longer in the outer world, they still physically exist—in the wiring of the neurons of your brain.”

When I first read O’Connor’s last line, I read whirring, not wiring. This seemed like a better description of what my grief feels like. It’s as if my brain is filled with the constant hum of grief and worry. Only talking to my daughter quietens it.

I heard about the Wind Phone from a friend. Overlooking the Japanese city of Ōtsuchi, this shrine is composed of an old-fashioned phone booth and a disconnected black rotary phone. But it is no ordinary phone; it allows the bereaved to talk to those who have died—the idea being that the wind carries the mourners’ words to their loved ones.

Created by Itaru Sasaki, to honour a beloved cousin he lost to cancer, the shrine now receives over 30,000 visitors a year. First opened to the public after the devastating tsunami in 201l, the Wind Phone offered relief to people who didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to the loved ones they lost. Today replicas of the shrine have sprung up all around the globe including in Quebec, North Carolina, and Dublin.

If the thought of using a dial-up telephone to talk with your dead seems too old-fashioned, there’s now the Here After app. It works like this: a virtual interviewer offers prompts in order to help the participant share stories about their childhood, relationships, passions, and interests. These are recorded and stored so that loved ones can ask questions and interact with, thanks to the magic of artificial intelligence, the participant’s virtual avatar on their phone or computer—even after the participant has long since died.

It sounds appealing, particularly the opportunity to hear my daughter’s voice again. If I close my eyes, I can still imagine the sound of her calling me or singing one of the showtunes she was so fond of. Nothing makes me happier than when someone tells me a story about India or sends a photo. I’m always appreciative—after all I’m aware that the photos and stories I have are it. There are only so many of these in existence. I can easily imagine I might become addicted to the Here After app. Constantly relying on it to give me an India fix whenever I craved it. But the true work of grief is learning to create this kind of experience for one’s self. That is why leaving the Indy beads in places Indy had loved was so important to Mark and me. At each place, we built a new connection and memory with her.

“Almost a third of Americans say they have communicated with someone who has died, and they collectively spend more than two billion dollars a year for psychic services on platforms old and new,” says Casey Cep, a writer for the New Yorker.

Throughout my daughter’s illness I blogged about our lives, sharing our experiences in and out of the hospital; the possibility of a treatment, when a university research team took an interest in her rare and degenerative condition; and then the shattering reality of her death and learning to live without her. It was all there, hopefully to help other people going through similar ordeals. But I soon learned that seeking solace in their grief was not the only reason some people sought out blogs and social media posts about death and bereavement.

Three months after India died, I received an email from a so-called psychic in England. She told me she’d been contacted by a little girl she believed was India. She said that the girl’s head hurt and that she was crying for her mummy. She wanted my consent to speak to her. Of course, she assured me, she didn’t want money, just to help. The letter filled me with panic. Later when I thought about it logically, I felt angry that someone had attempted to use my grief against me.

People are always recommending psychics to me. I tell them, I don’t need anyone else. I feel India with me and communicate with her in my own way all the time.

I may be alone in this. Many people seem to prefer to employ professionals, to connect with deceased loved ones. Cep says, “Like clairvoyants in centuries past, those of today also fill auditoriums, lecture halls, and retreats.” The first Spiritualist church appeared in the 1840s in upstate New York and by the 1860s, they had followers throughout the world.

The Spiritualists believe in communication with the spirits of dead people through gifted mediums. Cep says, “there are more than a hundred Spiritualist churches in the United States, more than three hundred in the United Kingdom, and hundreds of others in more than thirty countries around the world.” There are spiritualist churches across Canada from Vancouver to Ottawa. Though, I don’t feel the need for a session with a medium, I do find myself wondering what it would be like to sit in one of those churches in the company of others, who like myself wanted nothing more than to talk to their dead.

Mark and I venture into the cathedral’s ambulatory, hoping to find a good resting place for our last Indy bead. As I walk, I think about the history buried beneath the stone slabs we are walking on; the 4th century basilica and 9th century Carolingian cathedral that once stood here. For hundreds and hundreds of years, this piece of land has been the real estate of the bereaved and grief-stricken, all pleading with their dead for a sign.

When India was dying, I remember whispering in her ear, telling her that I loved her over and over. If she had to die, I wanted it to feel like falling into a sleep. I have always imagined death to feel like being pulled under. Like Alice falling through the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland but instead of furniture floating around, scenes from one’s life float by.

Further back still, the Notre-Dame Cathedral was once the site of Lutetia, the Roman predecessor of Paris. The Pillar of the Boatman, the oldest piece of sculpture in France, was discovered here. Dedicated to the Roman god Jupiter, it was a gift to the Roman Emperor Tiberius from the Guild of Boatmen of the Seine, a group of Gauls. For me, the name of the piece conjures images of the Seine as a sort of River Styx, separating the living from the dead. I imagine boatloads of deceased Parisians making their way down the grey, cold river.

The sculpture is considered a rare find as it features symbols treasured by the Celtic Gauls as well as Romans. One of the featured Gods is the Celtic Gaul’s horned God, Cernunnos—an imposing being that bears an uncanny resemblance to Tim Curry’s character in the 1985 movie, Legend. Not much is known about this character, but it’s easy to imagine him, calling one to the shadows, begging one to join him on the other side.

Picking the exact spot to place an Indy bead is always difficult. Sometimes it takes a while. We always wander back and forth from place to place, trying to decide, hoping to get it perfect. This feels like an important part of our conversation with India.

Finally, we decide on a hiding place. The marble statue of Joan of Arc by Charles Jean Desvergnes, built to commemorate her beautification in 1909. Other than the Virgin Mary, it may be the only other feminine presence in the building. Regal in her helmet and armour, the Saint wears her sword hanging from her hip. Her hands are clasped in prayer. She has the kind of feminine teenage energy I admire. And like my daughter, she was forced to sacrifice everything.

I tuck the bead under Joan of Arc’s foot. Usually, we hide the bead a little, place it under or behind an object. It’s not that we don’t want it found, we just don’t want it to be found too easily. It’s like we’re testing the person who will discover it—like parents meeting their teenage girl’s boyfriend for the first time. We want to make sure they have the appropriate sense of wonder.

Four months late, in April when the fire breaks out at Notre-Dame, I’m glued to the news, as orange flames engulf the spire and the roof. Great wafts of grey smoke circle the ancient building, while toxic dust and lead spew forth contaminating the surrounding area.

I wonder if the little blue Indy bead is still under St. Joan’s foot. I imagine at the first sign of the fire, St. Joan’s spirit lifting from the statue, and wandering angrily about the cathedral, saying “Not this again. I told you God, I’m done with fire!”

It’s strange to think of a monument this magnificent, vulnerable to something as trivial as, say, faulty old electrical wires or a dropped cigarette. Before succumbing to the fire, the cathedral had survived more than 800 years of plagues, revolutions, and wars.

Part of me hopes the Indy bead was found soon after we left it in the cathedral. A lucky talisman that the discoverer takes everywhere. Maybe, they whisper to it when they are afraid or anxious, roll it in their palm, admiring its beauty. I like that thought. This way India’s story continues independently.

There’s another part of me that likes to think of the Indy bead lost in all the rubble and ash surrounded by all that glorious art and history. I picture the spirits of India and St. Joan wandering through the cathedral and pranking the construction team tasked with the rebuild, moving their tools from place to place. I imagine the two of them talking about boys and giggling over plans to spook the night watchman. Racing up to the highest remaining point of the cathedral so they can watch the living saunter by, and comment on how fearful they seem.

Last December, at a creamatorium in Nottinghamshire, England, a Postbox to Heaven was installed thanks to nine-year-old, Matilda Handy, who wanted to stay in communication with her grandparents who’d both passed on. Matilda told ITV Central, a U.K. regional news network, “It was very nice because I’m very upset and it’s just a very nice way to express my feelings and send a letter to them and to say how much I love them.” Within two months, the box had received a hundred letters. The crematorium, which is part of the Westerleigh Group, is now rolling out postboxes to heaven across the U.K.

When I found out about the Postbox to Heaven, I thought about the first time India went to overnight summer camp. She was nine and very excited, because it was a riding camp. I was worried she’d be lonely so I wrote a letter for every day she was away. I did my best to make the letters special. Each one was written on fancy paper with colourful envelopes decorated with stickers and drawings. I spent a lot of time thinking about what to say and drawing pictures of things she liked. I remember writing her name in big loopy letters on the envelopes and putting a heart over the I instead of a dot. I put all the letters in a little cloth drawstring bag and tied it with a bow.

After a week, India returned home from camp, exhausted and smelling like a horse. She’d had a great time. As I was throwing her clothes into the washing basket, I noticed the drawstring bag was still closed with the bow. I opened it out of curiosity. Not a single letter was open.

“India, why didn’t you open my letters?” I said, a little hurt.

“Oh, I was so busy, Mummy,” she said. “I forgot.”

Later when I was complaining to a friend about India and the letters, she’d laughed and said I should be happy I’d raised such an independent child. Looking back, I now realize the letters were just as much for me as they were for India. I needed to express how much I was thinking of her. That’s still true today. It doesn’t matter whether she actually hears me or not, when I place her beads in special places and talk with her inside my head.

Paris was the last trip we made with Indy beads, before the pandemic put travel on pause. Last September, less than three years after the Notre-Dame Cathedral was devastated by fire—Mark died. He was diagnosed on his 64th birthday with stage 4 Melanoma and died a month before what would have been his 65th.

Before Mark’s illness, I thought I knew what it was to watch someone suffer. For years, I’d watched India tortured by seizure after seizure. This was different. Mark’s cancer struck quickly and consumed him entirely. One moment, we were planning trips in our trailer, the next I was holding him up in the superstore because he couldn’t breathe. In six months, he went from 220 to 150 lbs. At the cancer clinic where he’d taken his immunotherapy treatment, his nurse asked if I was his daughter. I was only eight years younger than Mark.

Since becoming a widow I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the past. It’s a strange feeling to be the lone survivor of the family I created. It’s like we all went to war and I’m the only one who returned. The only one left to tell our story. Still, there are times I struggle to believe they are really both gone, or that I once had a child and a husband. So much loss is hard to grasp.

In her article “Walking in the Dark: Creating a New Virtual Map in Your Brain After Loss,” Mary-Frances O’Connor says:

“When we experience a loss through death, our brain initially cannot comprehend that the dimensions we usually use to locate our loved ones simply do not exist anymore. We may even search for them, feeling like we might be a bit crazy for doing so.

If we feel that we know where they are, even in an abstract place like Heaven, we may feel comforted that our virtual map just needs to be updated to include a place and time that we have never been. Updating also includes changing our prediction algorithm, learning the painful lessons of not filling in the gaps with the sights, sounds, and sensations of our loved ones.”

When Mark was in the hospice dying, he told me if I was going to make it after he died, I’d have to forget him and India—pretend they never existed. He was suggesting I wrap up the conversation and move on. When he said this, he was no longer the Mark I’d always known. The cancer and the drugs had changed him. He’d become unbearably frank, sometimes saying things that hurt my feelings. The way he saw it, I suppose, there was not enough time left for niceties.

At the time, I nodded and smiled. But I never once entertained Mark’s suggestion. We were together for 30 years. I’d lived with him longer than I’d lived without him. As far as I was concerned it was not an option to stop talking with the people I loved most, regardless if they were living or dead, listening or not. It would be like losing my leg in an accident and pretending I’d never loved to dance.

At the moment, Mark’s ashes are in my underwear drawer in a plain cardboard box. Eventually though, I intend to have some beads made with his ashes. I will have some more Indy beads made as well. My plans aren’t definite yet, but I’ve been thinking about placing some of their beads in Rome. Mark lived there as a child. He talked about the city the way one might a lost love. We always meant to go there together but we never did. Still, I know all about the city from the stories he told me. How he played in the Villa Borghese gardens and around the Colosseum. I imagine our conversation will continue once I’m there. I look forward to this with all my heart.

As a marine biologist I see how the average person’s eyes glaze over when they are confronted with sobering facts and figures. I get it. It can seem so abstract, particularly when you live in an urban centre. I believe people are most inspired to take action when they love blue spaces. As climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe writes in her book Saving Us: “We need to bring our hearts to the table, not just our heads.”

Before industrial times, First Peoples and settlers had deep connections to the global ocean. Ordinary people kept track of the tides, weather, and seasons, because those dictated when you could travel downriver by canoe or cross a bay on sea ice. Water also provided food. The availability of fish, shellfish, marine mammals and seabirds was determined by migration patterns, mating seasons, and the health of marine life, so you can be sure people were paying attention.

But as fishing technology advanced, intense commercial fisheries developed, leading to the depletion of marine life.And our deep and expansive blue spaces were exploited as places to hide things that are unsightly and unwanted on the land. Once garbage and waste have been dumped into the ocean, chemicals dissipate, debris sinks, and entire ecosystems lose the ability to thrive. It all happens out of sight and out of mind.

Water is present in some form, wherever you are in the world. Fresh water is connected through surface rivers and tributaries, underground in the permafrost and in the water table flowing towards the ocean. Its journey doesn’t end there; it circulates through powerful currents, all over the planet, evaporating at the surface once it reaches the equator. Leaving the heavy salt behind, water then dances in the atmosphere with the clouds and wind, coming back to earth eventually as snow, sleet, rain, or fog. It seeps through the soil nourishing our plants, flowing over rocks and picking up minerals before beginning the cycle once more.Water is a beautiful thing, so how do we reconnect with it?

Start small, by getting familiar with a single blue space. Take the time to sit near water, say at an urban stream, then watch it move, and notice the life within and around it. Let this become part of your routine, just like doing groceries or watching your favourite TV show.

My retired father spends lots of time by the sea. He notices when there are whales around, when the capelin are rolling, and if a shell becomes more abundant. He asks me to explain what’s happening biologically, because the more he observes, the more he cares.

Pay attention and you will notice when things start falling out of balance. Then you might find yourself picking up that bit of garbage on the riverbank. If you notice that the source of the garbage is a municipal garbage bin that needs more frequent emptying, you may call the town council. Small individual actions to prevent waste from entering the ecosystem of that blue space, are tangible and come quite naturally as you build a relationship with water bodies.

Keep focusing on how you can make changes in keeping with your growing care for our water systems. That might look like consuming less and responsibly: choosing shampoo bars over liquid shampoo in a bottle or using a refillable water bottle or silicone food saver bag, to reduce plastic waste.

As former U.S. First Lady and environmentalist Lady Bird Johnson noted in 1967, “The environment is where we all meet, where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens on what we can become.”

The next step is take your newfound love of water public. Our actions can inspire others to consume with the global ocean in mind. Sharing responsible companies’ posts on social media works, as does old-fashioned conversation. I use a natural clay deodorant that comes in a glass pot that the company invites consumers to return so they can reuse them. It smells great, so when people ask me about it I tell them about the brand and their environmental programs.

Working with fishers and undergraduate students on conservation projects, I drop it into conversation that I never go in the field without picking up marine debris. Small acts of love for the ocean can be contagious. Once on a field trip with a fisher we did an impromptu inventory of the debris along the shoreline: tangled nets, plastic gasoline jugs, beer cans … and so the list goes on. We found plastic lobster tags discarded 20 years ago and still intact, as if they’d been tossed overboard just yesterday. The fisher couldn’t believe this tangible example of how plastic doesn’t biodegrade and how litter just accumulates, slowly leaching its chemicals and eventually micro and nano plastics. He vowed not to contribute to this garbage problem.

Another way to show your love: participate in a community science program that recruits and trains the public to help collect data that feeds scientific research programs. If there isn’t one in your area there are lots of online apps and platforms that individuals or groups can contribute to; organizations such as eOceans, and the Marine Debris Tracker app can point you towards community-based science projects. The data you collect will be used to help advise governments who have the power to make decisions around blue spaces and their resources.

To continually renew your sense of wonder, you could join a snorkelling or cold-plunge group, or learn to surf. You’ll soon find you’ve signed up for more than just a hobby. For example, it should come as no surprise that surfers are among the most passionate and active ocean activists out there: Coral Gardeners was started by a 16-year-old French-Polynesian surfer to restore reef communities all over the world; Surf Riders lobbied for a plastic-bag ban and blocked offshore drilling in California; and Surfers Against Sewage has cleaned up coastlines all around the UK. You’re in a serious relationship with the global ocean now, so join forces with like-minded water lovers!

Last thing: as you physically get into the water, let it hold you up, let it move you with its waves. Feel its temperature. Feel its wildness. Then thank it for making our planet habitable and being so easy to love. In the words of American marine biologist Sylvia Earle:

“Stick your face in the blue heart of the planet.”

Illustration by Juliette Vermeersch

“I’ve been worried about you.”

I heard this phrase often in the spring of 2020, when my move into a place of my own coincided with Ontario’s first round of social distancing and lockdowns. My world shrunk to 500 square feet, bound by the drafty walls of a second-floor studio in Toronto’s Trinity-Bellwoods neighbourhood. I owned one pot, three forks, and a bed made from reclaimed barn wood that took up half my apartment. I woke up to birdsong, which grew louder in the silent streets of that time. By nightfall, the only voices I heard were those of neighbours seeping through the walls and of BoJack Horseman voicing thoughts of self-loathing.

I was alone, yes. But I was living. Settling in, for what felt like the first time. As someone who had lived with chronic feelings of loneliness, I found a sense of relief during the pandemic. Permission to be with my loneliness, without the pressure to escape it. I also felt a sense of belonging, as tweets, news headlines, and political statements were increasingly filled with the language of loneliness, signaling that I was no longer the only lonely one.

Not to suggest that I ever was. The loneliness epidemic was already upon us before COVID-19 sent us into isolation. Recognized as an emerging public health crisis in the U.S. since 2017, according to Vivek H. Murthy, the former Surgeon General of the United States, loneliness is something communities around the globe have been grappling with for years.

“It’s been a long time of people feeling this way,” says Jaylin Bradbury, a social worker and therapist who has worked in both community and academic mental health settings over the past 10 years. Bradbury confirms that the feelings of belonging I felt early in the pandemic made sense, as there was this universal experience of loneliness that helped validate what chronically lonely people like myself had been feeling in a more individualized way for years.

Today, according to a 2021 global survey by Ipsos, it’s estimated that a third of us are lonely.

In Canada, the numbers increase. While a pre-pandemic study found that one in five Canadians identified as being lonely, a 2022 Statistics Canada survey shows close to half of us now claim to experience loneliness sometimes, often, or always. And 2022 research by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health notes that we are getting lonelier.

Although loneliness is reported at higher levels among those aged between 15 and 24, urban dwellers, and folks who fall outside of the straight, cisgendered, abled-bodied, white male demographic, it is clear from the latest Statistics Canada findings on loneliness across sociodemographic characteristics that none of us are immune. A 2009 study by John T. Cacioppo—the co-founder of the field of social neuroscience—observes proof of the transmission of loneliness across three degrees of separation, between family and friends. In other words, just like COVID-19—a contagion we’ve been fighting collectively—the chronic feeling of being on the outside can also be passed on from one person to another, with all the associated health impacts.

In his book Together, Murthy explains that feeling lonely increases one’s risk of developing heart disease, dementia, depression, anxiety, or a stroke, as well as higher blood pressure, immune system dysfunction, impulsive behaviour, impaired judgment, and lower quality of sleep—all of which make us more prone to early mortality.

Our loneliness is killing us. So why are we not still talking about it like we did in 2020? Why are we not doing more to prevent its spread?

Countries like Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.K., and cities as large as Barcelona and as small as Villa del Conte (pop.: 5,400) in the northern Italian region of Veneto have either enacted loneliness ministers, launched awareness campaigns, or begun implementing strategies to address the epidemic. Bradbury believes these measures can help change our view of loneliness from a personal to societal issue. “Having it be a bigger, broader conversation helps people recognize that this isn’t necessarily a personal deficit, but more widespread,” she explains.

In the Canadian context, a national conversation on loneliness is lacking, but there are a growing number of community-led initiatives striving to address systemic issues like loneliness that contribute to our collective well-being. A handful of these initiatives were made possible by the findings of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW).

“What would it really take to measure Canadians’ quality of life?”

A board member from the Atkinson Foundation—a non-profit organization with a mandate for social and economic justice—posed this question back in 1999 upon reflecting on the irrelevance of gross domestic product, which was and is still misguidedly often cited as a marker of a nation’s well-being, to reflect the social and cultural landscapes.

The Foundation decided to change this focus on economic health by developing a measurement tool for the well-being of people and their communities, the CIW. While they’d hoped the tool and its recommendations would capture federal attention, it was local leaders and grassroots organizations that showed interest at first, approaching the developers to learn how it could help improve wellbeing within their communities.

“Our first question for them is ‘Have you organized yourself with like-minded organizations within the community?’” shares Bryan Smale, the director of the CIW, which now operates out of the University of Waterloo. Smale has found that implementing the CIW is most effective when communities unite as a consortium, “We really emphasize the role that collaboration can play.”

Rather than approaching well-being “one problem, one solution” at a time, Smale also believes we should strive for policy changes that improve well-being across multiple domains, such as introducing a universal basic income, adopting a Pan-Canadian education strategy to support accessible opportunities throughout our lives, and offering universal access to leisure, arts, culture, sport, parks, and recreation. He also stresses the importance of assessing indicators of well-being in relation to each other, rather than in isolation, as they’re all interconnected.

Loneliness is not directly included as an indicator within the CIW; however, its prevalence is captured indirectly through several measurement criteria and has been addressed directly through the community-based surveys.

Smale shares that there has been some movement at a national level since federal and provincial governments eventually noticed the uptake of the CIW at the community level and responded to it. Statistics Canada now has an entire division devoted to measuring social well-being, including rates of loneliness.

In 2017, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health at the time, David C. Williams, issued a report on Connected Communities which included the CIW as a framework for measuring connectedness. He cited “loneliness and social isolation as serious public health problems that cost us all.” And in 2021, the Department of Finance Canada released a policy paper on drafting a nationwide Quality of Life Strategy, which built on the CIW’s framework to identify 83 indicators for assessment, one being loneliness.

Bradbury notes that while it’s important to include loneliness in these broader strategies, the loneliness epidemic calls for deeper analysis and targeted solutions, if we are to make a real difference to the lives of lonely Canadians. However, Smale notes that this federal strategy has been put on hold due to shifts in government priorities and clarifies that while the CIW was integrated into the Connected Communities report, his team was only involved in its review rather than collaborating more broadly on strategy or the implementation of recommendations.

Within this context, there does not appear to be a collective roadmap for addressing loneliness or building a future of collective well-being, a future that reports to date show is desperately needed. Outside of existing measurement practices, government reports lack teeth without dedicated funding and resources in place, both to implement solutions and raise awareness within the public discourse. By and large, communities in Canada seem still to be left to fight loneliness alone. Isn’t that how we got here in the first place?

Since the term “loneliness” shifted from being understood as synonymous with solitude to a distinct, negative emotional state in the early 19th century, it has increasingly shown up in songs, poems, plays, and prose, just as much as feelings of love, loss, and liberty.

There’s Emily Dickinson’s poem, written somewhere between 1886-1896, The Loneliness One dare not sound which describes the emotion as, “The Horror not to be surveyed – / But skirted in the Dark / with Consciousness suspended / And Being under Lock.” Fast forward nearly a century, and Leonard Cohen writes in his book Beautiful Losers, “Please make me empty, if I’m empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I’m not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.” And more recently, Dua Lipa asks, “Is the only reason you’re holding me tonight ‘cause we’re scared to be lonely?”

The architecture and intricacies of loneliness have been studied, over the past several decades, across academic disciplines as well. Since Frieda Fromm-Reichmann’s trailblazing paper on loneliness in 1959, we have learned more about the phenomenon through the fields of psychology, neuro-urbanism, and feminist studies, amongst others. The prevalence of this research increased in the late 20th century, particularly following the creation of the UCLA Loneliness Scale in 1978 (the first standardized tool for measuring the state) and the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s, which as Noreena Hertz explains in The Lonely Century, supported a shift to individualism in all facets of life—how we live, work, get around, and more—leaving us prone to feelings of isolation and alienation.

And yet during that same time frame, it seems that loneliness scarcely made it into everyday dialogues, with loved ones and within communities.

Fromm-Reichmann suggested this void could be partially attributed to the incommunicable nature of the state, which produces a sad conviction that no one has experienced what we’re feeling. It could also result from how we lonely people experience our condition, which, as determined through a 2021 study out of the University of Bonn, can make us less trusting of others and thus less likely to engage in conversation about the parts of ourselves we hold close.

And these days, the unwillingness to talk about loneliness may also stem from our culture of hyper-connectivity and hyper-productivity; where a busy schedule and phone filled with notifications defines our worth, forcing many to hide their loneliness out of shame. As Anthony Silard explains in his 2021 Psychology Today article titled “How Social Media Exploits Our Loneliness”:

“Social media has, strangely, created its own demand. By isolating you from your friends, your loneliness becomes greater and you feel more motivated by what the British psychologist Pamela Qualter calls the ‘reaffiliation motive’ to check your social media and see what your friends are doing.”

But rather, loneliness should be understood as a failure of modernity, and the imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist, and heteropatriarchal systems that support it (what bell hooks coined “dominator culture”). Shoshana Magnet, a professor of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa, calls these systems “the loneliness-making-machine” and believes the shame we feel when we are lonely is systemic as well. And yet, so much of the discourse remains focused on the state as an individual feeling, instead of a shared experience of today’s world. Magnet put this best, “We always want to blame the tree, not the poisoned root systems that feed it.”

In the first year of the pandemic, discourse around loneliness did shift to the realm of the collective. Associated with the everyday experience of life during a pandemic, “loneliness” was thrown around just as much as “unprecedented,” “essential,” or “the new normal.” I was hopeful this would be just the beginning of a larger conversation. But like “trauma” and “equity,” the word “loneliness” seemed to become a modern-day voguism, basking in its 15 minutes of fame.

What does this mean for the lonely ones? Those who were living in their loneliness before it became the new normal, or who tapped into chronic loneliness during the pandemic?

“It’s back to that individualized view, which is very like, okay, so it’s my fault that this is happening,” says Bradbury. “Health anxiety is at an all time high. [There’s] social anxiety across all ages… but also lots of relationship breakdowns because of different views.” And with lockdowns coming to an end, Bradbury notes that more of us are in a stage where we want connection but can’t access it, or feel this pressure to be social, even if that’s not what we want. “[These are] reasons for why people are still feeling that loneliness, but… we’re not talking about it as much.”

“I’ve been worried about you.”

I rarely heard that phrase in the months that saw our lives returning to some kind of normalcy, and that brought the heaviness of loneliness back into my life at a time when it seemed like its weight was lifting for many others. It left me to feel as though the loneliness that was spoken about so much in 2020 was not the kind that I carried.

Most days, it takes a pep talk or the fear of being late for me to emerge from the four walls of my world. I’ve moved now and am living with a partner and two pandemic pets in the ground floor apartment of a converted Victorian, one neighbourhood east of my last. But on nights spent in their company, probably bingeing a show to feed my desire for escapism, I feel filled with both love and emptiness. Even shoulder to shoulder at a concert, a place that used to provide me with some refuge from my loneliness in the past, this emptiness now prevails. Since the pandemic, I’m more aware of myself and the space around me than ever before.

When I reached out to see if anybody else felt this way, through calls on social media and reading blog posts about the state, I discovered I was not alone.

Among those I spoke with was Olga, a server in her late twenties, who could relate to such feelings of emptiness. Having moved back in with her mom and brothers during the pandemic, her physical loneliness in Stoney Creek—a suburban neighbourhood in east Hamilton—is exacerbated by social media and the lack of places to make connections as a single, child-free adult.

Then there was Nina—a Torontonian in her late twenties—who, unlike Olga, lives close to her friends yet still feels lonely. “When things started to open up again, it was kind of like going back to almost being younger and being left out … getting hit with that super social anxiety again, like being so afraid to ask people to do things, or go out and just be seen.” Spending more time alone than she would like to because of this, Nina has found herself coping with a fear of being seen paired with the disappointment of not reviving her social life. “It can be such a vicious cycle,” she admits.

While women under 24 have been the hardest hit by loneliness in recent times, according to Statistics Canada, those feelings of emptiness, exclusion, and isolation are not unique to the young. Dr. GS, a 94-year-old living on the west coast, first truly felt lonely when he moved into his own place after his wife died in 2021, following years of her living with dementia. In writing to me, he revealed, “I did not know what to do with myself. I had all this time on my hands, I was basically not needed by anyone … I did not have a purpose. I realized my entire life responded to the needs of my wife and kids, my patients, and my work at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine—and now, nothing. I also had a great hole in my life … I did not want to have a girlfriend and definitely never thought of getting remarried, but I was yearning [for intimacy].”

In November 2021, Statistics Canada shared that 14 percent of Canadians aged 75 or over report always or often feeling lonely. And according to the Government of Canada’s Report on the Social Isolation of Seniors, “studies show that the lack of a supportive social network is linked to a 60 percent increase in the risk of dementia and cognitive decline; while socially integrated lifestyles protect against dementia.” The same report noted a troubling correlation between social isolation for seniors and elder abuse.

All the lonely people I spoke with for this story shared that at some point they’d found themselves wondering, “Is there something wrong with me?”

I see this question as a failure of our collective discourse.

In moments where I’ve shared my own lonely feelings with others—in writing about how cities spur loneliness or in conversation with my therapist and friends—I’m often asked what I would need to make things better. This is a question that leads me to fantasies about running away to the French countryside and spending my days labouring on a farm or vineyard. What I’m really saying is, “I need a different world.”

For me, being so aware of the systemic reasons for loneliness can make it difficult to envision a future without it. What I’m craving is a space, right here in Canada, where experts, leaders, and everyday people living with loneliness can come together to envision this different world.

Yes, the constant use of the word during more or less two years of lockdowns, bubbles, and restrictive measures did bring loneliness into everyday dialogues—at least during that time. But there’s a difference between fleetingly acknowledging loneliness and seriously talking about it with the goal of addressing the underlying issues. And I fear we spent too much time doing the former. Capitalizing on language, diluting the term, and ignoring the chronic nature of our loneliness crisis.

So, what now when we’re tweeting about it less and thinking about it less? How can we revive the dialogues about loneliness that sparked up earlier on in the pandemic and act upon them?

Emily Empel has been exploring this question through her new venture, Advance Notice—a collective of fellow futurists and strategists, as well as a Jungian-trained analyst, Akashic record reader, movement facilitator, and anthropologist, who help others envision what the future could look like and put that vision into practice. Empel first brought together this interdisciplinary group of dreamers to explore the future of collective well-being. In this project she asks, “How do we think about this at a systems level and on a societal scale versus putting the onus on the individual to solve for how they feel?”

I asked a similar question of Empel and all the other people I spoke with on the subject of loneliness. My own interviews sparked dialogues about the need for us to attend to our mental health not just individually, but collectively. There were suggestions that we conceive of new housing models and third spaces—communal places distinct from home and work—that are affordable, accessible, and responsive to our changing culture. That we bring artists, comedians, kinkeepers, a whole range of everyday people into the solution. And that we change public policies, whether that means formalizing the implementation of the CIW through government funding; including loneliness as a measure of community health just as diabetes, heart disease, or other chronic illnesses are; or providing guaranteed universal income, so everyone can afford the foundational elements necessary for well-being (housing, food, transportation, clothing and the likes).

As Shoshana Magnet shared with me, “The world will not be fixed by one big thing but a million tiny little gestures.”

We all experience life in our own unique way, and just as the pandemic has shifted our experiences of inhabiting this world, future events will too. No single solution will help us all, so we need a collective loneliness strategy for all the tiny little gestures to stem from—one that will destigmatize loneliness by continuing the conversation, inviting people living with loneliness to talk and listening to what they have to say.

The next steps? To create a foundation of contextual and embodied research on the Canadian experience of loneliness; to mobilize, based on the recommendations that come out of this research, with the support of ample funding; and as we implement solutions around our collective well-being that involve us all as community builders, to monitor progress over time. Perhaps most importantly, awareness campaigns can only take us so far: for real change to happen, we need to be guided by a collective vision for an alternate future so that we can fall in love with the solutions and begin to live them today.

COVID-19 case counts rise and fall, but loneliness remains.

Now’s the time to do something about it.

Photo by North Island College

Seaweed, a traditional food for many coastal First Nations in B.C., is experiencing a renaissance, thanks to its untapped carbon sequestration potential. In recent years, multiple First Nations have partnered with private companies like Cascadia Seaweed to lead this growing industry. But unlike other coastal First Nations in B.C., the Kwiakah First Nation—a small band of 21 registered members located near Phillips Arm and Frederick Arm—has not signed production agreements with seaweed companies. That’s because conserving kelp forests, instead of making a profit from farming them, is the main factor driving the Kwiakah members’ work.

“I don’t think, if we don’t do the kelp thing right … that our coast can survive another industrial onslaught,” cautions the band’s administrator and economic development officer, Frank Voelker, describing decades of gold mining, logging, and fish farming.

The Kwiakah Nation is unique in that it does not receive as much federal funding as some other nations since it does not have a residential reservation, Voelker explains. “Over the decades, the band members just adjusted to that and became self-reliant,” he says, adding that the nation turned a “huge disadvantage” into a positive.

As a result, not only are the Kwiakah in a stronger position to say no to companies that promise jobs at the expense of the environment, but they can learn how to become better kelp farmers through smaller-scale initiatives, rather than jumping headfirst into uncertain new ventures under the pressure to generate jobs.

RESISTING PRESSURES TO SCALE UP

The Kwiakah are currently repurposing an old fish farm into a kelp farm—including establishing pre-processing facilities, where kelp would be dried before transport—and a research centre.

Despite having a good research relationship with industrial actor Cascadia Seaweed, the Kwiakah Nation has not rushed to sign any production agreements; its traditional territory in the Phillips and Frederick Arm region has long experienced serious, irreparable environmental damage from B.C.’s extraction industry.

As mentioned, one reason kelp farming has been of great interest in B.C. in recent years is due to the ability of kelp forests to sequester and store carbon. The carbon stored in coastal ecosystems is called “blue carbon” and is often touted as a way to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

But because of the Earth’s changing climate and rising ocean temperatures, carbon-sequestering species like kelp are dwindling in number without human intervention.

Given the potential of blue carbon, communities might be tempted to grow kelp in many B.C. inlets, but undertaking any such activity on a large scale has to be approached with caution, Voelker says.

This is why the Kwiakah are working closely with sister tribes within the Laich-Kwil-Tach First Nation and speaking with elders to understand traditional methods of cultivation, including learning how much kelp has historically grown in the region and working to match those quantities, not exceed them.

KELP CULTIVATION VS. KELP FARMING

Kelp farming isn’t the only way to reap the environmental benefits of kelp and generate income.

One promising solution is for the Kwiakah to participate in seaweed cultivation for its own sake, which will enrich the marine ecosystem and absorb carbon dioxide, and for which the community can be compensated through a carbon scheme.

“That would be my dream scenario,” Voelker muses, “purely carbon sequestration and [the community] getting paid for it.”