April 3rd marks 20 years since my dad died.
20 years ago tomorrow, my mom, accompanied by her mom, picked me up from daycare, went home, sat on the couch, and told me that Dad died.
I can still picture sitting on that old green couch at the house my mom and dad bought in 1999 in East Vancouver. My grandma sat in the old wicker chair beside the couch while my mom held me and I cried. More than anything else, I remember feeling confused, like it didn’t make sense. My mom would tell me years later that the only thing I asked was “Does that mean I don’t have a Dad anymore?”
It hasn’t gotten any less confusing.
That’s part of what’s so devastating about this kind of grief – there are no easy answers. I’ve never been a religious person, but I’ve found myself asking God why countless times in the last 20 years. God never gives me any answers, at least that I can see. Maybe if I look hard enough, I’ll see answers, but nothing will change that many of the answers I’m looking for died with my dad, in his apartment in East Van, all by himself, on a chilly April day in 2004.
One thing I know for certain is that while the grief changes, it never gets easier. I’ve always loved the analogy that the grief never gets any smaller, but you grow around your grief, and it takes up less space in your existence, even if it never shrinks.
I often wonder about the person I would be if grief wasn’t a part of my experience. 20 years later and I can still feel that little twinge in my chest when I think about getting a hug from my dad. My eyes water when I think about him or when I run through the hundreds of questions in my head that I wish I could ask him. I wouldn’t ask him if he loved the drugs more than he loved me, because I already know the answer to that. I would ask him if he thought it was funny that the Leafs still haven’t won a cup. I would ask him if he thought I should go into journalism or political science. I would ask him to teach me how to drive. I would ask him about the socio-political implications of the current state of the world and what he thought about Aaron Bushnell. I like to think he would think Aaron was brave.
I ask him these questions and then I sit in silence. No response ever comes.
One thing I remember clearly is his voice. Strong, deep, warm, silly. When he was in recovery (rehab), he would record himself reading children’s stories to me and then he would mail my mom the tapes. We will have them, but I can’t listen to them anymore like I used to. It makes me too sad. Like I said – the grief changes, but never gets easier.
My family remains one of my strongest connections to him. Even though she harbours a deep distrust for every man her daughters or granddaughters date, my grandmother speaks nothing but good things about my dad. She, like my mom, knows the hell he put us through in his last years on earth. Yet she still understands that I deserve to know my dad for the beautiful, good, caring things about him. My mom doesn’t talk about him much anymore, but every once in a while, she’ll drop a funny story about my dad. Both his mom and dad have died since then, and the only remaining family on his side is his sister, who lives in Quebec. My mom and I used to go to AA meetings with his old sponsor, to see his community.
I often must remind myself that I can also know him through myself. Him and my mom came together to create my existence, and without him I would not be here. I see glimpses of him in myself when I’m at my silliest, when I’m laying on the couch watching Oilers games, or when I’m sitting at my desk at work reading the news thinking “Pierre Poilievre sucks”. I see glimpses of him in myself when I sing at the top of my lungs in the car, and when I notice and challenge injustices in my life and the greater world. I see differences in us when I politely decline key bumps in the bathroom with my friends. I wish I could know him and know who he was in his voice, but I can’t.
I do what I can to find answers.
In late August of 2023, my mom came to visit me in Edmonton. She came to explore this little life I’ve built for myself here, far from the heaviness that Vancouver had turned into for me. After we explored Whyte Ave, jetted around on scooters, and watched Stranger Things together, we sat on the couch, and I asked her questions about my dad that I had been nervous to ask before. Did she know he had been using? When did he start using heroin? Were there people in his life that I hadn’t heard about? Did she know he was going to die?
I know, and knew, the gist of it. My dad was a deeply traumatized man, coming from a deeply complicated, and from how I see it, abusive family. His parents split up when he was about 8 and went back and forth between two very distinct sides of the family His father was a Conservative Member of Parliament for a time, but my Dad rejected Conservative values from the start (despite how happy he looks in that picture). After high school, he moved to Ottawa to go to Carleton, where he met my mom.
I love the pictures of my dad at the pro-choice rallies in Ottawa in the 80’s, carrying his sign and advocating for full healthcare for women in Canada.
My dad always drank a lot. He was a cool liberal man in a band in the 80’s, so no shit he’s getting fucked up on a regular basis. He was an alcoholic for a long time before he died.
My parents fell in love in Ottawa, and moved to Vancouver when my dad was accepted to the Peter A. Allard Law School at UBC. They lived in a little basement suite in East Vancouver before moving up to the main floor, and got married in the back yard with their pug Brutus as the ring bearer. In early 1999, my mom got pregnant with me and it was time to move to a bigger place.
In 2002, my parents separated because they agreed that he couldn’t be around me when he was actively using, and he was draining their bank accounts to fund his addiction. I found out years later that my dad would smoke crack in our back yard and then come in for dinner. When they separated, they agreed that I would live with my mom but he could visit whenever he wasn’t using. At this point, he was bouncing between recovery houses, programs, and apartments. I still remember spending time with him during this time in our lives - blissfully unaware of what was happening to him.
Things deteriorated quickly when I was around three. When my dad started using heroin, he changed. Now, I can see the change in him in pictures. He looked gaunt, skinny, tired. The silly, goofy, energetic, and playful man that I knew and loved was slowly dying, but of course at the time, I had no idea. He was just my dad, perfect in all ways.
He died when I was four after an overdose on a combination of heroin and cocaine. He was using by himself, and I often wonder what would have happened if someone was with him. They could have called 911. He could’ve woken up. But he was alone, so he died alone.
It was the next day that he didn’t show up for a visit, and the police found him.
It was from then onward that grief was a central part of my existence. Each year when I started school, my mom would send my teachers a letter letting them know about my dead dad, so they would be prepared when Father’s Day came around. They would be talking about dads to the class before I’d see their voices falter and eyes dart to me, remembering my circumstances. I used to call my friend’s dads “Dad”, too young to know that how they were addressing their fathers was unique to them only. My friend’s parents cautiously brought it up to my mom, who said that I could do whatever I wanted. As she should.
I wish I could count all the ways grief has affected me, but in the end, it’s not about counting all the ways, because grief just exists alongside me. Every breath, movement, decision, and thought are impacted by the death of my dad.
I was 10 when I became aware of the term “daddy issues” – as if having a dead dad somehow makes me less worthy of love or care. As if any girl or woman who has a strained/no relationship with their father is less valuable as a woman. As if my or any other woman’s sexual promiscuity or lack thereof can be attributed to their fathers. I’m sure there is some actual psychology behind it, but that’s not the intention of words like fatherless or daddy issues. Terms like these were created by men – designed to simultaneously sexualize women with trauma and shame them what they’ve gone through. I was 10 years old when someone called me a slut for the first time and attributed it to my “daddy issues”.
I was 12 when I went into high school and one of the cool boys muttered to me in class that my dad deserved to die. I turned around and told him that if he ever spoke to me again, I would punch him in the face. He never spoke to me again.
I was 14 when my friends started doing drugs. There was one afternoon when we all walked home from school together to my friend’s house. As soon as we walked in, they set their backpacks down and started drinking from their parent’s liquor cabinet and talking about smoking weed. This was clearly an overreaction, but I yelled at them and sobbed and and ran all the way home. To the friend whose house it was – you know who you are, and I think you’ll probably read this – I think about this and laugh now. I love you.
I was 15 when I smoked weed for the first time. Like all baby stoners, you don’t get high the first time. I remember smoking and thinking “this is it?”. It wasn’t until a few months later that someone told me I had to inhale, and I realized why people do drugs.
I was 16 when I got drunk for the first time. We had just finished our English 11 provincial and were drinking Sour Puss and Balm Bays in a tiny apartment. One of my friends got so drunk that she passed out and I had to hold a bowl for her while she puked unconscious. I was so scared. I wondered why my dad loved doing this.
I was 17 when I met E. His mom had died of a drug overdose too, and we became best friends. He was just as fucked up as I was but suddenly, we weren’t friends anymore. This is when I learned that some people see grief as something to take advantage of, rather than something to hold with care. I still hate him.
I was 18 when the smoke alarm went off in the middle of the night in our house. I didn’t smell smoke and I knew my mom would get up, so I stayed in bed. A few minutes later, she opened my door, accusing me of smoking weed and setting off the smoke detector. I hadn’t been smoking, and I refused to smoke in my room. While I denied that I set off the alarm, my mom hit me with a “you’re reminding me of your dad right now, denying what you’re doing.” This was when it sank in for me that my mom lives with the trauma and grief of what we went through too. Just like me, grief lives alongside her; a silent companion accompanying her on every adventure the world has to offer. My mom had spent so long being the stable rock in my life that I had forgotten that she too lives with trauma. She said this because she was scared and angry, but I think about it regularly. I often wonder if I am too much like my dad.
I was 19 when I saw one of my friends do coke for the first time. We were in a stall at Fortune in Vancouver when she took out her little glass jar, lightly tapped the powder onto a key, and held it up to her nose. It wasn’t as upsetting as I thought I would be, but I couldn’t tell my mom that I’d never even seen coke in person before.
I was 20 when the pandemic hit, and I started smoking weed all day every day to deal with the anxiety and boredom of the years 2020 and 2021. This was the year I started dating someone for the first time since E and made quite a few bad decisions. My mom went through a brief chronic illness, and the fear of losing her gripped and paralyzed my body for a long time. My 16-year-old cat died and for the first time, I felt grief that rivaled that of my dad’s death. I experienced my first mental health crisis and had to go visit VGH. I was diagnosed with depression – which my dad lived with for most of his time on earth. I didn’t see myself making it past 21 at this point in my life but I couldn’t leave my mom behind. She’s why I’m here. This was also when I became closer with my best friend Cait. They, along with my mom, got me through that year.
I was 22 when my grandmother told me a story about my dad. She told me that one day, he had sat her down and told her to watch for signs of addiction with me, because he knew that he would be passing it on – no matter whether it was nature or nurture.
I was 23 when I moved out of the house that my parents bought in 1999 to pursue a career in the NHL in Edmonton. My 23rd birthday was a few weeks before I moved, and my step-dad wrote me a card that said:
“You, my dearest daughter, are loved, muchly and unconditionally”.
I got that tattooed on my arm as a reminder that I am the daughter of a father, more accurately the daughter of two fathers.
I cried constantly in those final weeks in Vancouver, grieving the relationships and friendships from my hometown which had carried me through my childhood. I grieved that old house in East Van, which was the last place my mom, dad, and I all lived together. I still think about the pictures of him holding me as a baby, the biggest smile on his face, in our front yard. It was hard to leave that front yard behind.
I’m 24 now, and I have finally been granted probate over my dad’s tiny estate. There is a new feeling of calm, sadness, and ownership when I hold my Grant of Probate, I feel like someone can finally take care of what no one could before.
The grief never gets easier, but it does change. From the age of four, grief has been a part of my existence in ways that I never could have anticipated. I grow up and deal with countless variations of questions and situations in my life centered around grief. Sometimes it is easier to try to ignore it and convince myself that all the processing is done – but then something like a TikTok about a dad will send me into hysterics and I’ll be coldly and harshly reminded that this is something I will always live with. It’s better to just…feel it. Allow it to center itself in your being and allow other things to center themselves too. Your family, the sun, your friends, a delicious sandwich for lunch, the smell of a clean apartment, being a hockey fan during playoffs, the smell of the sidewalk after it rains.
I don’t hate my dad for what happened, and I don’t hate the fact that grief is part of my existence. What I hate is imagining my life if my dad had lived. I am overwhelmed with jealousy of the version of me out there whose dad was able to talk about hockey, and to give her advice, and teach her how to drive, and reassure her that a better world is possible.
After my dad died, that old house in East Van was too big for my just my mom and I, but she couldn’t bring herself to sell it. She still lives there today, with my stepdad Paul, and our two dogs. The home that my parents bought in 1999 turned into a haven for countless friends and family – a homebase or safe place when the world was too dark. My friends and I have broken up with our partners and gotten back together with our partners in that house. Countless pizza parties and sleepovers. A home base during COVID when we couldn’t hold each other. When housing in Vancouver is precarious, we could afford to take in loved ones that needed help. It became a home to my stepdad and stepbrother. Its warmth lasted through every winter. I like to think that a little bit of my dad’s soul lives on in that house.
One thing I never anticipated or prepared myself for was having to justify why my dad deserved to live. A few years ago, someone I work with came up with me to chat about a festival they’d been to. We exchanged stories about festivals but this one took place in an area of the city where there were more drug users. In the middle of our sentence, he stopped and said, “we just need to poison all the drugs, so they all just drop dead.” I felt like my heart had physically left my chest. I froze and couldn’t get any words out, so I just smiled and turned back to my computer. He walked away. He didn’t know the story of my dad, nor should I have expected him to. This was a coworker that to this point, I had had nothing but positive interactions with – someone I considered kind, caring, thoughtful. This was a devastating reminder that some people just don’t think people who use drugs deserve to live. They do. That woman on the corner slouched over with the needle still in her arm deserves to live. That blue-collar man smoking crack in his truck after work deserves to live. That mom of three taking key bumps in her bathroom because she’s done it all alone deserves to live. My dad deserved to live.
I’ve loved writing for as long as I can remember, and part of why I write is because it helps me make sense of what’s happened. I love writing about my dad and how grief has impacted my life. It changes the grief from anger and resentment and devastation to just plain sadness – which in a lot of ways, is easier than the anger and resentment and devastation. I think he would have loved to read what I write. I wish he could tell me.
I wish there was some poetic way to end this - but I just wanted people to know my dad and his story. But there’s no poetic way to end a devastating death, just silence and grief and joy and acceptance.
In Loving Memory
John Robert Horner
November 9th 1964 – April 3rd 2004
Thank you for sharing your dad and your grief Robin. Your words remind me that nothing and nobody should be taken for granted and for those of us fortunate enough to have fathers and daughters and sons should appreciate every day we can share with them. Your beautifully written and shared words have very much affected me, and I am grateful to you for having the courage and skill to share.