Elsa and her Shadow

Let me just begin by telling you a bit about Elsa; about the person she was and my own rendition of what she meant to me.

Elsa was born in the spring of 1974 to two loving and caring parents, Jim and Grace. She was born in a small town that was just getting its first taste of a recession that would see all but a handful of its then booming industry fade away into nothing but an echo of its former glory.

Her parents did what they could to get by after Jim lost his job in the mill. He worked odd jobs and long hours but there was always a hot meal on the table at the end of the day and though she would get more than her fair share of hand-me -downs and thrift shop school clothing, Elsa never wanted for the necessities in life.

I used to babysit her when her mother would go out for the shopping or running other errands and her father was earning a living. She would help me bake cookies or we’d sit at the dining room table and play board games. If it was a nice day we’d sometimes lay on a picnic blanket in the back yard and look for shapes in the clouds; cloud-watching we would call it.

Elsa’s parents weren’t particularly religious but she still attended vacation bible school for 3 weeks every summer in the non-denominational Christian Church on the corner of Parkview and West every year. She learned songs that she would sing for me and make arts and tell me about the bible stories she had learned.

Elsa was a girl scout. She had a sash literally covered in badges that she had earned by helping out with her mother at Mount Sinai Hospice and Retirement Home. She knitted blankets and even ran a workshop to teach some of the elderly residents how to knit; instead of the traditional role reversal where a grandmother would show a ten year old the magic of the old knitting needles.

She grew just like any other normal child. She went to sleepovers and played with barbie dolls or lego. She had a dog, a little collie cross named Runt that used to run along the side of her when she would take her bike with the purple streamers for rides through Orchard Park.

Elsa did well throughout her schooling. She was on the honour roll and had a high B average throughout school. She played the flute in the marching band and sang in the school choir. Her favourite classes were English and Music.

I knew Elsa from the day she was born and I watched her grow up. It went so fast but I still love to reminisce and stroll down memory lane as though it were only yesterday. I was there when she was out in the front yard in her prom gown, her hair all done up and looking very grown up as she had her photo taken sitting on the porch swing with Jason Bleaks. He looked so charming in his tuxedo, but Elsa looked elegant. She had her mothers smile. It was natural even though she was posing for the camera.

Elsa grew up as all of us inevitably do. She went to college for a couple of years and lived on campus. She would come home to visit for the holidays and it always warmed my heart to see her. She’d lightened her hair and cut it short when she came home for Thanksgiving the first year. I hardly recognised her only a few months after she had gone away! It suited her though. She looked lovely; like she was really enjoying life and the independence had suited her very well.

She came back for Christmas and Spring break. I’d hear the whine of her old Ford station wagon when it crested the hill and know that she must be back again to see her folks. The neighbours would all come out to greet her. It was almost as though we had our own celebrity in the neighbourhood and everyone wanted to catch up and see how she was doing and what college was like. We would ask about her classes and how she was finding campus life.

She returned home for the summer and found a part time job in the local pharmacy. The poor girl must have had to tell the same stories a hundred times a day as people from the area would stop in to fill prescriptions or pick up a bottle of aspirin. It never seemed to bother her though. She’d smile and answer the same questions again and again for the curious customers and make small talk, smiling all the while.

It was on her second summer back home that everything changed. I was washing the dishes from breakfast when I heard the familiar whine of her station wagon and realised it must be Elsa back for another summer at her parents house. I set the pot I was scrubbing back into the sink and dried my hands on the dish towel before making my way down the hall and to the front door.

I saw her darker and slightly longer hair trail behind her as she ran up the front steps and heard the slam of the door across the street. I knew something must have been up but didn’t want to intrude and so I went back to the kitchen and turned on the radio for a bit of company, and to take the edge off of the anticipated conversation that I had been unintentionally readying myself for had been so abruptly called off.

Only then did I hear about the whole ordeal. There had been a shooting at another campus not far from where Elsa had been attending college. Six students and two teachers had died in a murder suicide with details that were still sketchy at best. The entire eight hours that Elsa had been driving home the gory tale was unfolding in the guess work way that most of these stories start out. First blaming Islamic fundamentalists, then falling on to the stereotypical homicidal maniac.

There were calls for guns to be banned. There were rallies being organised by the NRA to keep guns in the hands of decent people with a need to protect themselves from these sort of psychos. There was talk of bombs and suspicious devices being left all over campus. There were people calling for anyone not born in America to be shipped back to wherever they came from. There were churches arranging candle lit vigils while evangelicals claimed that the lecherous party culture of college students in that area had brought this act of god down on the sinners like a plague of locusts.

It was bedlam on all of the airwaves and yet none of us knew what had happened to Elsa at the time. Over the following days people talked. There were hushed conversations out on the street between neighbours that looked at the house as they speculated. I heard stories ranging from her having been on campus at the other college for one reason or another and having witnessed the barbaric slayings all the way to a love interest having been a victim of the massacre; or even that he had been the sick mind behind the barrel.

It turned out of course that it was all hearsay. Elsa was driving home when the incident happened. She didn’t have a boyfriend and she didn’t know a single person; faculty or student, that had been involved in the massacre. She had simply spooked herself as a result of too much caffeine, too long of a drive, too much time alone while she was hearing the story unfolding, and too wild an imagination.

I only found out that much by speaking to her mother one day while she was out walking the dog. The poor woman was distraught. It was obvious she wanted to talk to someone and since I had been a family friend for so long she chose to console in me.

She told me that Elsa was in a bad way. She had managed to get herself so worked up and kept going on about how it could have been her. Elsa wouldn’t leave the house. She spent most of her days in her bedroom and most of her time there crying about what could have been.

Her mother told me of the nightmares she was having. How she would frequently wake up screaming. How no amount of comforting from either her or her husband seemed to make any difference.

During this time friends of hers from college had phoned but Elsa didn’t want to speak to them. She just wanted to be alone with her grief. There was absolutely nothing that anyone could say or do that helped.

Elsa dropped out of college that year. She cited stress as her main reason whenever anyone would ask her about it; once she did finally start leaving the house again that is. It took her mother and father every ounce of strength they had left to convince her that she needed to see a psychiatrist. Not even that helped in the end.

It turned out that the atrocity had been committed by one local and terribly unhappy male student. His parents had divorced. He had been struggling to pay off his student loans. He had suffered bullying about his lack of money throughout his life and one day he just snapped. He decided to take as many of the people he blamed for the hand he had been dealt in life down with him.

Of course the media never apologised to any of the numerous people they had targeted and hassled. The small Muslim community on campus were still receiving regular harassment from students after the claim that the shooter may have been a recent convert to a militant Islamic group that was secretly operating in the area.

Gun sales went up on the whole in the area due to the fear mongering that the media with the help of the National Rifle Association had created. There were billboards asking about the safety of not having a gun and bumper stickers declaring “If they make guns illegal only criminals will have guns” stuck to old chevy and buicks right alongside commemoration stickers reminding us all of the date of the incident and the names of the victims.

It is understandable that a person could hear about a terrible tragedy like that and stress themselves out enough to believe that it actually could have been them that had been there even though they were not. Unfortunately it was only the tip of the iceberg for Elsa though.

After several months of therapy she slowly started to retreat from her shell. We were all smart enough not to say anything to her about it but would ask how she was and she would normally give us a forced smile and do her best to reassure everyone that she was “fine, just fine and dandy thank you”.

In time she resumed her position in Laurent’s Pharmacy. They had expanded their store while she had been away and now also had what was essentially a small convenience store complete with birthday cards, makeup, drinks and snacks, and the staples like milk and bread. The change to store meant that it saw far more custom from the local population since it was within walking distance and had most of the essentials that people wouldn’t see fit to drive all the way into town to pick up.

At first she would work with her eyes down, never saying more than she had to and never initiating conversation with the customers. One word answers were about the best we could hope for and the first time I experienced it myself I welled up with tears. What happened to the little girl that I used to know? Where was that confidence and determination? Had that poor boy that did those terrible things been able to take yet another victim after all?

They say that time heals all wounds and to a certain extent I suppose it’s true that it does for most people. As the months passed and the seasons changed Elsa seemed to make a bit of progress. Her demeanour was still reserved and she shied away from people more often than not. Every now and then though I’d see a glimmer of who she was before.

One day I had to stop into Laurent’s Pharmacy to fill a prescription for antibiotics for a nasty ear infection I had picked up that didn’t seem to want to go away on it’s own. The store radio was still playing Christmas songs at the time even though Christmas had come and gone. I made a reference to a parody of ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’ that involved ‘Womens Underwear’ along to the music as I approached Elsa and handed her the money to pay for the drugs and she burst out laughing with a snort that reminded me so much of the unadulterated laughter of her childhood; and the Elsa I knew and loved so much.

Things like that were rare but they happened periodically. I heard similar tales of breakthroughs from other people in the neighbourhood and even from her own family. Sometimes she would laugh at something unexpected and funny. Sometimes she would come out of her shell just enough to remind us that she was still there and that all hope hadn’t in fact been lost.

As it turns out I needed to fill a repeat prescription for that particularly nasty ear infection I’d caught that year. I went to the Laurent’s Pharmacy and when I didn’t see Elsa I knew something wasn’t right. Franklin Laurent himself was there manning the cash register and I could see it in his tired and sullen expression that all was not well.

“Good morning Franklin! How’s Nancy doing? I haven’t seen you since the carolling! Did you have a nice Christmas?” Franklin had never been a man of many words and I could tell by his demeanour that the festive spirit was far behind him. “Ah Marilyn. Good to see you. Yes, thank you. Yourself?’ I was never one for beating around bushes. More a supporter of the ‘better out than in’ school of thinking I decided that there was no harm in asking.

“Isn’t Elsa in today?” He weighed up the damage a response would yield. Shifting his glasses uncomfortably he leaned in so as not to be overheard. “It’s the superbug that the damn reporters keep going on about Marilyn. It’s gone and spooked her just like that damned shooting did.” He straightened up and took the money I had been holding out for him, keeping his eyes down as he made change of a twenty.

“Just one elderly patient dies in hospital in a suspected case of this so called super bug and she can’t come in. What am I meant to do? I mean honestly! I can’t afford to have someone on the payroll when I don’t even know if they are going to be too scared of the bogeyman to be here doing their job! Does she think I’m made of money? I’m still paying for the renovations done last spring!”

He was exasperated but it didn’t stop him from grasping my hand ever so slightly as he slid the change gently into my open palm. “I just don’t know what to do about her. This can’t go on.”

It pained him to say it but I knew where he was coming from. Times were hard and profits were down. He should have been ensuring the shop was running efficiently, taking stock and placing orders, not trying to catch up with it after hours while spending his day doing the job he had employed her to do.

“I’ll see if I can get through to her.” I promised before pocketing my change and taking the plastic bag. The doubt was clear in his eyes and I realised I didn’t have much faith in myself making any difference either, but I was willing to try. Anything was better than just sitting back and watching Elsa wreck her life.

She had already missed out on her college education and all of the potential prospects that would bring and now here she was slowly throwing away her job, her references for future jobs, and hurting people in the community as well as herself. It wasn’t fair to anyone.

As I made my way back along the slush covered streets, careful not to slip and fall on the icy patches, I thought about this fear that she had. She ceased attending college despite having loved it there; and for what reason? The tiny chance that someone might come in with a gun and kill her? Millions of other students get their degree without ever even being grazed by a bullet. Just because it happens once, and she happened to hear about it shouldn’t mean that she should shut herself in and hide from the possibility, which was minuscule, of it happening again only to her this time.

I knew that was just plain silly but what about the super bug? Yes she worked with the public and not just any members of the public but a higher proportion of people that weren’t well and most likely had recently been to a hospital or at least a Doctor’s office. Then again there were many people that simply had repeat prescriptions to fill and hadn’t been to a medical professional for months or even years.

There was also the fact that the number of people that had contracted the super bug was so ridiculously low in comparison to the number of people who hadn’t to bear in mind. Surely the odds of being struck by lightning must have been higher than her odds of contracting the super bug at work would be. I debated saying this to her and realised that she may never leave the house again on a rainy day for fear of being struck by a rogue bolt.

I realised as I hit a particularly slippery patch of the path that there was a real difference in fear that is healthy to feel and what Elsa was feeling. I was mildly afraid that I may slip and go down on my behind, mostly because I was confident that it would hurt. There was also the mild embarrassment I would suffer if anyone saw me as an even milder secondary fear. Technically I’m sure that if I fell at just the wrong angle and perhaps too quickly to get my arms up to cushion the blow that yes, in theory I could slip and fall and hit my head hard enough to die. However, here I was walking on the ice and slipping and sliding my way home because I was being sensibly cautious.

I had my winter boots with good tread on my feet. I had my hands free and out of my pockets so that if I did slip I had more chance to catch myself. My eyes never ceased trying to spot the ice versus the safer patches to walk on. Because I was being aware and reasonably cautious my odds of imminent death on ice were drastically reduced. We all have to figuratively walk on a few icy patches every day, when had this become a problem for Elsa?

I decided that someone needed to tell her this. Someone would have to bring her back to reality. That someone was going to have to be me.

Carefully I climbed the steps to her front door, without even having returned home with my prescription first. I figured that I should do what I could to help her while it was fresh in my mind.

I knocked and waited only a moment before her mother came to the door. “Hello Grace, is Elsa home?” The troubled look she gave me spoke volumes. The scent of harsh cleaning chemicals struck my nose like a tidal wave. My eyes burned with the harshness as Grace stood aside motioning for me to come in.

I kicked the snow off of my boots and wiped my feet on the welcome mat just inside the door. Taking a moment to look around while I did I could see that the problem was a lot worse than I had anticipated.

The house had always been clean but lived in. It had been homely and it felt good to be inside of it. Right then the house looked clinical. There wasn’t a speck of dust sparkling in the beams of sunlight that shone in from the windows. The floors looked like you could eat off of them. The chemical scent was unbearable and I found that it wasn’t only my eyes that were burning but my lungs as well.

“Oh Marilyn! We don’t know what to do!” I wasn’t able to know for sure if Grace’s eyes were streaming from the chemicals in the air or from tears of exasperation. “I’m sorry about the state of the place. She’s been disinfecting everything in the entire house for days now. I can’t stand it! I taste it when I breathe, I taste it when I eat, I haven’t slept in days.”

Grace was close to having a nervous breakdown. She was so barely keeping herself restrained and the bags under her eyes looked like they might be permanent. Though there wasn’t a single speck of dust glittering in the sunlight, I did see clearly that the grey hairs at her temples had multiplied significantly in the few days that it had been since I last saw her.

“I want to help. I was at the pharmacy earlier and heard what happened. She needs someone to talk some sense into her Grace. Do you think she would listen to me if I tried?” She took my coat and hung it on a hook near the door.

“We’ve been trying for months now to get her to be sensible. Nothing works. She won’t even go back to the therapist because of this damned super bug that they keep talking about on the news. It was the only thing that was helping at all and now it’s out because there is this stupid germ that she’s afraid she would get catch that would mean certain death… When did my little girl become so afraid of dying? How did this happen? What did I do wrong?”

I opened my arms to her and held her, gently rubbing her back with my hands as she sobbed on my shoulder. We stood that way for a long time. I let her get it out and feel the support that I was there to give to her and her family. I couldn’t help but feel angry with Elsa for doing this to the people that cared the most about her. If she wanted to ruin her own life with these ridiculous actions that was one thing, but was she so blind as not to see what she was doing to everyone else around her?

I scolded myself for letting the anger of helplessness in the face of the situation overtake me temporarily. Elsa was sick. She wasn’t in control and she needed help. Similar events happen in most families where someone needs help and everyone selflessly pulls together and gives and does everything they can, and they suffer, but that is the bad that we have to take with the good.

“It’s okay Grace. I’m here. I’d like to talk to her and see if I can help.” She pulled herself together with a bit of effort and wiped the remnants of tears from her eye with her hand, sniffling slightly before becoming serious.

“I’ll get her for you but I wouldn’t hold much hope if I were you. Jim wants to take her to a Doctor in Chicago that has been making real progress with people that suffer from Thanatophobia; a fear of death.” “If money is the problem I could help out a little…” She interrupted, “No it’s not that. He mentioned flying there and she had a panic attack. She was babbling about terrorists and the twin towers and… Oh there’s no use! It’s still a Doctor’s Office and bound to be swarming with super bugs. She won’t accept the help and we try so hard to convince her…”

She wiped at her eye once more with the side of her hand. “I’ve been thinking about getting Doctor Stephens to tranquilise her so that we can get her there before she even realise that she’s been out! Isn’t that terrible?” I fished a tissue out of my pocket and handed it to her as she attempted to get herself back under control once more.

“It’s not terrible at all. She needs help Grace. Like I said, anything at all I can do to help her or to help you is…” We were interrupted by the sound of Elsa’s footsteps at the top of the stairs.

She descended and I was speechless. Looking as though she had slept even less than her mother had, the dark circles below her eyes were accentuated by the surgical face mask that she wore to cover her mouth and nose. Her hair was tied back and she appeared to be wearing hospital clothing, like the sort a ward walker would wear.

Seeing her like that broke my heart. The poor girl seemed to be literally dying of fright. “I thought I heard you down here.” She raised her left arm while her right held onto the bannister. She had a spray can and before I could object she gave the downstairs hallway a thorough dousing in disinfectant. I coughed and closed my eyes to protect them while the chemicals rained and added to the stinging feeling I already had from breathing them in.

“Elsa! Stop this at once! We can’t breathe!” Her mother scolded between coughs. Elsa stopped spraying and lowered her hand but wouldn’t come any closer.

“I stopped by to see how you were Elsa. I thought that you might come over to dinner this evening so we could catch up with each other. I’ve got a lovely big pot of stew simmering away and there’s no way I could eat it by myself.” I was aware that I hadn’t thought this through and the words were simply coming to me instinctually. Her mother and father obviously needed a break and it might do her good to get out of the house.

She looked at me as though she were in a bit of a daze. “I can’t.”

“Well if you have other plans I understand. What about tomorrow? There will be plenty left over.” I knew she didn’t have plans but maybe if I made it hard for her to refuse she would just accept.

“No, I can’t eat the stew I mean. Haven’t you heard about CJD? How could anyone eat beef these days? Don’t you know what it does to you?” She retreated by one step, still clutching the banister in one hand and the disinfectant spray in the other.

“Oh dear, I hadn’t realised… What about making some cookies together like we used to? I’ve been a bit lonely recently Elsa and I think it might cheer us both up.”

She retreated another step. “Salmonella. Raw eggs are really dangerous. We don’t have a cooking thermometer to make sure it’s hot enough to kill it.” She jumped at the sound of her own voice when she said ‘kill’, turned, and ran up the stairs without another word. The sound of her sobbing uncontrollably in her bedroom greeted our ears just seconds after the slam of her door.

I turned to her mother, “You’re right. She needs help very badly. You get on the phone to Doctor Stephens and I’ll stay here to help out wherever I can in the meantime.”

With a nod of her head she was away to the kitchen to get the phone. The poor woman just needed someone from the outside to agree with her to make her see that she had made the right decision. She knew that sedation in order to get help was the only thing that was going to work short of locking Elsa up in some sort of institute, but she simply couldn’t see it as the right thing to do without support.

She came back a few minutes later. “Doctor Stephens is on his way here. He agrees that it’s an emergency and that she needs to get help.”

I spent the next half hour phoning airlines and getting details about flights for a sedated passenger and her parents. As it was so close to the holidays not a single airline was able to get Elsa to Chicago for a few weeks and it was obvious that she didn’t have that much time.

Jim came home just as Doctor Stephens was arriving and I filled him in on what was happening while Grace and the Doctor went upstairs to see Elsa. A short while later they returned downstairs. Elsa was deeply sedated.

Doctor Stephens made a point of explaining how imperative it was that Elsa get professional psychiatric help as soon as possible. Apparently she hadn’t been eating or sleeping and he explained that she was so ill that a clump of her hair fell out when he attempted to brush it from her face. “If she keeps up like this she’s going to kill herself.”

Plans were laid out for Jim and Grace to drive the twelve hours to Chicago. I was going to help them pack and then book hotel rooms for their arrival. Everyone got to work and within an hour the car was loaded up and they were ready to set out on their long drive to help Elsa.

I agreed to phone Grace’s cell phone with details of hotels and be on hand for any problems that might arise with directions or anything else I could do to help. They gave me a house key and I agreed to look after Runt, their dog, while they were away.

Jim carried Elsa to the car. She didn’t regain consciousness the whole time as we laid her in the backseat and covered her up with a blanket and propped her head up on a pillow. I stood on the porch with Runt while they got into the car and waved goodbye before pulling out and driving off.

“Well Runt, we’ve got a hotel to book. Let’s go get warmed up. There might even be some stew for you tonight if you’re a good boy.” I locked up and then we crossed the street to my house. It’s scary to think that it was in that short amount of time that it happened and Elsa’s worries were laid to rest.

Grace and Jim had only driven to the top of the street where it joins the main road before they hit a patch of black ice and lost control of the car. It spun and Jim threw it into neutral, just as any smart driver that hits ice would, avoiding that maddening urge to hit the breaks that only make the situation worse. The car spun directly into oncoming traffic and if it had been seconds earlier or later it wouldn’t have made any difference and would have just been yet another vehicle that spins out before continuing even more cautiously on the journey at hand. However they spun directly into the path of an ambulance that was on its way to the sight of another accident brought on as a result of the wintery weather and icy conditions on the road.

They were less than a mile from the house when the accident happened, killing all three of them instantly. There was nothing any of them could have done differently. There was no precaution they could have taken that they didn’t take. They were wearing their seat belts. The airbags deployed. The ambulance was on the scene literally as the accident happened.

At the end of the day Elsa spent the last six months of her life being so afraid of death that she missed out on everything that would have been enjoyable about the time. It wasn’t any media hyped bogey man that got her in the end. It wasn’t Al-Qaeda. It wasn’t a super bug. It wasn’t eating the wrong food, breathing in the wrong air, or being in contact with the wrong customer. It wasn’t a bullet fired by someone on campus. It was just a run of the mill patch of ice on the road she lived on.

If Elsa had gone back to college it wouldn’t have happened. If Elsa had gone to work it wouldn’t have happened. Elsa lived in fear for the last six months of her short life. Elsa’s shadow that she had learned to be afraid of is what killed her in the end.

As I looked out over the congregation I saw not a single dry eye. They had witnessed it just as I had. I left the podium and approached the three closed caskets at the front of the church. “Don’t be afraid anymore Elsa.” I said my final parting words and laid a single white rose on the casket in the centre, just below the photo of the smiling girl I used to know.

The moral of the story:

Live your life. Don’t spend it being afraid of what could be.