[Note: I’d planned to write about Pauline Dakin’s book, Run, Hide, Repeat, in this post until I realized that Lesley Buxton is giving a webinar in less than a week. See end of post for details and link.]

Instead, the book opens a few months after her daughter, India, has died. She and her husband are on a plane to Japan, with which India was obsessed, to celebrate what would have been her seventeenth birthday. They’d had a speck of their daughter’s ashes baked into 16 colourful glass beads that they planned to leave in places she would have loved to visit. When I heard this story, I thought that was a far better idea than anything else I could think of doing with the memory of a child, especially one who’d seemed destined to do creative and interesting things. 

Lesley’s story then goes back to a time when India was just 10 years old. It’s the day the first symptom of India’s illness appeared, remarkable only for the fact that Lesley had a dental appointment that day, until India inexplicably fell. Their journey began, the journey that every parent hopes will never begin for them. 

From there, the story moves back and forth in time, sort of the way grief moves back and forth, taking us from the present to a memory in the distant past to thoughts of the future to a memory in the recent past, in no particular order. 

“Mark and I decided, when we headed west through the States to Vancouver, a stop on our way to Japan, that if we wanted something, we’d treat ourselves. By the time we returned to Quebec in the middle of June, the back seat of our car was heaving with souvenirs … 

“In Gibson’s, British Columbia, I bought myself a dress on a whim. The dress had a halter top and a wide 1950s skirt. It was sky blue and covered with pirate flags. I knew she would approve, though she probably would have told me it was too low cut. 

“I never censored India’s taste. A romantic with a flair for the dramatic, she favoured Manga-inspired outfits over low-cut t-shirts and short skirts. She often looked as if she’d stepped out of an anime movie.

“We still have her clothes. Everything is packed in big blue Tupperware boxes. Among them, a cream-coloured satin Regent style wedding dress she liked because it looked like it belonged to a Jane Austen character, and a Goth evening gown which, when she was sick, she used to watch TV in. I have no idea what will become of these things.

“Whenever I buy clothes, the first thing I ask myself is if India would approve. She was very opinionated about how I should dress. Once when I was wearing white pants, she told me, ‘Mummy, you can’t wear white. You’re not Beyonce.’ I’m not sure what I said, but I’m pretty sure I laughed. Now I don’t ever wear white. Too afraid. India might strike me down with a lightning bolt.”

A few years after India died, Lesley and her husband, Mark, moved out to BC, where her sister and parents still live. A few years after that, Mark was diagnosed with cancer; he died in 2022. I remember being in awe of Lesley’s attitude after he passed. I live with depression and often struggle with thoughts of suicide, and all three of my children are still alive and well. I don’t know how I would manage in Lesley’s circumstances. But a short while after Mark passed, Lesley wrote on Facebook that continuing to live well and enjoy life would be her way of honouring Mark and India. It’s what they would want for her. 

It’s no wonder India was one strong girl. Her mother is one strong woman. 

One Strong Girl won the first-ever Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction.  On Sunday October 27, 2024, Lesley Buxton will present a webinar, Scene Stealing: Creating Textured Scenes Using Your Five Senses, through the Federation of BC Writers. 

Other books about illness and disability:

Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, by Pauline Dakin.

Just Jen: Thriving Through Multiple Sclerosis, by Jen Powell.

I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself, by Adelle Purdham.

Still, I Cannot Save You: A Memoir of Sisterhood, Love, and Letting Go, by Kelly S. Thompson.