Author’s note: This is in dedication to YRP’s Detective Constable Rachel, who died on April 7, 2023. She was 36 years old, and she was my best friend. This is my memories of our youth, where in my mind and heart, we will always be in our 20s, forever.
I often wonder how her and Johan would’ve gotten along. She never mentioned wanting any kids although she once asked me to baby-sit a bunch of Jewish kids while synagogue was happening and I saw her as a mother figure for the first time — stern, but patient. The kids knew they could test me, I was just a foreign body there that wouldn’t really try to do anything as long as they kept their noise down a certain decibel. But one swift look at Rachel and they quieted down almost immediately; she didn’t even have to say anything. She just stood there, amongst them, chemically straightened red hair pushed back in a tight ponytail, the stubborn curls starting to edge their way in, producing little bumps on her head that I knew drove her crazy, her lips firm and peeled back, eyebrows furrowed. It was the same look she shot me every time I disappointed her, or whenever she was angry, or whenever she really wanted to emphasize her point so that I could take her seriously, like when we first made the drive from Mississauga to Montreal. She turned to me with that look for the third time and said, “And when I say when you feel like you have to go, don’t wait until you actually need to go before saying something. Let me know when you start to think you have to go, or even before that–it’s gonna take us a while to find a place to stop, okay? There’s not a lot of gas stations on the highway, you know. If you don’t let me know early, you’re gonna end up pissing on the side of the road.”
“Okay, okay,” I told her, waving her warnings away, refusing to give it any importance. Of course we ended up, as most of our road trips always do, parked on the side of the highway, Rachel standing guard, while I shamelessly squatted and did the dirty, despite how many warnings she had given me.
One thing about Rachel that I do remember: she was never the one to say, I told you so.
So even though I ended up leaving streaks of make-up on her white sheets and pillowcase, and ended up puking on her beloved childhood toy, Teddy, despite her insisting that I did not look okay, that I needed water and all that Rachel-mothering that she always does, or did, she never brought it up, never banished me to the couch as punishment, never even blamed me for messing anything up. Her room and her bed remained open, despite her valuing privacy above all else, despite me violating Teddy. I was still allowed to sleep beside her when I got too drunk to go home, and I was still allowed to cuddle with Teddy no matter how drunk I got.
We lived together, yes, during our first year of university, but I don’t think we got close until we started working together at the legendary mirror store, where we spent every weekend of our university life for about three to four years, watching movies and binge-watching Jersey Shore when there were no customers around, mastering every level of Burger Tycoon like it’s nobody’s business, going through every Facebook profile of people we knew from Uni, scouring tagged photos to see what un-demure, drunken, mean-spirited photo got uploaded of us or one of our friends upon which relentless campaigns of “Take that shit down!” every time we passed by them on campus occurred (You know, the old timey version of online brigading), and just plain talking. Talking out of the corners of our mouths, talking while half-asleep, talking while semi-consciously nursing a devastating hang-over — just good, old talking, the kind that didn’t suffer in awkward silence in between pauses, the kind that lingered in the air between two people, allowing the other to speak into being their version of truth and have it unjudged. We didn’t contradict each other or spoke over one another or secretly waited until it was our turn to speak– in the 8 long hours we had to spend there, with each other, we learned to listen. If we entered into the relationship with pretense, that slowly went out the window by the time noon rolled around and the only thing that distracted us was the one customer who came in through the glass door, pause upon seeing our two eager faces, and then who slowly backs away upon realizing they had just entered No Man’s Land.
I still have dreams about the mirror store. I still dream that I’m in the backroom, looking for an order, while I hear Rachel’s kitten heels clap against the wooden floor as she regurgitated memorized information from our binder, the price for each foot, the increase in price when it came to bevels, glass thickness, whether or not chrome or matte was still in style when it came to shower frames. It was a rich people store, and what Rachel and I quickly learned about rich people is that you can make absolutely anything up, as long as you say “it’s the trend” or “it’s the industry standard” or simply “this is what people do”, and you say that with unflinching confidence — straight back, hands clasped behind you, chin up, direct eye contact — rich people would believe it, and would be more than willing to fork the money for it, especially if they’re convinced, this is what everyone else is buying.
I remember when Rachel once turned to me, during one of those boring sessions in the store, her face lit up and her smile wide (before she even said anything I already knew this was one of her mirror-store epiphanies). She said, “You know what I realized about rich people?”
“What?”
“All their clothes just look new,” she answered, utterly convinced that this was the truth. “It’s just always new.”
I believed her of course, as I had no idea how rich people lived. I know Rachel was always obsessed with status and this idea of richness, or wealth. That was how we ended up on Canal Street in New York one fall, Rachel van-deep into someone’s SUV, wading through piles and piles of leather, while I stayed on the curb, eyeing each end of the street warily. She was on a quest to buy fake Coach bags. We drove 485 miles from the U of T Erindale campus to Canal St, New York City just for fake Coach bags. I didn’t get the appeal then. Now, I find myself stock-full of luxury bags and looking at Coach bags with disdain, as if I was above it. Looking back, I suspect my affinity with luxury bags is connected to Rachel somehow, because even today I can’t tell you why I have so many of them, why I’m seemingly collecting them. They mean absolutely nothing to me.
But that walk — from our hostel in Harlem to Canal Street — a 7 mile walk that took 2.5 hours because she was too afraid to take the subway and she was too fascinated with looking at every building, wanting to feel every inch of New York underneath her feet — and walking the entirety of Manhattan with her in a single day — from sunrise to sunset, that meant something to me.
We ended up travelling together. In Nassau, because I was too proud to admit that I was afraid, I ended up jumping first into the choppy waters to snorkel around the rainbow reef, despite not knowing how to swim. My heart pounding, I forced myself to go under, trying not to let panic overtake me as wave after wave went into my snorkel, choking me and forcing me to gasp for air above water. When I looked over at her I could tell she was also afraid, but because we were too damn proud to admit that to each other, we said nothing, and dove our heads in anyway.
It was the most beautiful place I ever saw.
Truly an alien world. It felt like we were swimming through rainbows. A completely new world where every colour stood out, and everything danced. I was breathless with awe.
Ever since then I learned to never let fear get in the way of adventure. That on the other side of my fear, is every possibility, every situation, dark or beautiful–on the other side of fear was everything.
I loved snorkeling ever since.
Back then, I always knew our friendship was terminal. We were just too different. She was a Jewish, white girl with curly red hair who dunked her hair full of chemicals so that it can turn out iron straight for a few weeks. I was a Filipino who ran away from church, with iron straight hair who would gladly dunk my hair full of chemicals just so it’d end up curly, if only I had the money. She came to Uni with a plan – graduate with a forensics degree, go to Scotland to get her master’s degree, join the police, do 10 years of working the beat or however long it takes to get into the lab, which was her ultimate goal. I didn’t even know what the fuck I was doing in Uni, let alone what major to declare. While she had every step of her life planned, I was at a complete loss, barely even able to understand what kind of reality she lived in — where everything was so sure, and everything had a purpose.
The only time I felt sameness with her, like I had broken through the walls of her plans and saw the reason why she had those guardrails to begin with, was during that one night we were at the pool, the stars bright above us, the waves crashing against the shore, a beautiful, peaceful night at the Bahamas, when she turned to me and said, “I think, all of this is because–what I’m really trying to do, to avoid, is ending up like her. That’s my greatest fear, I think,” and I didn’t say anything, didn’t ask why, or who, because I felt that I understood, that I knew the fear she talked of, for the same raw, curdling fear sometimes wrapped it’s tendrils around me, and held me tight into its fist. I felt the same pull, the same panic, and right then, in the silence that grew and solidified between us, was the only moment I felt I had truly understood what it was like to be Rachel, and she knew what it was like to be me.
I’m writing about her because a couple of days ago, she would’ve turned 38, if only cancer didn’t take her away. And I say taken because she was, a life violently cut short and snuffed out without anyone’s choice or say. No matter how much she must have convinced everyone else that she had accepted it, that this was the way it was always supposed to go. Because the thing that is really screwy about all this is that if Rachel could ever be whittled down into one thing, the essence of her soul, if she could be a literary archetype, she would be a snake-oil salesman, but instead of deceiving others with made-up potions and talismans, she would be selling people on hope – all packaged nicely in a clear, transparent jar, complete with a tincture to put two drops of hope under your tongue every 2 hours, as needed.
And I say this because Rachel had a plan. Rachel knew what she was going to do. She had figured life out and knew the only ending she would accept, and she had no doubt in her mind that that was what she was born in this world to do – she had a purpose before the rest of us even managed to grasp the idea that the meaning of life is whatever purpose we adhere to.
And she actually did it, by god, she actually did all of it. Even after she found out that cops didn’t earn that much, that the risk of it may not necessarily be worth it, the woman was not bothered. She just kept on going. Even when she found out that her co-workers would drink just to get through their shift, that each case is not necessarily black and white, completely shattering her own views of morality and law, even after all those revelations – she continued to pour herself into her work, steady onwards, moving forward her path of life, putting a check beside each milestone indicated on her map.
And through time, as our relationships fell apart, as plans began to diverge and eventually abandoned, as milestones and events we were really not prepared for got handed to us without our control, Rachel’s plan for her life began to inspire us. Hey, if things didn’t pan out, who cares? Look at Rachel, she’s still going. She did everything she said she was going to do. You can plan for things. With hard work, you will be rewarded. There is sense in hard work and keeping on going because look at Rachel – this 5″5, 110 pound, red-headed woman is now York Regional Police’s Detective Constable!
Yes, the same woman who spent hours using a hand grip strengthener underneath the desk at the mirror store, because she was afraid her wrists would break during physicals. She even bought me one so she wouldn’t have to do it on her own, and we must’ve made such a funny sight to anyone coming in, two ladies with their fists hidden underneath the front desk, faces constricted in pure concentration. That’s the Rachel I know. When we watched Monster’s Ball in the computer at work, and the sex scene with Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton came on, we both looked at every corner in the store, everywhere else except the computer screen, because it was so explicit and so breathy, and we were much too young to feel comfortable about sex, especially with each other. That’s the Rachel I know. And when I took that holocaust course, in an attempt to understand her better, and for the first time was faced with the genuine horror of her history, and she asked me how it was going, unbeknownst to me I started crying and uncontrollably caterwauling because I couldn’t separate what I was learning about her history from the present her, she looked at me with such confusion that for a moment I felt ashamed–until she reached out and held my hand, because she knew that even though she didn’t understand, this was the right thing to do— and I’ve never felt ashamed in front of her since.
That’s the Rachel I know.
It is almost cruel, savage even, for the universe to take away the one thing that was stable for us. That worked so hard to protect us. I never trusted cops, nor do I trust them now, but I trust Rachel, and I trust that everything she did, she did because she thought it was the right thing to do. What is beautiful about a life cut short, about a life that was forcefully unrealized simply because she ran out of time? I guess the only thing that we’re left with is this, a story to tell others: “There once was a woman named Rachel and she was my friend. And she did everything she said she was going to do. And she did all of it because she knew they were the right things to do.
And you, you can do that too.
Put power behind your words, behind the choices you make, behind your plans.
Make sure what you say and do is true.”
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