Main Feature
Why Mark LeMay is Driven to Help Anawim
excerpted from the Fall & Winter 2015 edition of Anawim News
Volume 30 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: April 5, 2016
The phone rang as we returned home on the afternoon of August 11th. A person from VGH asked that Sue and I go immediately to the hospital: Michelle, our daughter, had been admitted through Emergency and was in intensive care.
Given no further explanation, we immediately called our son and, enveloped by rising fear and such tearing of the heart, headed to the hospital. A nurse with pain-filled eyes led us to a sterile room where we found our precious 15-year-old child unresponsive and on life-support.
The phone rang as we returned home on the afternoon of August 11th. A person from VGH asked that Sue and I go immediately to the hospital: Michelle, our daughter, had been admitted through Emergency and was in intensive care.
Given no further explanation, we immediately called our son and, enveloped by rising fear and such tearing of the heart, headed to the hospital. A nurse with pain-filled eyes led us to a sterile room where we found our precious 15-year-old child unresponsive and on life-support.
A doctor later met with our family and advised that life support be removed in the morning. Our family and closest friends gathered at the hospital that night where we kept vigil at her bed-side. In the morning we crowded around her bed as life left her body and we surrendered her to the loving God she knew, who had come to free her from the hell that her last year of life had become.
Our vibrant, loving Michelle had over the previous year succumbed to major depression following episodes of bullying at school. While medicated she showed signs of bi-polar disorder and became noticeably manic. Michelle asked to withdraw money from her bank account in order to buy a tent for a homeless man she had seen on a specific corner in downtown Victoria.
Our daughter never returned home. She soon found acceptance on the street, made new friendships with other street kids, and slept with them in city parkades. We met with street workers and other parents in similar situations but found ourselves powerless to do more. At times I would search for her downtown and then sit down with her at Yates and Douglas to say how much we loved and missed her and ask her to please come home.
She once explained to me: “Dad, I can’t be a ‘twinky’, i.e., a kid who left the comforts of home on weekends, drifted downtown, only to return to home and school on Monday! My friends cannot return home and I won’t leave them.”
But street life, especially at 15 years, inevitably draws one into a world that circles death: progressive mental illness, poor health, drug addiction, and the drift into crime in order to survive. The streets of Victoria soon revealed their ugly side and with untamed malice stole our daughter!
I am left to cherish the times the phone would ring well after midnight and Michelle would ask me to pick her up from some darkened parking lot. Once home, she would cuddle into bed with her mother and find, for a few hours, some grace-filled peace.
Love for God’s suffering poor and Michelle’s forceful tug at our hearts has empowered us, over the past 25 years, to serve her street brothers and sisters at Anawim House.
Anawim’s Mission: Supporting people in poverty to make empowering changes in their lives
Anawim’s Values: The Anawim family, Healthy Living, Compassion, Addressing Poverty
Note: Poverty is not just lack of money, it is the lack of many of life’s essentials such as health, love, peace, joy, ambition and the will to live life.
excerpted from the Fall & Winter 2015 edition of Anawim News