Love Affair Before and After Death…: A Memoir By

By Shelley Wickabrod

It was the summer of 1991 and the weather was hot and still. Bernard and I sat in the shade of the back of our weekend home making small talk. We were at the height of our careers, prominent designers in the Canadian Fashion Industry, enjoying a fabulous lifestyledinners out every night, the finest wines, expensive watches, jewellery, and carseverything one expects of a life of success. We were young, attractive and madly in love with each other.

I made a move to go feed our dogs Bernard went upstairs to shower and died instead. It was the day that altered both of our lives forever.


Written with the strong emotions of true love, this story takes you on a thoughtful, spiritual journey of love between two souls and a deep overall love of God. It is a story of life, absolute love, and immeasurable grief. If you had never known Shelley Wickabrod and Bernard McGee as a couple, nor felt the love between these two souls, this story makes you feel like you have known them all of your life... or possibly for many lives.
Katherine Goodes, Editor, MyEditor.ca

This is a story of uncompromising and unconditional love... Shelley Wickabrod writes a compelling story that will touch us all. It reads like a movie.
Kirsten Scollie, Producer, Noumena Productions Inc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463418502

Shelley Wickabrod

Shelley Wickabrod has had careers in fashion design, fashion editing, journalism, and as an instructor (at the college level) teaching design and merchandising but feels her greatest accomplishment was trusting in love. Her life long ambition to write a book about her legendary love affair with partner, Bernard McGee, comes to fruition in this memoir. She resides in rural Ontario with her Weimaraners—Heaven & Handsome—and has always been a big proponent of the Creative Force, also known as God, but has never been affiliated with organized religion.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

LIFE

Life can be terrifying… but then again, I suppose it depends on your vantage point.

I grew up in a severely dysfunctional family—thank God that’s not what this book is about. What my family did for me was two-fold. The noise and chaos at home drove me to respond in two ways—to go within myself to find quiet and safety, and to go without to look for answers and meaning. The going within taught me a great life strategy… the ability to reside in solitude. It was a strategy that has served me well, enabling me to live in the country—alone—for long periods of time, free of the concern to try to relate to other people. Sounds a bit harsh but what I mean is my ability to totally reside alone. Many people, men and women, when confronted with the death of a loved one, seek comfort in numbers. That has never been my choice. As a matter of fact… distraction from my grief, over the years, has only served to annoy me.

The other path manifested itself in religious curiosity. I wasn’t a bible thumper kind of kid… just oddly precocious. I started harping at my parents when I was a very young girl that I absolutely had to go to church. Sunday mornings I would arrive in their bedroom all dressed up in my Sunday best… sporting little white gloves and announcing that I was off to church and could I please have some money for the collection plate. I laugh when I think about it because it took me until I was about twenty to realize that gloves serve a different purpose than a way to carry around your change. Off I would go and be totally mesmerized by what the preacher spoke of. I was particularly fascinated with stories of Jesus. I loved the miracles and the healing. I loved that He never backed down from his beliefs. I loved that He cared not for material things. It was a character study that would shape my entire life. I will return to this fascination many times in the book but suffice it to say, for now, that those initial sermons pointed me on a path, not of church-going fervor, but a road I would take privately, drawing me closer and closer to what I knew in my heart to be the truth.

I joined the choir even though I could not sing. I liked the flowing robes and singing in the early mass at Easter because they gave you hot cross buns. I liked the ritual and circumstance. I loved the stories and the church-related lectures. I would make my mother drive me to evening lectures as I got older. To hear missionaries speak about far off places where they were indeed helping others. A message I had strongly absorbed from the teachings of Jesus. One summer I even joined the bible school at the local Mennonite Brethren church, much to my parent’s horror. As I became a teenager my church going fell to the wayside, but the quest stayed with me. I was blessed as a troubled, young girl to have a best friend who was also intrigued by the mysteries of the universe and we guided one another through the tumultuous years of our youth. To this day she is still one of my best friends and we are as Centrum, (the vitamin people) would say… enjoying our silver years.

When I was about twelve years old things at home had gotten pretty horrible. Being the type that went within myself I developed an invisible friend. Sounds odd for that age range probably, but my home life was in no way safe or secure, so I developed this alter ego who would guide me and talk to me and generally help me through the rough times. I spent more time with this invisible friend than I did with flesh and blood people, for good reason I might add. One day in school, my teacher asked me why I was so distracted. I told him I was talking to my friend. The obvious dialogue ensued, as to what friend? et cetera and in a moment of tell-all purging I blurted out that my invisible friend was Jesus. A truly humiliating disclosure, as being a teenager and a Jesus freak at the same time was pretty unacceptable in the mid-sixties. Fortunately for me, my teacher in grade 5 was a liberal and creative guy and did not appear shocked at all about my apparent psychosis. He actually went so far as to retrieve an empty chair for my friend and allow me to have the chair near by. My fellow students were not as sophisticated and many of them stared at me—appalled! Or so it seemed to my fragile, young self. Eventually my ego survived the harrowing experience of disclosing my safety net, but it brought me to challenge what and who exactly WAS I talking to?

During this time of my life when I became frightened or insecure about something I would engage in conversation with my invisible friend… often I would hear a voice in my head that said, Here, take my hand and I will guide you. I would then outstretch my hand and I would feel a warm, inviting grasp that sent security up my arm. This sensation served to quell my fears and I would lift myself up to confront whatever life was ready to serve.

Through my teenage years I mostly took up drinking, wearing dark clothing, writing poetry, and smoking in coffee houses. My first real boyfriend was an A-1 draft dodger from California. He still has a warm space in my heart because even though we were not meant to be together he left a lasting impression on me. Just before my husband died he came back into my life… a story I will recount later. But for my purposes now it serves me to tell you that he was a twin, his sister having stayed behind in California—probably because she had no need to avoid the draft. Eventually this relationship felt too serious to me and I moved on. Looking for fun and less commitment. I found it in my next boyfriend. Captain of the football team type and not the smartest guy I ever met but he looked great in jeans and a t-shirt, a good enough reason in the late sixties to date anyone. I won’t bore you with the details of this relationship but it needs to be said that he was a twin, his brother also becoming a friend of mine.

Off I went to college and to confront my destiny. I entered Humber College in September of 1972 and the very first day I was attending a lecture on the course study and generally sizing up the people in the room… when, as a late arrival, in walked a man that totally got my attention. He wasn’t the type I usually pursued, but he had a presence and a charisma that shone. I watched attentively as he took his place in the room and I could tell that the teacher was as impressed as I with his way of being. I remember very clearly this LARGE THOUGHT that entered my mind as I watched him and that thought is what this whole book is about. The thought was, Thank God you’re here . . . spoken quietly in my mind… like a prayer. I felt like his entering the room was somehow a harbinger of good things that were to open up to me. Within minutes of the lecture ending, he and I were walking towards the school store to buy our textbooks and securing a friendship that would last a lifetime. Our friendship so cemented within minutes it was like I had always known him. And as this book will reveal that happens to be true. And as you probably guessed… this man was to become my husband.

As we walked he engaged me in the story of his sister’s wedding, which had taken place the week before. He told it in such a way as to have me screeching with laughter and I knew in those moments, that I had met someone truly gifted with humour. I have always laughed my way through life, mostly because if I really allowed my feelings to surface half of the time I would be running and screaming like an Edvard Munch etching. Much like the late Katherine Hepburn was known to say, Life is hilarious… hilarious awful. Not only was Bernard’s story of his sister’s wedding truly funny, but I was struck with the joy he took in talking about his sister and her new husband, Bernard’s best friend. His love for this particular sister was so obvious that many times over the years we would be together, it seemed like they were indeed twins. In his hometown of Ottawa many thought they were because Maureen had been set back one year in school and that had put them in the same grade causing people to inquire if they were twins.

Maureen and I are a year older than Bernard, our birthdays within weeks of each other. I have often wondered if we were born and then Bernard, unable to stand how we might bungle our lives, made a snap decision to join us here on earth, to help guide the two women he loved very much. The death of Bernard was as brutal on his sister as it was on myself.

Before I begin to recount our legendary love I need to mention that my girl friend, in my early years, also had a brother one year older than her. They were so close in friendship and love that many believed them to be twins. As my career morphed into success, a woman came to work with Bernard and I who has remained a loyal and dear friend to this day. She is a woman of great depth and artistry, integrity and compassion… and needless to say she is a twin. Her brother is a savant that is in close contact daily with the world of spirit.

This twin theme is a recurring thread that runs through my life and as you will see later culminated in a rather surprising twist. Even while young it became apparent to me that I was somehow searching for my other half… so to speak.

CHAPTER 2

THE COLLEGE YEARS

While Bernard and I attended college, studying fashion design, we were devoted friends. We slept with one another, only once, within weeks of meeting… but then our relationship became one of mutual creative zeal. During this time we had a strange event take place. Accompanied by one of my boyfriends, the three of us went off to see a movie in the school assembly hall. It was a life changing moment. The movie was Brother Sun. Sister Moon—the story of St. Francis of Assisi. After having viewed the movie, Bernard and I wept uncontrollably… for days—a decidedly strange reaction for two young, self possessed and highly ambitious people. We were literally moved to our very core by the beauty of this man’s life and St. Francis would remain a topic of conversation for the rest of our time together and beyond. It was also around this period of our life that we both became obsessed with the topic of stigmata. For years, from locations all over the planet, Bernard and I would phone his mother every time we couldn’t recall the word for ‘bleeding from your hands’. She eventually shouted at us to write the damn word down and Bernard took to writing it in the front of his agenda every new year. Our conversations never ceased on the topics of God, Jesus, St. Francis and miracles. Bernard’s interest rooted in his Catholicism and love of nature, and mine rooted in my love of theology.

We were best friends and dating other people. A mood started to creep into our friendship around the Christmas just prior to our graduation. Something was afoot. We agreed to go to the student Christmas party with our respective dates of the time. Sitting on a couch, talking, Bernard leaned over and looked intently into my eyes. He whispered in my ear, We don’t belong with these people. We belong together. I was mildly taken aback, as at this point in my life, I took flirting and boyfriends for granted. There were lots of them available (and as it was the seventies) and the sexual revolution was in full swing, I didn’t shy from the menu, so to speak. We spent the balance of that evening trying to get Bernard’s girlfriend and my boyfriend interested in one another. We were brash and hilarious and likely didn’t take into consideration their feelings at all. But we were giddy with the thought of transcendence. That wonderful swirl of feeling that comes with a breakthrough of freedom. We both knew that that gentle whisper, where Bernard had stepped over a boundary, was about to take flight into something truly remarkable.

Bernard and I took up the high art of flirting during our final months of college, the sexual energy growing between us like a magnet. We were on a competitive, creative rollercoaster. We loved each other but were both highly ambitious and determined to rise to the top of our chosen fields. We competed with each other on every level. I wrote for the school newspaper—essays on my essential feminism, and Bernard, with the fun loving approach he had to life, would write a retort from the male point of view. Here is where we began to realize we weren’t polarized by our gender at all but actually shared the same views on just about everything. A very lucky breakthrough for a young woman like myself. I had committed myself to a world of women based on the fact that I thought all men were generic. Kind of like the old Mae West adage, All men are the same except the one I met who is different. My eyes were beginning to see the possibilities of loving someone like Bernard, and as the years have gone by, I have been known to say that my love for Bernard was so solid that I hadn’t even noticed he was a man.

During our college years we constantly discussed our goals in life. I was a writer who wanted to be a famous fashion designer and Bernard was a fashion designer who wanted to be a famous writer. During his high school years he had perfected many short stories and graphed out the synopsis of a book he wanted to write. Albeit, his novel had the resonance of an early Harold Robbins—which I always maintained was the reason Bernard was such an attentive lover. He approached everything in life with the vigor of ‘how can I become better at this.’ He had a gifted voice and a great command of expression and won a literary award in our days studying fashion. Our ambitions were so similar that I remember when he won the cash award for his submission I sat in the audience jealous—although it hadn’t occurred to me to even enter a piece in the contest.

When I won for highest academic achievement our first year of college, Bernard politely borrowed a car to escort me to the awards night and while driving, calmly told me he should have won the award… not me.

It was this kind of competitiveness that would, oddly, lead to our eventual marriage.

CHAPTER 3

CAREER & PURSUIT

By graduation, Bernard had entered and won a full scholarship to apprentice with a manufacturing company in Montreal. I entered the contest but was defeated by my best friend. Off he went to reside in Montreal and I started my career in Toronto in a succession of mundane design jobs. Bernard, on the other hand, was up and running within days of his initial employment. I always felt that his immediate success was due to three things: his uncanny ability to promote himself, his large confidence, and forgive me (as I eventually forgave myself) the fact that he was a male in the world of fashion. A heterosexual male at that, which made him very appealing to the women fashion editors. Not to mention wildly handsome and innately elegant. During this period of our lives, residing in two different cities—made for long phone calls and even more frequent letters. Bernard pursued my friendship with the focus of a man who never loses. Cajoling me into coming to his first large fashion show, in which he had only one garment, but assuring me it was best-of-show, I went to Montreal. After the big event we were standing around having cocktails when a woman approached me asking if I would like to meet her editor. I can’t say I understood what was going on but after the initial meeting, at Bernard’s big debut, I managed to land a job as a fashion editor… just by attending the show. My career was finally starting to look up and of course, Bernard’s was right on target.

We went through some very tumultuous times in those early years. My job as a fashion editor led me to work in Toronto and Montreal. I convinced the editor-in-chief that being based in Montreal (then the nucleus of Canadian fashion) was the best place for me to report from. She agreed and whether I mentioned my lover lived there I can’t recall. Bernard and I shared an apartment, actually several over time, as the FLQ was in full swing during that period and more and more extravagant apartments could be rented for a fraction of their cost as the wealthy and privileged migrated in hordes to Toronto.

We ended up living in a beautiful high rise at Guy and de Maissoneuve. Going to the after hours clubs and dancing the nights away. It was a time of searching for who we really were, together and separate, and finding out our true destiny… loving, learning, laughing and living together. There were times of great romance and times of great sorrow.

So that you can understand the kind of man Bernard was—I would go to Toronto to finalize a shoot for the magazine and upon my return—would find abundant gifts of my signature perfume hidden around our apartment. Tucked in my towel in the bathroom, under my pillow on our bed, slipped inside the coffee mug I usually chose. This man was confident enough to jump headlong into romance. A quality that, as we grew older, remained prevalent in our lives and served as a recognizable trait of Bernard’s. Many women grew to adore him as they understood innately that he was as true a feminist as I was and that he honestly loved and respected women. The gift of perfume became an emblem of Bernard’s and my love affair.

This period of our lives drew us closer and closer. We became lovers and the dearest of friends. But it was also a time of youthful egos. If I wasn’t going to be a fashion designer just yet… than I had to become the best editor and journalist. Bernard was easily recognizable as one of Canada’s hottest young designers and was becoming widely known for his unusual art of illustration, a talent he evolved more acutely the morning the legendary Picasso died and a gift that he pursued the remainder of his life.

But with ambition and ego being part of our true natures, we battled incessantly. Breaking up and hurting one another with words, relenting and melting into each other’s arms, time and time again. Finally in one of our