Healing: A Family’s Journey

By Peg Beaton

In 1976, the life of a busy mother of three changed forever. After Peg Beaton’s twenty-month-old son was diagnosed with leukemia and given two months to live, she and her husband embarked down an unpredictable path lined with emotions they did not understand or know how to deal with. Forty-four years later, she now has a better understanding of grief and how it affects each of us in different ways.

In a touching resharing of her family’s story, Peg details their personal journey with the hope of helping those suffering through losses both big and small to first understand and process the powerful emotion of grief, and then move into an acceptance stage to embrace a new direction filled with peace and joy. Included are chapter summaries and an appendix that provide valuable insight into the process of grief and empower those suffering to move from an existence fueled by fear and negativity into a state of positivity that welcomes peace, joy, and fulfillment.

Healing shares the personal story of a family’s journey through loss and grief to help others understand the grieving process and ultimately heal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Dec 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982275914

Peg Beaton

Peg Beaton is a teacher, counselor/coach, and healer who brings a wealth of experience to her writing. For the past thirty years, she has facilitated workshops and training/coaching sessions utilizing Peg’s Keep It Simple Silly method that provides participants with practical, concrete tools and techniques to come to greater peace with themselves.

Book preview

Healing

A Family’s Journey

PEG BEATON

33609.png

Copyright © 2021 Peg Beaton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by

any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system

without the written permission of the author except in the case of

brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

844-682-1282

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or

links contained in this book may have changed since publication and

may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those

of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use

of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical

problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The

intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help

you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use

any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional

right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7590-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7592-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7591-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021921469

Balboa Press rev. date: 12/13/2021

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1     From Life to Death—All in a Matter of Two Weeks

Chapter 2     Two Males I Loved—About to Leave Me

Chapter 3     Returning Home to Die—Two Months to Live

Chapter 4     Keeping Him Alive, Not Just Surviving

Chapter 5     Overwhelmed into Depression—Where Is This Journey Taking Us?

Chapter 6     Losing Our Family—What Was Triggering This Loss?

Chapter 7     Isolation and Separation—Moving Again

Chapter 8     Re-establishing Our Family in a New Community

Chapter 9     Transitioning Out of Isolation

Chapter 10   A Summer of Our Greatest Fears

Chapter 11   The Countdown—Life or Death?

Chapter 12   Acceptance

Chapter 13   Choosing to Live—Moving Forward with Life as a Family

Chapter 14   Out into the World

Chapter 15   Another Matter of Life and Death

Chapter 16   The Celebration

Chapter 17   Dealing with Addictions

Chapter 18   On the Move Again

Chapter 19   More Threats of Death

Chapter 20   An Unbelievable Ending

Appendix

DEDICATION

It is with deep gratitude that I dedicate this book to our family—John, Fawn, Johnny, Chuck, and Guy—and each of your families. You persevered with a mother who was determined that each of you find peace in your lives by working through the grief and losses we experienced individually and as a family.

Peace be with each of you.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is with the deepest gratitude that I thank each and every one of you family, friends, neighbours, associates, and medical staff who were a part of our lives as we journeyed these last forty-four years dealing with our many losses. So many circumstances affected our behaviours and actions during these times. We may not have shown our appreciation at the time, but we are forever grateful.

To all of my students and clients over the last thirty years: you have accepted me teaching you about the power grief has to control our lives. You accepted my challenge to move to acceptance so you could be at peace with yourself.

To Susan Gellert for being my partner in work, supporter, and first editor. To Veronica Langelier-Enns, my fellow worker, photographer, and creator of the picture for my cover. Leigh Ann Toth for doing my nails for my cover picture. A special thanks to eight year old Talyceeya Toth who gave me the idea for the cover and shared her grief with me for her own healing. From the hearts of children!

INTRODUCTION

From twenty-four years of age, my mission in life has been peace. I was a nun and was asked to speak on peace at the World Day of Prayer. As I prepared for my presentation, I realized there could never be peace in the world from the outside. There could only be peace in the world when each of us is at peace with ourselves. So I declared a mission: contact with me would leave others at greater peace with themselves. Let it begin with me was my motto.

This story is our family’s experience with grief, which led to an understanding of how the losses in our life affect us until we learn to process the grief and move on to acceptance. Until we understand this process, we can never be at peace.

It is a personal story, and I appreciate the willingness of our family to share it for the benefits it may have for others. It truly has challenged each of us, allowing us to be vulnerable and expose our wounds to the world for healing. I hope that by reading our story, you will find healing in your life. This is only one aspect of our life, but we learned that nothing changed until we understood the effects of loss on our lives and grieved them through to acceptance. Instead, we repeated the old cycle of denial, bargaining, anger, and depression, feeling as if life were a never-ending rollercoaster—patterns of behaviour occurring over and over until we moved to accept what we had no power to change.

Acceptance

We must accept three truths:

1. Our thoughts create what we think about; therefore, changing our thinking can change our lives.

2. Processing our emotions and releasing them from our bodies reduces our pain. As I learned from Louise Hay in her 1988 book, Heal Your Body, most illnesses in our bodies likely stem from emotional causes.

3. We acquire our beliefs from our many experiences. We must continually evaluate our beliefs and decide whether they are valid. If a belief is found to be false, is life trying to teach us another lesson? Was this belief based on our truth from our experience?

Once we accept our losses, we can move out of fear and negativity and into a state of positivity, arising from a source of unconditional love for ourselves and others. Now we can move and change and move forward to live life to its fullest.

CHAPTER 1

From Life to Death—All

in a Matter of Two Weeks

On Sunday, September 12, 1976, we woke up to our son crying with every step he tried to take. He was nineteen months old and had been walking since he was eight months. Yes, he was a go-getting little boy who had not stopped since he could move around independently. We could not figure out what might be wrong.

As a family—my husband, John, our daughter, Fawn (four), Johnny, baby Charles (six weeks), and I—had travelled through British Columbia, from Mackenzie to Kamloops, to attend an Amway convention with John’s brother and sister-in-law. Their teenage children babysat Johnny and Fawn, and since I was breastfeeding Charles, we took him to the conference. The teenagers had the kids in bed by the time we got home and assured us all was well. But during the night, the crying started, and nothing we did helped settle him down.

With all the crying, we took turns carrying Johnny around, hoping something would soothe him. We questioned the teenagers, but they could not remember anything from the day before that could have hurt him, and there was no sign of injury. However, when he put pressure on his foot, he felt excruciating pain.

We were scheduled to leave Kamloops that Sunday morning and drive to Vernon to visit my parents and extended family. During the one-hour trip, Johnny sat quietly and barely moved; everything seemed fine. When we got out of the car, as soon as he put pressure on his foot to walk, he started to cry. I shared the events of the previous eight hours with my mom, and she encouraged me to take him to the emergency room for X-rays.

Like most emergency room visits, it was a lengthy process. The doctor checked him over and decided there was no reason to X-ray his leg, as he could not find anything broken or out of place. We were sent home with no answers.

We put Johnny to bed with some Children’s Tylenol, but that night, he started to cry in pain. There was no comforting him, and my mother’s heart was breaking. We were visitors, and my family had to be up for work and school in the morning, so the all-night crying was causing stress for several reasons. John was upset with Johnny, so he got up and gave him a talking-to; he told him to be quiet and to go to sleep because he was waking up Gramma and Grampa. He settled for a bit, and then, after I had nursed Charles, I got up and just held him in my arms.

In the morning, Gramma said, Something is seriously wrong with that little boy. He is not crying like that for nothing.

As a mother of ten children, she had a direct line to the pediatrician. A call to him from my mom got us an afternoon appointment. This visit included another more thorough examination, this time including a referral for X-rays. The X-rays indicated some new bone structure along the tibia. The doctor asked what might have happened to cause this, and that got me thinking.

A month earlier, Johnny had been visiting the neighbours. I had called for him out the back door, and their daughter (our babysitter) called back to say he was with her. She said she would keep an eye on him, so I went back into the house to nurse Charles. Johnny was playing on his little green plastic motorcycle when he decided to drive down their inclined driveway and head home. The wife was backing out of the driveway on the other side of her son’s vehicle. When she backed onto the road, she felt a crunch, as she would later tell us. She stopped suddenly and got out of her vehicle to see Johnny’s green motorcycle under her back wheel. In terror, she started to scream, and Johnny crawled out from between the front and back tires. He seemed fine. Another neighbour heard the screaming and ran over, picking up Johnny while trying to calm her down. He carried him home to me, and Johnny got down and started running around like his normal self. I took him into the clinic and had the doctor give him a thorough checkup. Nothing was broken—although we could see the tire marks on his leg.

The pediatrician thought the new growth could have resulted from the injury, even though nothing had appeared broken after the incident. He sent us on our way, prescribing Children’s Tylenol for the pain. He said, If he does not show improvement within a week, make an appointment with your doctor and have him refer you to an orthopedic surgeon.

It was a short trip during John’s five days off, so we planned to see his family in Kamloops and mine in Vernon. On Tuesday morning, we headed home to Mackenzie so John could get back to work on Wednesday morning. It was a ten-hour trip. Johnny was curled up in the back seat (these were the days before car seats) with his sister. We headed home having received no explanation why our son was crying in pain. As long as we carried him, he was content. John took on this responsibility, as I had a six-week-old baby in my lap, nursing and sleeping while we travelled.

During the next week, Johnny cried and cried even when he wasn’t on his leg. Of course, from our perspective, it was from the pain. But just try to keep a normally active twenty-month-old boy down. A gracious neighbour would take him for a ride in the buggy while I nursed every three hours. This seemed to calm and quiet him and certainly gave both of us a break.

By Friday, I could not wait any longer, so I booked an appointment with our family doctor and told him what the pediatrician had told us. He referred us immediately to the orthopedic surgeon in Prince George. A week later, I received the appointment for two weeks down the road.

After giving it serious thought and knowing we were all at the end of our rope, I decided to call first thing Monday morning and see if I could get an earlier appointment. I called and asked to speak to the doctor, who was apparently unavailable. I told the receptionist that if I could not see him sooner, I was just going to come to Prince George and sit in the office with my nursing baby and my crying little boy. Someone would have to admit me to the psychiatric unit in Prince George. But then, what would happen with my children? I was serious. This was not an idle threat. The receptionist said she would talk to the doctor on his lunch break and get back to me. Early that afternoon, I received a call instructing me to be there with our son at noon the next day. He would see him during his lunch hour.

All five of us arrived on time, and after Johnny’s examination, the doctor said he was admitting him to the hospital. So, off we were to the children’s ward, where he was admitted. We were not expecting this, so we had to leave him alone in Prince George while we returned to Mackenzie so John could go to work, leaving it up to me to hold the home together and look after our other two children. These days, you were not free to stay in the hospital with your kids. There were visiting hours in the afternoon and evening. Seeing no other options, we left him in their care.

I called the hospital the next day to check on him, only to be told they had strapped him down in his crib to keep him off his leg. It was one thing for me to leave him alone in the hospital for hours with no one to visit him; it was quite another to be told they had strapped him down to his crib. I was tremendously stressed.

On Wednesday night, the doctor called and said he had brought in a pediatrician and wanted permission to do a bone marrow biopsy the next day. I was sure the pain was in his bones, so I did not understand why the biopsy was necessary, but I said yes. He also said he wanted us to meet with the pediatrician at the hospital at five o’clock on Friday afternoon. I asked if there was any chance we would be able to bring him home on Friday.

Not likely, he said.

John took a long weekend, we booked a motel, and we planned to take our niece to babysit the other two children while we spent time at the hospital with Johnny. In his room, we were greeted by an extremely excited little boy. He just wanted out of his restricting ties. It was about two in the afternoon, so we had three hours to hold him and play with him before we could see the doctor in his consultation room at five. Unfortunately, his condition had not changed. He would not stand on his leg, so when the doctor arrived at about five thirty, we had no idea what he was going to tell us.

He had us sit down across from him at his desk, and he simply said, Your son has leukemia. I have scheduled chemotherapy to begin on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. in Vancouver General Hospital. You must leave immediately.

My head was spinning. I knew leukemia was deadly, since a school friend had died from it as a teenager. We had a million thoughts and questions. What is chemotherapy? How were we going to get to Vancouver, and where was this hospital in Vancouver? Was it a big city? What about John’s job and our home? We had other children. Who is going to look after them?

John looked at the doctor and said, I have to be back at work on Tuesday.

The doctor said, You two must stay together. It is going to take both of you to see this little boy through the next months. What is your boss’s name? I will call him and tell him what is happening.

John then asked the question I didn’t want to ask: How long does he have?

The doctor responded, Two months at the most.

Totally devastated and numb after being told we would lose our son, we returned to the motel to get things in order. We had a lot of things to do in a brief time. A phone call to John’s sister brought her and her husband from Mackenzie to pick up our niece and take her home. She also said she would pack up suitcases of clothes and send them out on the bus, one to Vernon (for Fawn and Charles) and one to Vancouver (for John and me).

My Mom and Dad, in Vernon, had agreed to take Fawn and Charles while we went to Vancouver. So, on Saturday morning, we drove to Vernon and settled our two children in to stay with Gramma and Grampa and the aunties and uncles still at home. On Sunday morning, I nursed Charles for the last time and handed him over to my mom to put him on a bottle. Everything was happening so fast as we set out on our journey to keep our son alive.

We arrived in Vancouver General Hospital 3 East, the Children’s Cancer Clinic, where they were waiting for us. By this time, I thought, What are we doing? How can we subject a twenty-month-old little boy to chemotherapy? Aren’t there any alternatives? I asked those questions only to be told that if I refused treatment, social services would be called, and he would be taken from us so that they could provide treatment. We had no choice; I was not prepared to give him up to the system, and I knew they were going to give him treatment regardless of what I thought. So, we moved forward, and Johnny’s first treatment was administered at two o’clock that afternoon. We were introduced to the team of doctors who would be working with us—a pediatrician and two oncologists, a female and a male.

After the treatments got underway, we had other things to figure out. Where were we going to stay? We didn’t know anyone in Vancouver, and we were not familiar with the city. The staff at the hospital suggested a few hotels that offered reduced rates to families with someone in the hospital. We found one two blocks from the hospital. We had no idea how long we were going to be there or how we