Being present, in grief and spirit beads

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This article was published 25/07/2022 (1506 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The smell of medicines fills her tiny North End home on this warm Thursday morning. Candy Volk sits on the corner of her sofa, while three of her grandsons — all teenagers — sit around the dining room table using their devices in the other room. Occasionally, the sound of cars whizzing by on the fairly busy side street outside drowns out the sounds from inside this home. The TV murmurs in the background, offering just enough noise to be present. Fresh air wafts in through the open screen door, blocked by a baby gate so the small dog doesn’t escape. The walls are filled with photos of the close-knit family, and there’s a shelf stuffed with knick-knacks and mementoes that hold memories, sometimes too painful to say out loud.

Volk pulls out a small plastic bag from the table beside her. The bag contains about 20 pairs of individually packaged beaded earrings she and her niece, Jessica Bird, have made.

“I did a lot of beading before. It was just something to do,” she says, dumping the earrings on the couch beside her and sorting though them.

Volk picked up the hobby about 10 years ago after taking a workshop at Ka Ni Kanichihk. Back then, she would mostly bead the brims of ball caps, taking orders from people on social media. She’d sell her work for little more than what she paid for the supplies, because she said she didn’t have the confidence to ask for what it was worth.

The hobby is something that relaxes Volk, though she nearly quit a few years ago.

“I was actually sitting there beading an order, one of the hats, and Jenny was supposed to come over that day to pick me up. They were going shopping, and she always picked me up to go shopping,” Volk says.

The date was Sept. 26, 2020.

Her daughter Jenny Dethmers, 30, would come over to her place nearly every day with her nine-month-old son, AJ, the little boy Volk Lovingly called Bambino. On that particular day, Jenny was running late. Volk didn’t pay much attention at first. After all, Jenny had a baby to care for and was often late. As time passed, and Jenny still hadn’t shown up and wasn’t responding to phone calls or texts, Volk and her son Josh began to feel a little uneasy. She took a break from beading and began to scroll through Facebook. That’s when she saw a photo that someone had just posted of a terrible vehicle crash, just up the street from her home.

“I said, ‘That looks like Jenny’s van,’” Volk said.

Volk made her way to the place where the bystander had taken the photo she had seen on Facebook. Volk tried to get a better look of the wreckage, telling an officer on the scene that she thought her daughter might have been involved in the crash. She gave him Jenny’s name, and her fears were confirmed.

“He told me that yeah, she was in there and she’s passed,” Volk said quietly, adding she doesn’t remember exactly what she said or did next, only that she started running home, with the police chasing her.

The truck that had crashed into Jenny’s van was involved in a routine traffic stop. The driver, Armand Chartrand, took off at a high rate of speed and collided with the van at the corner of Boyd Avenue and Andrews Street. Chartrand was arrested and pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal negligence causing death and three counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm. He was sentenced to eight years in prison. At the time of the crash, Chartrand had been legally prohibited from getting behind the wheel for more than 25 years.

Baby AJ was transported to Children’s Hospital. Volk spent the next 32 days with him at his bedside. He fought hard, but the injuries were too severe. He died in her arms on Oct. 28.

“We had his fire and his funeral, and then I came home, and I put all my beading away. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I tried a couple times, but I just couldn’t,” Volk said.

There have been good days and bad days. Grief is not linear or easy to make sense of.

“I go through a lot of different emotions. I’m still going through a phase where if I’m having a fun time and I’m laughing, then I all of a sudden feel guilty, like why am I laughing? Why am I having a good time? They say that’s all part of the grieving process.”

In the days after the crash, Volk said she was surrounded by people offering company and support. Nearly two years later, she says people and life have moved on. People don’t really come around and check in on the family. That stopped shortly after the funerals.

“Lately, it’s like Jenny’s telling me, ‘Mom, you gotta get back. You gotta get back to life,’” Volk said.

A while ago, she pulled out her beading materials and began to bead again. She finds it relaxing.

“I sit here in the corner. I watch TV and I bead,” Volk said, adding she has felt Jenny’s presence a couple of times while beading.

“It was like someone was there and put their arm around me, and I was like, ‘OK, Jenny.’”

She’s come a long way since she first started. These days, her earring patterns and designs are very intricate. The long, dangly shoulder duster earrings take her about a day to complete, while some of the smaller pairs take a few hours. She’s very careful and meticulous, but every so often she makes a mistake.

A woman recently ordered two pairs of earrings made from beads and porcupine quills, with very intricate designs.

“I was doing those earrings with the porcupine quills, and I was thanking the porcupine for the quills for our jewelry. When I was done my order, I realized that in each set there was one bead that was wrong. We call that a spirit beads, and that shows that we’re not perfect,” Volk said. She questioned whether she should remake the earrings but decided to leave them.

“I remember Jenny used to say that. I’d make a mistake, and she’d say, ‘That’s a spirit bead. Keep beading, Mom.’ She had a lot of knowledge, and she taught me a lot, too.”

Volk and Bird are slated to set up a booth selling earrings at a conference at Club Regent Casino in a few weeks. She said she’s had to stop selling earrings on Facebook for now because people bought up her supply, and she needs enough for the craft show. Getting out of her house is challenging and sometimes causes anxiety, but Volk says it’s something Jenny would want her to do.

shelley.cook@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @ShelleyACook