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Wanda Ball always listens for signs her son is coming home.
She waits to hear the porch door open and listens for his quick steps down the stairs from his bedroom.
She still checks her phone for texts that will never come.
“It’s still at the back of your mind; It’s hard,” says Wanda. Sixteen-year-old Kye Ball took his life at the family’s Indian Head home one year ago March 20.
Kye had told friends he was going to kill himself so the police were
called. Six of his friends and the RCMP got to the house at the same
time, but his buddies opened Kye’s bedroomdoor just as he shot himself in the head with a .303-calibre rifle.
The family mourns the empty spot on the couch where Kye sat, the empty kitchen chair at every meal.
Wanda
misses the smell of popcorn Kye made every day and her husband Chris
misses his sidekick on hunting and fishing trips. Even the family’s pets
notice the teen’s absence. The cats sit outside his bedroom meowing.
His
empty bedroom has just a bed frame, bookshelf “and marks left in the
ceiling from that one afternoon that changed our lives forever,” Wanda
says.
Chris Ball and his wife Wanda, from Indian Head, speak about their loss since their son took his life a year ago.TROY FLEECE /
Regina Leader-Post Kye struggled with mental illness from age 13 and was in and
out of Regina emergency rooms after several attempts to harm himself.
Now
Wanda feels guilt his friends’ childhood innocence was destroyed that
day (some have turned to drugs and alcohol to cope) and is disturbed
mental health services for youths don’t appear to have improved since
Kye’s death.
“Recently one of Kye’s friends was brought into the
emergency ward,” Wanda says. “He threatened his life at home and was
sent home six hours later. He wasn’t kept on the ward because he said
that he was no longer suicidal. There’s just something not right there …
Something needs to give before we lose more kids.”
A group of medical students with similar concerns will converge on the Legislative Building on Tuesday. The
Student Medical Society of Saskatchewan is calling on the provincial
government to immediately strengthen community mental health supports,
saying, “Given that Saskatchewan is home to one of the highest rates of
youth suicide in Canada, with unacceptably long wait times for
psychiatric care of up to two years, urgent action is warranted.”
And on May 25, the Balls are organizing their second mental health and suicide awareness walk,
starting at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum and ending at the Legislative
Building. Those impacted by mental health issues will be speaking on
the steps.
“We need a lot more support than there is,” Chris says. “We’ve got to keep going until we get it.”
After Kye died, Wanda and Chris returned to work as a way of coping, a way of keeping busy.
“Not
to forget,” Wanda says. “You never forget, but as a way of trying to
make this chaos we now live in somewhat normal — our new kind of
normal.”
One of Kye’s friends goes fishing with Chris — an activity father and son enjoyed.
“I do appreciate these kids coming and even Facebook messages to see how we’re doing,” Chris says.
Kadince, Kye’s 14-year-old sister, has shown remarkable resilience. She’s a straight-A student and excels in air cadets.
“I
know she feels that void and she really misses him because his room is
right across from his, but she’s able to carry on,” Wanda says.
The couple didn’t seek professional help, but family and friends have shown tremendous support.
“We
talk a lot,” Wanda says. “They’ve been very understanding. We’re also
on grieving parents sites on Facebook, which has been immensely helpful
… We all talk about our experiences and they all understand because
they’re in the same situation.”
She’s written a story about Kye’s
struggle, which will be part of the soon-to-be-published book Parenting
with Eyes Wide Open by Dwayne Peace, a retired Calgary police officer
who does school presentations around the world, including at Indian Head
before Kye’s death.
“He helped Chris and I through Kye’s
struggle before he took his life,” Wanda says. “I was able to contact
him on that day and he helped me through it a little bit at that time.”
Last summer when the family was camping, Wanda wrote about Kye and found it therapeutic to put feelings to paper.
“Chris still hasn’t been able to read it,” she says.
Wanda urges parents to take their children’s threats of suicide seriously.
‘I don’t want another parent to feel that,” she says tearfully. “That day is forever in my memory.”
Wanda Ball with one of the LifeLine cards she had made to help those dealing with mental health issues.TROY FLEECE /
Regina Leader-Post In memory of Kye, Wanda had Lifeline cards printed, which includes the Kids Help Phone number on it.
In
part the card reads: “If you are in need and don’t know how to ask for
help, take this card to a counselor, teach, coach, doctor, parent or
friend and say: ‘I need to use my card.’ ”
More than 3,000 cards are being distributed to schools, hospitals and shelters.
“My hope is they choose life, they choose to seek out the assistance that is available to them, to not give up,” Wanda says. pcowan@postmedia.com
When Trudy Gallagher's father died earlier this year, there
was a scarcity of sympathy cards, bouquets of flowers and the homemade
meals dropped off by family friends.
Instead, the Fredericton woman felt she was left to battle the grief of her father's suicide on her own.
"Grief is a beast that moves through you with a timetable of its own," Gallagher said in an interview with Information Morning Fredericton.
"The grief was so intense I needed to find out if I was normal."
So Gallagher, a staff member at the New Brunswick College of Craft
and Design, went looking for support in dealing with her father's death.
She wanted a place where she could share what she was feeling with others.
Bud Gallagher died earlier this year. (Trudy Gallagher)
She called and visited organizations across the capital city, but
there was no one to turn to or confide in about her father's suicide.
"I had enough self-preservation to realize I couldn't possibly go
through this alone," Gallagher said. "It just hurts too much, it's a
pain that's indescribable. It's beyond a normal death."
So Gallagher decided to start her own support group, where people can
come share their experiences and the pain left behind when people take
their own lives.
"Nobody has ever prepared a life lesson on how to deal with this," she said.
A hushed topic
The first meeting is Wednesday between 7 and 9 p.m. at the New
Brunswick College of Craft and Design in Fredericton. A psychiatrist
will also be there to help those struggling with grief.
Gallagher said many people have already reached out over social media to express interest in attending the group.
"If my father had died of cancer, you could've said, 'Well he had
this disease and this disease had him,' and it doesn't feel quite so
personal,'" she said.
'Was I a friend? Was I a daughter? …
Was I a good person? We all seem to automatically think that we had
something to do with that.'
- Trudy Gallagher
"You're mad at cancer but there seems a logic to it all."
Gallagher said there's often a stigma or religious taboos attached to suicide. She said people don't know how to react.
"I have personally experienced people who look at me, turn red and
duck in a hallway or duck in a room and are afraid to face me," she
said.
Often, this causes more guilt and isolation, which leaves a person
feeling responsible for the death of their loved one. It can also leave
people feeling depressed, which can also result in post-traumatic stress
disorder.
"Was I a friend? Was I a daughter?" …. Was I a good person? We all
seem to automatically think that we had something to do with that."
Information Morning - Fredericton
Suicide Support Group in Fredericton
00:0012:34
She said it's important people still acknowledge those who have suffered the loss of someone from suicide.
"Even if you have a really great support system … the closest they
can relate is they had a parent or a child die in unfortunate
circumstances," she said.
"But it doesn't carry all that extra confusion and conflict around it."
Bee Hive, ready to go outdoors with a recruit of Mason bees
Today, I got this little treasure from Cosco.. for 18 dollars. Then my husband bought some mason bees, and wild flower seeds to grow close to it. God is so faithful!
Every song tells a story. But sometimes the story behind a given song is more dramatic than the song itself.
That's the case with "I Can Only Imagine," the 2001 MercyMe song that
surged seemingly out of nowhere to become the biggest-selling Christian
single of all time.
But "I Can Only Imagine" didn't come from nowhere. And even
though that band's frontman, Bart Millard, scribbled out the
tear-jerking tune about being with Jesus in heaven in just a few minutes
one emotion-filled night, its inspiration was a lifetime in the making.
A painful lifetime.
It's 1985 when we first meet young Bart Millard as he works in his grandmother's yard, rides his bike through town (Goonies and Jaws 3-D are playing at the local theater) and makes a Star Wars-inspired helmet out of cardboard. Bart seems a carefree, imaginative kid. A nice kid.
Bart's mother loves her son's naturally whimsical nature: "You're a dreamer, Bart. That's good."
His father, Arthur? Not so much: "I'm gonna teach you something,
Bart. Dreams don't pay the bills. Nothing good comes from it. All it
does is keep you from all this," he says, waving his hands around at
their rural home in Greenville, Texas, "from knowing what's real." And
with that, he picks up Bart's helmet, takes it out to the garbage barrel
that's already burning with trash, and tosses it into the flames as
tears stream quietly down Bart's cheeks.
Arthur's reality isn't just informed by the rolling Texas hills. It's
distorted by his own broken dreams of being a professional football
player. Those disappoinments shattered his soul, and he has no time for
the dreams of others.. Now he spends his days as a mechanic, his nights
verbally and physically working out his bitterness on his wife, Adele,
and poor little Bart.
Soon Adele ships Bart off to church camp, where he meets a young girl
named Shannon who's quite taken with him. When Bart returns home after a
spiritually transformative week, however, his mother has gone.
Abandoned him to a father who growls more than he speaks, one who's more
prone to hit than hug. "Mom left," his dad says simply. "Just you and
me now."
And so it is. It's a sad fate for a boy, a tender dreamer being raised by a man whose dreams are dead.
But Bart strives mightily to earn his crusty father's approval
anyway, notably by playing football in high school. But when a terrible
tackle breaks both of Bart's legs, the teen's sole path to pleasing his
father smacks into a dead end. In the hospital, he asks his father about
his injuries: "What'd they say?"
"They said you can't play," Arthur responds coldly.
"For how long?"
"Forever."
"Well, that's disappointing," Bart says.
"Yeah, it is," his dad says, and walks out of the hospital room.
In the weeks and months that follow, though, Bart makes a surprising
discovery—one that he hides from his father: He can sing. That
undeniable talent eventually leads him to pursue a career in music,
following his heart, following his dream.
But in the back of his mind, his father's voice echoes like a
poisonous curse: "Dreams don't pay the bills," it whispers. And when
Bart, now the lead singer of a band called MercyMe, hits a crisis point,
he knows he has to return home and confront unfinished business with
his father.
The man he discovers there is not the one he expected to find. In fact, he's become someone Bart never could have imagined.
Positive Elements
Much
of Bart's journey is closely intertwined with his faith—sometimes
growing, other times receding. But his hard-but-redemptive story is one
that many who've struggled through painful family dysfunction will
likely identify with.
Arthur truly is a broken shell of a man. And for much of this story,
the only perspective we see of him is how that soul-sapping
disillusionment with life eats away at him and makes him an
ill-tempered, angry bully.
That's not good, obviously. But the film does realistically depict
the consequences of that emotional brokenness, namely his wife's
abandonment and Bart's deep personal wounds. Bart spends much of the
film coming to terms to with how badly his father hurt him. But, with
the encouragement of the band's manager, a Nashville insider named
Brickell, Bart decides to return home to try to mend his relationship
with his aging father.
Things aren't easy when Bart gets back, on many levels. But he finds
Arthur a changed man, and he's forced to decide whether he can really
forgive his dad for the lifetime of pain that he's inflicted upon his
son. Near the end of his life, Arthur offers Bart a remarkable blessing,
saying, "I told you not to follow your dreams, but that's only because
mine never came true." Then he tells his son that he's been saving money
and has a life insurance policy that should sustain Bart while he
pursues his musical career. "And I want you to have that so you can pay
attention to your singing. And you'll get a check every month. So you
can chase your dream. And I want you to catch it. Don’t you ever look
back. You promise?"
Elsewhere in the film, various characters respond to Bart with
patience and grace, even when he's acting like a self-centered hothead.
These include his on-again, off-again, on-again girlfriend, Shannon; his
surly-but-wise manager, Brickell; and his surprisingly patient band
members, who repeatedly go out of their way to try to help their
high-maintenance lead singer get what he needs to heal.
As for Bart, he definitely has some character shortcomings. But he's
also determined and idealistic—even amid his deeply hidden hurts—and
he's willing to receive others' correction, even when it's an affront to
his pride.
[Spoiler Warning] Amy Grant (played by actress Nicole
DuPort) plays a surprisingly poignant role in the film's conclusion.
She's been given the chance to sing and record "I Can Only Imagine."
During a performance where she's supposed to debut the song as her
"comeback single," she can't bring herself to sing it, inviting Bart
onstage (he's in the audience) instead. She says it's his song, and that
it wouldn't be right for her to take it from Bart.
Spiritual Content
Faith,
fear and forgiveness intertwine throughout this narrative of a young
man trying to come to grips with the deep damage his father has done to
him.
Bart apparently becomes a Christian at that youth camp. We see him
with a Bible, and it's clear that faith is a part of his life. He sings
in church services that are broadcast on the radio. Later on, he learns
that his father had been listening to those services, and that Bart's
contribution to them is one element that led the man to find God.
Arthur eventually tells Bart that listening to a particular pastor on
the radio also played a part in his coming to faith. He says he's read
the Bible several times (in Bart's absence on tour), but that he has
lots of questions about what he's read (especially Leviticus, which he
says doesn't make much sense to him).
Bart is stunned by his father's spiritual transformation, so much so
that he struggles mightily to forgive him for all the hurt he's
inflicted. He and his father have a heartrending conversation in which
his dad asks, "If God can forgive everybody else, why can't He forgive
me?" Bart responds bitterly, "God can forgive you. I can't." But after
that (understandable) rejection of his father, Bart discovers something
that changes his perspective on his dad, and he softens. He chooses to
forgive and spends time taking care of his aging father in his final
days.
In the end, Bart's painful-but-redeemed relationship with his father
becomes the primary inspiration for writing "I Can Only Imagine," a song
about what it will be like to be with Jesus in heaven.
Sexual Content
Bart and Shannon kiss a couple of times.
Violent Content
One
of Arthur's life mottos is, "Life hits me, I hit back harder."
Unfortunately, that's true of his relationship with his wife and son,
too.
One intense scene pictures him pinning Bart (who's in high school at
this point) to the floor. Other times, we see Arthur standing outside
Bart's room with a belt after a scream-filled argument with his wife
(that also includes the sound of things being broken). Arthur smashes
and throws things when angry, breaking windows and dishes. One
particularly painful moment finds him unexpectedly breaking plate over
Bart's head, resulting in a bloody cut. Another time, he throws a gallon
of milk at his son's head. Bart recounts a story of his father beating
him so badly that he had to sleep on his stomach, saying he cried all
night long.
We hear the sickening crunch of bones breaking as football players
slam into Bart. We see his broken bones in X-rays. At one point, he
(humorously) tips over in his wheelchair.
[Spoiler Warning] Bart's father is dying of pancreatic
cancer for much of the film. We see him collapse in a diner, clutching
his abdomen and screaming.
Crude or Profane Language
No profanity. The closest we get is a use of "gosh."
Drug and Alcohol Content
No obvious content here, though Bart's father definitely looks as if he could be drunk in at least one scene.
Other Negative Elements
A
flashback involves other horrible things Bart's father has said to him.
Bart remembers his dad saying, "You're gonna blink your eyes and
realize that you're nothing. And that life has got you nowhere because
you chased some stupid dream. Wake up. You're not good enough, Bart.
You're not."
As kids at camp, Bart, Shannon and another friend named Kent sneak
out late one night. Kent sets off some surprisingly massive fireworks,
but there's never any evidence that they're caught or that there are any
consequences.
Bart often doesn't listen very well. Whether his bullheaded
stubbornness is a character asset or liability can swing wildly one way
or another depending on the moment.
Conclusion
I was skeptical.
I was skeptical that a movie based on a song could work—no matter how great that song was.
But I'll admit it: I was wrong. There's more to I Can Only Imagine than I had been able to imagine.
Yes, it's a story about a singer, about the song that put him and his
band on the map. Fans of MercyMe will likely love the movie on that
level alone. (Though the film takes some dramatic license in spots with
the details.) But it's a lot more than that. I Can Only Imagine is about the paradoxical link between
pain and redemption, between brokenness and forgiveness. We see plenty
on each side of that paradox.
For much of his life, Arthur Millard is not a good father.
What kind of father smashes a plate on his son's head? What kind of a
father beats his boy senseless? What kind of a father burns something
his boy has lovingly created?
But faced with death, faced with his loneliness, faced with his
failure, Arthur finds that he's not beyond the reach of God's grace and
forgiveness, grace that remakes him. Bart says of his dad, "I saw God
transform him from a man that I hated into the man I wanted to become."
It was about right there that I felt a little flutter rise up in my chest. I'm not gonna cry, I told myself. I'm not gonna cry. I'm not gonna … and, I'm crying.
All of us have broken places inside. All of us stand in need of
redemption. All of us have hurt others, and been hurt by them. And I Can Only Imagine
paints one picture of what working through that hurt—admittedly, a very
dramatic variety of it—might look like. It challenges and inspires me
to forgive others and to ask for forgiveness myself in the ways I've
failed others.
And I imagine I'm not the only one who's going to have that kind of response.
