E236 - Earla Legault - Living With Sibling Grief

Welcome to the Grief Dreams podcast, where we have conversations with guests about their life, loss, grief, and of course, grief dreams, which can be dreams of the deceased. If you want to know more about the topic and your host, please visit the website griefdreams.ca. To support the podcast, please go ahead and rate it. For additional ways to support the show, please see the episode show notes. Before I move on with the show, I would like to give a territory acknowledgement. Long before Canada was formed, the Stalo people were the original land stewards, and they have lived here since time immemorial. They continue to live in the unceded Stalo territory known to settlers at the Fraser Valley and Lower Fraser Canyon of British Columbia. I recognize and honor the contribution that Indigenous Peoples have made and continue to make to our community and the topic of grief dreams. Welcome to the Grief Dreams podcast. Thank you again for tuning in. Today we have Erla Legault. She advocates for adult sibling grief peer support and using creativity to process grief. She co-wrote and illustrated the book Living with Sibling Grief, imagining a way forward with her sibling grief buddy, Monica Murphy. Erla is the 2024 recipient of the Compassionate Friends Karen Snape Outstanding Sibling Award. Given to those making significant contributions to fostering and furthering the philosophy of sibling programs, she currently co-hosts the Monthly Online Canada Sibling Sharing Circle, a peer grief support group for adult siblings. So, Erla, thank you for being here today. Thank you for having me, Joshua. I've been looking forward to us connecting like this. We're practically neighbors, aren't we? We are, we are, and it was nice that we've known each other for a little bit of time now with your interest in the podcast, but also just your dedication to providing grief support for others, and I really appreciate all the work that you're doing. I'm glad you got an award recently for it. It's always really nice to sort of be seen in that way, and you're doing great work. And so, I look forward to talking more about it today. Great, thank you. And so, I guess the first thing to bring up is sibling loss. So, can you talk a little about who, believe it was your sister, right? Yes, it was, yeah. Can you talk about your sister, and then what she meant to you, and then your grief? Well, she was wonderful, and her name is Leanne. There's four of us in our family, and she was, so goes Erla, Bruce, Leanne, Alan. So, we grew up in the Prairies, and then we just both gravitated towards British Columbia. And she lived quite close, 30 minutes away down the road from Chilliwack. I live in Harrison Hot Springs. And from our 30s on, we basically, I would say, grew up together. We, you know, as younger kids, we always fought like cat and dog, because that's what lots of sisters and siblings do. But we just, we were the best of friends, and our children grew up like she had a daughter, Sarah. I had our kids, our two kids. And we just grew up in a very, yeah, we were just happy together. We enjoyed each other's company. We had a lot of the same friends, same friends group. Just had lots of fun. But she immigrated to Spain shortly after she became divorced. You know, even though she lived, what, a million miles away, we still, we still connected all the time. We, I wouldn't say we phoned each other every day, but practically. We were still very much connected. And she phoned and told me she had a growth on her pancreas. And then she came to our house. She died actually in this room. And it's about, it's like 10 and a half years ago. Yeah, but we, she was, you know, just fun loving, fun to be with. I always say she was like a spiritual light, whimsical. She was like a fashionista. She always looked great. And yeah, just really a wonderful person. And so what are those moments that you miss now when it comes to thinking about your sister? Okay, well, first of all, like I, well, I became retired a year after she died, but she was semi-retired. She did well in her life and then she, she just, she would have been retired too now. So we would have traveled together. And I am positive that I would have, you know, once a year gone. She used to come home every October Thanksgiving. She loved this time of year, you know, the mist in the mountains, things like that. So she would have come back to Canada and Harrison was her home basically. All her stuff was here. And then I would be going there. We would have been just excellent companions and traveling. That's the one thing I miss. And also, you know, we would have had grandkids together. And so talking about that, you know, enjoying each other's friends, because we had mutual friends too. So any even things like books, like we, we read the similar, you know, similar things. So it's, it's those kinds of things that I really miss. And she was and would have been my, the best editor because she was like the grammar queen. And I'm the one that pays $100 a year for Grammarly, that kind of thing. And just a real sounding board for me, a cheerleader. And, you know, I wanted to speak to you like when you're younger. Like I used to think we did fight like cat and dog. But I asked my mom about it one time. She goes, actually, she said, you were just two very different people. So I kind of want to, I like to talk about that because, you know, in our minds, we did fight. That's just what we did. And there was rivalry and all that stuff. But when my mom explained it to me that, you know, we were just very different people. But I guess as we got older, we got more similar. Like our kids used to laugh and say, oh, you guys are like the same people. Oh, that's funny. And so could you talk a little bit about your grief? Because I know this has been a big journey for you and also wanting to support other people. And I was just wondering what kind of support you had going through this and maybe what you wished for if you didn't have the exact support that you wanted. Okay. Well, I think what I, I mean, I was introduced to hospice, probably about 10 years before Leanne got sick, a friend of mine, an elderly friend of mine was, her husband was dying. And after he died, I became, you know, like she didn't have any friends, she didn't have any close friends or family. So I became a person and she said to me that hospice was going to be part of her, I guess you'd call it now advanced care planning. And she introduced me to hospice. And I had, you know, I was a self-described weenie of death. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. But I walked into hospice and I felt so comfortable. It was actually quite odd. I don't know why I did, but I did. So just knowing that there was a place that I could go to and be real with my grief, because I grew up in a family where you didn't talk about it. My dad died when I was 26. So, you know, like, and he was super funny and nobody talked about him. And I thought, I don't want that with Leanne. So, so I felt like through my friend, I got comfortable with what hospice offers, which is counseling. And then after Leanne got sick, I didn't, well, during when she was sick, I didn't really lean on hospice all that much because it just went so fast. Pancreatic cancer, unfortunately, it went really fast. So your question was, did I, what kind of support I had? I think it was just, you know, kind of knowing that hospice was there and kind of having in myself that, okay, I can do this. Like I, I cared for my friend. I knew what it was like to sit in a room with somebody who's dying. So my friend did live in hospice at Chilliwack for a month. And I actually hosted a birthday party for her because she was, you know, she, she never had a birthday party as a kid. And so I invited all the women that she knew in the community and we had cake. She was not conscious at the time, but we still did it. And we were still living with her life. So I think that's what, that's the kind of support I got. And then I think just kind of learning that I kind of had it within me to support myself. Joshua, you can cut this out or not. It doesn't matter to me because this is a, this is really how I feel that I didn't have a peer. And I didn't even know what a peer was. And I didn't even know that I needed one. But when Leanne was sick and then after she died, I had a phone call from Cancer Connections. That's what it was called. It was a volunteer thing that somebody called you every week. And I really don't know what we talked about for an hour every week for almost a year, but it was the best thing. And even for the volunteer, it was good for her. She said, "Because oh, I get to talk about, talk about my sister." So I realized that even though I couldn't imagine living after my sister died, somebody else did. So, and that's where I get pretty passionate nowadays because there isn't a lot of support for adult siblings. And we need it because we have young people around us who are like looking up after, looking up at us. We are their mentors. I didn't have that in my life when I was a young adult. I was lucky that I met my friend Ricky who was comfortable with death and dying in hospice. But not a lot of people are. It's not taught in school. If we don't see somebody else caregiving when somebody dies, then that's a hard thing on us. And it's a challenge. And then that's where mental health comes in. And that's where I think I was really lucky that I had good mental health because I, well, Lucy from Hospice, she would call me an intentional griever. I didn't even know what that was. But it was that I was working at grieving, I guess, getting it out and not sealing it out. And that was through creativity. I'm a doodler. I'm a closet writer. And that is what really, really supported me. So I supported myself with that. But I sure could have used a buddy in the old days. And, you know, I didn't even know what a grief buddy was. So, so that's why I'm very thankful and very appreciative that I got to meet my friend Monica. And then we wrote a book together because we always wanted, both of us came to the realization that we wanted the book that would have helped us during that time. So how did you meet Monica then? Because it seems like there's a delay there from when your sister did die to win Monica. Yeah, there was about four years. You know, I kept going along with my life and helping a bit with hospice because I found through her staff grief group and going to it twice, as in 16 sessions, Joshua, not just the first. I had to go again because I just couldn't talk. So then I signed up on Facebook and then I thought, oh, they've got groups here. And there was one on sibling. There was one called Sibling Grief Peer Support. And that's where I met Monica. She out of, you know, and I would like, you know, scroll in the middle of the night and read what people are going through. And then there was just this one clear voice that she was really just, I felt like she was wise. She was positive, but not over the top, if you know what I mean, very genuine. And then I, you know, looked her up and I thought, oh, she's from Saskatchewan, from the prairies. And oh, she lives in BC. So, you know, so that's where, so I just reached out to her and she, and then she reached back. And it's so funny because I had just come on Facebook and she was just about to leave Facebook. So if it wasn't for that, me reaching out in a message, I always call it the educated risk because I did, I took an educated risk. So that was in April. And then I think about, so we text it back and forth. And then in June, I accidentally butt dialed her. And then we just started talking. And then I thought, you know, if we're going to be friends, I need to meet you in person. So we agreed to meet in Surrey. Her daughters were playing baseball at a tournament. It was just fast friends right away. She got me, it was quite funny. I forgot about this, but she tells me how I brought her 10 pounds of clearance. Because, you know, like she was of a good friend, Amrajean, who grows the best carrots. And I just wanted to bring Monica something because we create this relationship. So we laugh about that. And so we've been friends ever since, but it wasn't soon after we met in person that summer, then November, she came to visit me. We did a mind map together and we decided what we're going to write about. I just remember when she left the house and I'm just crying to my husband, she was so much fun. You know, because it was like a sister relationship, but it wasn't. And she had her sister, her older sister had died. It was, Leanne was my younger sister, but they lived, they led very parallel lives. It was quite interesting because they had both immigrated to a different country. Leanne was in Spain, Darcy had lived in Bermuda. Both died from a terminal illness. We both care gave for them, you know, so that, and then they also remarried or they married. So we're, you know, like talking about our wonderful brother-in-law. So, so that's how I met and got to know her. And yeah, I butt dialed her June of 2017 and we haven't hung up yet. That's beautiful. And so when you guys were talking about the book and making that, you know, what were some of the important factors that kind of went into that, that you really wanted to focus on or bring awareness to? Yeah, that was a really neat process because like I said, we did this mind map together, but separately we created one where we wrote sibling grief in the middle. And then we had these satellite things and we wanted to come back together. Okay, what are the, what are the 10 things that we felt were important? So out of the eight of the 10, they were all the same. It was like navigating families. How do you deal with missing your loved one? How have you changed self-care? What resources do you, do you, or have you used that kind of thing? And what have you learned so far? So that was the kind of, that was the, the key points. And actually, you know, in our book, that's what we used as the, for the table content. So each chapter has a verb and that's what we were kind of using. So we put it all in continuing bonds, which is something that I did not learn until I went to hospice nine days after Leanne died. So that was very important to both of us because I had, Monica hadn't heard of it till Hillstreet met me. So that's how we decided what was going to go in the book. And so with that continuing bonds, I always like to sort of, one aspect of that can be dreams. And I was really curious if you or Monica has ever talked about dreams from your, that you had of your siblings? Oh, for sure. I'm a very vivid dreamer. And I don't hold back when telling people dreams if they're interested. But Monica, she, I mean, she has had dreams, but we're two very different people. We're very similar in some ways, but we're very different. And it was dreams that really meant a lot to me. And I, frankly, didn't know the things. I didn't know what grief dreams was until I went to your talk that was through hospice. You know, it's funny because I was going through things. January 27, 2018 is when I learned about them. It was so helpful because I guess because I had a dream six months after my dad died. And it brought me such comfort that, you know, 38 years later or whatever, it still brings me comfort every time I think about it. So my dad had, he had had cancer. And so in the dream, him and I are sitting on mom and dad's love seat. And he's got a velour brown house coat. So you know how long ago that was. And he's, I know, and I knew he was sick because he, he was a little bit stiff because the cancer was in his body. So he was kind of turned to me like this. And he just said, "Ella, I'm fine. I'm okay." Because I just did not know about death. I didn't have any, because I was a weenie about it. I didn't really want to think about it. So that dream gave me comfort. Him coming to tell me that he was okay meant the world to me. And it still does. And then when I, you know, went and heard you and Jay talk about grief dreams, I thought, "Yeah, that's what I had. That's what it was." And since then with Leanne, when I reached out to you, it was because I had a very, it was, it was that spring. So a few months after Leanne died and she came to me, it's so vivid. She's on, her and I are on a Ferris wheel and she's in a blue jacket of mine, bright blue jacket. She's wearing his this winter time and she has her headband on and she's got the coolest sunglasses on. And she says to me, "How are your appointments coming along, Ella?" And I don't, I never use that word appointments because she was, by training, she was a receptionist. She worked in admin. So I would never have used that word. But I took it from her to me, "How are you doing? What are you doing for yourself?" So I just had a book beside my bed and I just, every couple of days, I would just write down what, what I was doing for myself. You know, not realizing that this was helping me. I wouldn't have said it was grief work at the time, but it was, you know, making a conscious effort to say yes, when somebody said, "Can I come over and visit?" Going for a swim and, you know, really relaxing. There was just so many things that I was doing at the time, like even doodling and writing, that all went into my appointments book. Yeah, again, Monica and I, you know, we're very different in how, you know, dreams happen for us. But it was important for me to talk about it in the book. And so did you have many others or was it just a one of your sister? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Like honestly, I am a, I'm a journaler or a writer and I, I write down a lot. So it was funny because I was thinking, if I went through my journal, because what I usually do is, you know, I'll, you know, just use, I just use a plain book. But then when I'll go through it and I'll go, oh, well, I had a dream. I keep track of them. And I've had so many dreams. The one that I was thinking about the other day was eight months after Leanne died, what one of her wishes was to have her ashes go to Buriana Beach in Nairha, Spain, where she lived. So the first night we were there, I had this dream and I'm saying to her, I came all this way and you're not here. Like I was, I was choked. So that was very telling. That was, you know, so dreams like that, that, that happened to me. Yeah. And yeah, it was just, you know, that was what I was going through. Like, yeah, I really can't believe that we came all this way and you're not here because Sarah and I went to Spain the first time together. When Leanne had just moved there. So that was, yeah, so that was kind of neat. It's always interesting going to these places where they lived or they, or you, you'd go together to, to see each other. And for the first time to be there without them. I really said, it definitely activates that grief within us. And I like how you had that dream too about, so like her saying about your appointments, like how your appointment's going. And for me, it kind of reminded me of like making time for grief, like your appointments for the grief and to sit with that. And you're doing that with your journaling and all this sort of stuff. And I thought, oh, wow, that's, that's a beautiful way of saying it, right? Rather than saying you're doing grief work, you're just making appointments for grief in your life. You don't want to be overwhelmed with that at the same time, but, but you still need to sort of honor it. For sure. And, and I, I know that I come from a family of where you buried it. You kind of shove it down. And I just, I did not want to be that person with my sister. She, she was too funny, too much fun to be with. She was a lovely person and I did not want to not talk about her. Like for me, in order to talk about her, I had to work on my grief. And I'm glad you actually put a grief dream within your book. I think that's just special for me and just raising awareness that it happens and that people can have these experiences, which is one of the big things that I continue to do, right? Like we all try to raise awareness in our own ways. You're raising awareness of sibling loss and the importance of that. And, you know, in there, you're also raising awareness on something that's special to me. So I appreciate that. You know, Joshua, I want to tell you a story because so I volunteered hospice and they have a, I think they call it a horse whisper group, grief group. It's for kids once a year. They go to a horse camp and it's lovely. So they have all different ages there. I was in the craft tent for a couple of hours. And so there was, and it was like this, like they split kids up into different ages. So it was mostly teenage, it was teenagers. Then they were kind of quiet. I just said to somebody, "Hey, have you ever had, have you ever dreamed about your sibling or your person or whatever?" And it was so interesting because they, all of a sudden they, they got engaged and they were talking about it. And it was just so neat. And I thought, you know, this is the kind of thing that, you know, if we were taught this, if we were told about this when we were younger, that, you know, that you're not crazy, that your dad came to you, things like that. If we knew that this was a way that we can process our grief, well, you know how it is, like, I'm sure you heard, like people always think that dreams, "Oh, you got to get that dream interpretation book." That is not, like I always take it back to me in my dreams. And what does it mean to me? I was so happy that I was there that day to mention grief dreams because just to see those kids light up, it's, it's like a vessel that you can, that you can talk about your person, right? That's amazing, you asked the question. I love that. And I think that's all it takes is one person to ask the questions to see and what people have been dreaming about. Because it is a different way of engaging grief, especially with children or teens. Sometimes there can be some resistance there. And it's just a different way of asking the question about like how they're doing. And said some may be very comforting and others may be nightmarish. But then you can talk about the nightmares and talk about sort of what's going on to help them through that. And then I always like to say too, if sometimes people can feel jealous, if they didn't have a dream and other people have, then you can always just ask them like what dream they'd want to have, right? And so you bring them in the conversation that way. So no one feels neglected within that discussion. But I think that's awesome. That's a great sort of story. Yeah, I like it too. And I just, I just remembered that I did that. And I'm just so, you know, it was just so lovely because I know sometimes hospice does reach out to high schools and things like that. But you know, I always think, so there was that small group like, I don't know, 10, 12 teenagers in that group. Well, they might go back to their friends and say, you know what I heard or their families. So it's like that ripple, right? So you just kind of plunk the little rock in there and it just kind of, yeah. And I think, you know, because I'm an adult, I'm an older adult now. I just think it's so important to be open to it. And I had a niece a little while ago, she wrote, she texted me and said, "Hanty, I had a really good dream about Sarah. That's my niece who died five years ago, Liam's only daughter." And my niece, Morgan, said, "Sarah said in her dream, she was so happy that we were all getting together as a family." And that to me is something really big because this is my brother's daughter talking about, you know, a dream that she had. And I just couldn't wait for us to talk about it. And, you know, because when somebody dies, it, you know, it is the elephant in the room if you don't talk about them. And so for Morgan to bring up that she had this dream that Sarah said, "I'm so happy that you guys are getting together." It just was really yet another way to have a conversation and to be open about it. And so just getting back to your book, is there anything else you want to say on it? Well, it was a long time in making. It took us a while, but I think I'm very proud of it, I have to say. Because, you know, and I just, oh, you know, when I finished it, I was like, "Oh, Liam would have been so proud, you know, and she would have had a hand in it for sure." So, you know, it's very hard to reflect on your own work, but when you hear people talking about it, I had, we, Monica and I were guests on this sibling grief book club. And one of the things that I came away with is, and I really don't know if I thought about it at the time, but one woman said that this book is going to support people who have never gone through this to learn about sibling grief. Like, Monica and I wrote it through the eyes of, "What did we want back then after our sibling died?" But I hear now from other people that it's going to support people who aren't, who haven't maybe grieved deeply to know what it's like. And it's going to be not only, you know, they're going to, they're going to have more of a compassionate eye, or more empathy for somebody who's going through that. I have to say, too, that it was fun to write. Um, I always think about, like, I haven't finished it yet, but I want to do a cartoon where Monica's husband and her, and their daughter are talking together and the husband, and the daughter saying to dad, "Why, what's mom laughing about?" And she's upstairs and he, and he says, "Oh, she's writing a book about grief." Because Joshua, that's kind of what it was like. And I think with both Monica and I, and our sisters, they were very humorous, very fun-loving people. So that's what I think comes through the book. You know, if we had a tagline, it would be a heavy topic, but with a light touch. And, you know, I have to say, that's where I appreciate people like you. Because in your podcast, like, you know, it's about grief, but you bring a lightness to it. Like, just kind of the person that you are, it makes it accessible. That's what I, yeah. And that's how I feel about our book, it's accessible. So that's what I would say about the book, yeah. And I'm also advocating that if people buy it, that they buy two copies, one for themselves, and one to go into the nearest grief support organization. Because definitely we need more on the shelf. You'll see on my, I've got a stack of books here. To me, there's been 11 great books written about sibling grief. And we need them out there more than ever. I think, and now that I've met a few of the authors over the years now, and you've had some of them on your show, like, it's super important that, I think we're all working very collaboratively together, because we want the same, we want the message to get out there that there needs to be more grief support for adult siblings. I agree. No, I totally agree with that. And so, yeah, congratulations on getting the book finished. Where can people find it? Well, you know, the store online that starts with an A. And yeah, it's on Amazon. They can, I advocate going to your local independent bookseller and asking them to purchase it, because they will do that. That's what I would say. Okay, amazing. And then, for our last question on the podcast, it's always, if you could have a dream tonight of someone who has died, it could be your sister or someone else. What would that dream look like to you? Well, Joshua, after the session that I went to you in 20 to 18, I really thought about it. And then, so again, I forgot about it till I read it this morning. I thought, "Oh, gosh, that's the same dream I want. I don't want just one person there. I want to have a picnic. I'm from the Prairies. Picnics are the best thing." Just because I'm such a vivid dreamer or vivid person, it would be just right after a harvest. We'd lay a blanket down, made out of blue jeans, so it's nice and thick, so the grain, the hay doesn't poke you. And we'd have a great big basket just laden with all the favorite foods of everybody. And then, everybody would be there. My grandma's one whom I don't remember. My favorite, Auntie Leona, my dad, my sister, her daughter, Sara. I would want everybody there and just really enjoying each other and just being in the moment and having fun and all the favorite foods. That would be my dream. And just seeing what everybody is wearing and just hanging out together under a big Saskatchewan sky. That's what I would like. Wow, that sounds amazing. I love when people sort of talk about it because sometimes it's that singular one-on-one interaction, but to bring everyone together. Well, even just at the picnic, just talking one-on-one but seeing everybody else interact and their joy. And my dad would be feeding his great-grandson, that kind of thing, like the pies that my aunt Annie would bring to the picnic, all that kind of thing. Yeah. So they're all potluck. What would you bring? Yeah. Oh, okay, puff wheat cake. It's this Saskatchewan thing. It's practically illegal not to bring it to reunions. It's like puff wheat cereal, but you make a chocolate sauce and it's kind of hard and crunchy and there's always crumbs and stuff. So that's definitely a great big whack of it. Yeah. I love that. Well, I hope you have that dream. Let me know if you do. I'm always curious. I will, yeah. So thank you again for spending some time and coming on the podcast and doing all the work that you're doing in the world. Thanks, Joshua.