All the Way (12 page)

They came back at seven the next morning. They hopped the fence and the dogs started going apeshit. It was still kind of dark. I was standing by the garage with Kelly McCrimmon. Neil went over the fence to take a look. Then all I could hear was his screaming. I just fainted into Kelly's arms.

The night before, if I had looked to my right, five feet into the bush, it would have been me who found him. Thank God, I didn't.

All that time, right up until we found Terence, I never thought that he would have killed himself. It didn't even cross my mind. Never. That was the last thing I would have thought. He loved hunting and, you know, Terence was a survivor. He was a guy who could fucking rough it. In my mind, I was thinking,
Well, he's probably built a little hut back there, he's trying to hide, to hide from everyone.
That's what I was thinking.

By that time my parents were in the air flying to Winnipeg, because I'd called them and said, “Hey, look, I don't know where Terence is.” They'd jumped on a plane that got in at ten o'clock in the morning and we found him at seven. It's a two and a half–hour drive from Brandon to Winnipeg. Kelly, Neil, and I made the trip.

At the airport, they have a quiet room where they bring people when there's trouble. When my parents arrived, all hell just broke loose in there.

The drive back to Brandon was a bit of a blur. My mom was so out of it, we thought she might have to be hospitalized. When we got there, she wanted to identify the body to make sure it was Terence. I eventually convinced her not to see him. Neil went in to identify him. I wanted our last memories of Terence to be of when he was happy—not of what he did to himself, not of the way he was then.

Eventually, we cremated him. They ask you what kind of clothes you want him to wear for the last time. I picked out
his clothes. Terence was a casual guy, a T-shirt and jeans guy. I picked out a nice plaid shirt that I remembered him wearing.

SINCE THAT DAY, it's been hell for my parents. You can see in their eyes that they're still hurting. Every day, I think of Terence, but for me it's joyful now. It's not that I'm over his death, but I understand that I have to move on. But for them— they're still in pain. I can't imagine being a parent and losing a kid.

My dad's never, ever going to show emotion about it, though. That's just how he is. And my mom is my mom. She's going to be that way forever. I've tried to help them get professional help and stuff, but they're not interested. They don't want to talk about it. That's how they grew up. It's frowned upon. Any unpleasant issues, any issues at all, nothing was talked about. Communication was very minimal. And even to this day, when I try to ask questions about certain situations, it's as if they're on the defensive. It's as if I'm always walking a fine line with both of my parents.

At some point you have to get over losing someone, but my parents haven't. They talk like they have, but once they start drinking, that's when everything comes out. I understand that. I understand that perspective. I've told my mom that I can't imagine what it must be like for her. But it's been over ten years now. You have to embrace Terence's life and let his memory live on. But to them, it's an issue. They say I don't understand, and that's an easy way out, an excuse.

I had to ask my parents some questions about Terence and how he was brought up. They got their backs up.
Why the fuck are you asking us? Why do you need to know?
I ask my mom questions and she says, “Don't ever fucking ask me questions like that again. Don't you ever fucking bring up shit like that again.” They weren't even direct questions. You've got to kind of work around things with my parents. You're walking a fine line. You don't want my mom to snap because you don't know what's going to happen. And you know, as a child, that you don't ever want to see your parents hurt themselves or your siblings. That's the fine line I'm walking every day. My dad pushes my mom to the brink of taking her own life some days, and she talks about suicide and it's like,
Holy fuck, what the fuck is going on?

So, for our family, the truth is that it's been hell. It's tough sometimes for my parents when they're lonely. I think Terence's death is something they're never, ever going to let go of. Terence was their pride and joy.

Back home, they still keep his room just like it was when he was alive. Obviously, we have a lot of great memories and that's what we've got to embrace. I walk into his room all the time when I'm alone, and I look at all the old pictures and hold his trophies and all his medals and stuff like that. It brings me joy, because it's something that will never be taken away from me.

ONE OF THE QUESTIONS I had to ask my parents was about Terence's ashes. My understanding was that, after we cremated him, the ashes were going to be spread on the land
near our cabin. But nothing was ever said as to when this was going to be done. I thought there would be a little ceremony, but I never heard anything more about it, and just assumed that whatever was said had been done. But nothing ever came up about it. So I had to get that straight. I finally asked them directly: “What did you do with Terence's ashes?”

My mom said, “We still have them.”

“What? I thought you guys were going to spread his ashes out by our cabin.”

“No, I still have them up in our room.”

I went to their room with my sister and saw the box, and we had a little conversation about the whole situation. Corinne said we couldn't tell them what to do. But, as a family, we should be able to have a ceremony about letting him go and having his spirit in our hearts. The whole thing kind of rattled me.

I understand from a parent's perspective that it's hard to let go. But my parents go to bed and his ashes are still right there in their bedroom. It's something you've got to be able to let go of. For my parents—for my mom, especially—it's hard. And that's holding her back and causing a lot more stress in her life. It's kind of sad to see. She uses anger as a coping mechanism. And that's not how it should be. You can't keep going back to something that's in the past.

I've talked to her a bit about it. She tells me I don't understand the pain it causes her. It's just the same story over and over again. It's not that I'm completely over the whole situation. But I'm not a parent.

TWO WEEKS AFTER Terence died, I was back with the Wheat Kings. Terence always told me that he wanted me to do what I loved, and so I felt like that was the right place for me to be. I wanted to stick to our goal. We loved playing hockey. When I decided to keep playing, I think I really got a lot of respect from my parents. I was at a point in my career when I could have just fucking said I'm done, called it quits, and that's it—and have had something to blame it on. But that's not what Terence would have wanted. He would want me to be doing what I love, so that's what I did.

I was angry early on, for sure. But you can't dwell on it. You can't keep asking yourself those questions because, fuck, you just get so wrapped up in it. It consumes you. It's not that it's wasted energy, but it's energy you know at some point you have to put somewhere else. For me, it's not so much a daily battle as a daily, constant reminder of how important life is.

I went back over the night that Terence died all the time— for five years. But I would do it only when I was partying, when I was alone at night all pissed up. That's when I would start thinking. And then I'd have another shot to try to put me out of my misery, to pass out. Or I would use women to keep my mind off of it. I needed that to help release the weight off my shoulders. For many years I blamed myself for Terence's death. What could I have done? Why didn't I do this or that? Why was I partying so much with him? When my mind started getting clearer I realized that if you grow up with physical and mental abuse, you have to deal with it.

EIGHT

D
espondent after Terence's suicide, Jordin had little time to grieve. He was a draft pick of the Nashville Predators, and they expected him at their pre-season training camp within days. If he didn't stick with the National Hockey League team, he'd be back playing junior hockey in Brandon, and living in the same place where his brother had spent his final hours. For a brief moment, Jordin considered giving up the game altogether, giving up his dream, and heading back to Rankin Inlet. But then he thought of the words in Terence's note, and understood that he had to go on.

Hockey became an outlet for me, something I could use to numb all of my pain and help me forget about it. When Terence passed away at the end of August, training camp was just starting in Nashville. A few days went by, and I remember telling my dad, “I need to be on the ice. I need to go.” There were optional
skates for the Wheat Kings players in Brandon and I started there, and then I took off for Nashville.

Terence's death had been publicized, so everybody knew about it. Obviously, suicide is a touchy subject. But the Predators organization was great to me. They gave me all kinds of extra support. If I needed to talk to anyone, at any time, they were available. Barry Trotz was a big part of that. He was probably the first guy to sit me down and sincerely ask me if there was anything he could do; he was almost in tears. He didn't want anything bad to happen to me. He and David Poile, they really cared about me as a person. That's very hard to come by. You don't find people like that in the hockey business these days. It really made me feel comfortable seeing that these people who didn't even know me—and who I didn't know—cared about me so much. Everyone came up to me and said, “Here's my number; call if you need anything.” It was like that, and it's still like that to this day with the friends I made on that team.

I played in a few exhibition games during camp, and then they sent me back to Brandon, which is what I expected would happen. It was all kind of a blur to me. Returning to Brandon was just unbelievable. The city really embraced me. I don't think I've ever heard anyone cheer louder than the city of Brandon when I came back to play my first game after Terence's death.

That could have been the point when I called it quits and said,
Fuck it, I don't want to play hockey anymore.
It would have been an easy out: I don't want to play hockey because I lost my brother. But I knew that Terence would have wanted me to keep
going. He said so in the note he left for me. Every time I stepped onto the ice, I just felt the presence of my brother, his spirit.

FROM THE FIRST GAME of the season in Brandon, when the crowd gave me that great welcome, until the beginning of December, I was fucking on fire. I scored 5 points in my first game back, and in the first 35 games of the season I had 25 goals and 57 points. I was the leading goal scorer in the whole league. The WHL is a tough place, and there I was, a guy who was only supposed to be a fighter, ahead of everyone in points. I was playing unreal hockey, and that gave me a legitimate shot at playing for Team Canada in the World Junior Championship, which was being held in Halifax at the end of that year.

The season before, I'd been invited to the evaluation camp for the World Juniors but hadn't made the team. This time it was a no-brainer. I was the best player in the league, playing on the first line for the Wheat Kings. I went to the World Juniors camp and played a few exhibition games, and I was crushing guys while staying out of the penalty box. I started out in the fourth or fifth line in the camp rotation, but as I started to light it up—and the fans loved it—I moved up the ladder. By the last couple of days of training camp, when they'd make the final cuts, I knew I had a pretty good chance of making the team.

My roommate at that camp was Derek Roy, who played junior hockey with the Kitchener Rangers and who had been drafted by the Buffalo Sabres. We both watched as players got
cut and went home. Finally, it was the last day, when the final cuts would be made and the team would be named, and we were still there. They told us we'd get a phone call.

I'll never forget that day. We woke up at six o'clock in the morning, because we knew that they always deliver the news, good or bad, really early. The phone in the hotel room rang at about 6:45. I look at Roysy and said, “Do you want to pick it up?”

He said, “No, you pick it up.”

That's how nervous we were. So I picked up the phone and it was the coach, Marc Habscheid. “Is this Toots or Roysy?” he asked.

“It's Toots,” I told him.

“Congratulations. You've made the team.”

I was all smiles. And then he asked to talk to Roysy. It was a little tense there for a second, until he found out that he'd made the team, too. We started fist-pumping at each other and hooting and hollering. What a great feeling.

That tournament changed everything for me. I played at a level I had never played at before, and the hockey world noticed. I think that without that tournament, people across Canada would never have gotten to know me the way they did. I was a great story—an Inuk kid from the Far North, playing for Canada—and it became national news. And, of course, for the territory of Nunavut it was a big fucking deal, having one of its own guys playing for Team Canada. As a tribute, I wrote the word “Nunavut” on the sticks I used in the tournament games. And I could feel Terence looking down at me the whole time.
I remember thinking that he would have been there. He would have left his junior team to come and watch the games because that's how proud he would have been of me.

Our team had a great lineup. Out of that whole group, I think there are only seven guys now who haven't played in the NHL. Marc-André Fleury was the number-one goalie and he had a fantastic tournament. And then there were Joffrey Lupul, Kyle Wellwood, Carlo Colaiacovo, and a bunch of others. A lot of them were guys I had played against already—or would play against later in my career—and we still run into each other and share that bond. That's one of the things that's great about the hockey world. Those relationships last. You can be friends with a guy you played with in juniors and see him ten years later and you don't miss a beat. It's a pretty special feeling.