“You’re talking to stoned Audrey,” the woman joked, opening her door for what we both knew would be the last time we will ever meet.
The cannabis, you see, helps with pain that by then was so blindingly intense that a recent bone marrow biopsy “tickled by comparison,” and that it felt like her “body would break” during the short walk from her bedroom to the front door.
Audrey Parker’s time on this Earth was down to a few precious days last Thursday, when I arrived at her apartment, where her days will end.
But there were still things that she had to say and do.
When you read this, she will be only hours off looking for the final time at the faces of her mother, and her close friends, who have helped her on this journey that began with her 2016 terminal cancer diagnosis, and waiting for her caregiver to start the first of three injections that will end Parker’s anything-but-tragic life at the age of 57.
When you read this she will have stopped seeing the visitors who have been so frequent that she had to schedule Friday night open houses, just to fit in everyone who wanted to say goodbye.
She will have also conducted the last of the media interviews that became a deluge when Parker announced that she was moving the date of her passing up to Nov. 1, because medically assisted death requires that a person be mentally competent and able to communicate their wishes just before the desired act is to occur, and she was worried that might not be the case.
“My death is still a sacred thing,” she told me, lying in the bed where she will leave this life. “I have to make my self and soul ready to depart.”
The hard-core details of her passing — what she will have for her last meal, who gets her treasured Chanel bags, the writing of her self-penned obituary that will appear in the pages of this paper later this week — were ironed out long ago.
Being organized has been a comfort for her, and “freed her mind up for the end.”
When we met for the third and final time she already felt like she had “transitioned,” like she had a foot in this world and the next, like she was looking down from some other place.
There is wisdom that comes with that, she told me, a realization that the secret of life is something so simple that “it is almost astounding that not everyone is seeing it the way I am seeing it.”
There’s an irony that this self-described queen of materialism now wants people to know that “trying to make all this money,” “to be in the right schools … to own the nice house and car and all this material stuff” is folly.
Instead, she says, “slow down and have less. Savour it.”
She tells that to her friends and on the pages of the end-of-life guide that she is hurrying to finish so that it will be ready for the next person in her circle who needs it.
While she can, she is passing on other things too: be kind to people just because you can; be that spark to create some positive change in the world; instead of running from death, embrace it as part of life’s journey.
She has lived by the latter, packing a lifetime of experiences, parties and living into the months since learning she had terminal cancer.
During that period she has rekindled long-lost friendships, and deepened existing ones, but she has also jettisoned people who had been in her life but who
“weren’t on her team.”
When the former television makeup artist, businesswoman and image consultant says that she is “dying as her best self” she doesn’t just mean the startling way that she has remained positive throughout her illness.
As much as anything she means her ability to make peace with her lot and to reclaim control over her death, along the way “embracing every aspect of life’s journey.”
So I want you to picture her when we spoke: this blonde woman, her spirit undimmed, lying under the covers on her bed, fresh from telling some “feds,” over the telephone, that they need to abolish the requirement for late stage consent for the terminally ill so that people like her can die with dignity.
Somewhere on her laptop were the decorating schemes she’s been working on for the rooms at the new hospice residence, along with a guide for life she’s writing for a beloved relative from someone who, admittedly, “has been terrible with money and men,” but has much to pass on regarding other things.
Parker’s bones were riddled with cancer. The pain, even with all of the meds, was off the charts. In a week, she was scheduled to breathe her last breath.
You will notice I did not write that on Nov. 1 she will be gone.
Because Parker, even last Thursday, was all about the future, so that is what we talked about.
How she has never been afraid of death, perhaps because she nearly drowned at the age of 12, but also because the lapsed Catholic is simply excited to see what happens when she dies.
How her biggest worry is for the friends that she leaves behind, in part because she just wants them to enjoy life the way she has after having had this taste of what is best about it. But also how, perhaps, they shouldn’t worry.
Parker has a thing about nickel coins, among other reasons because the number five figures so prominently in the merchandise from her beloved Chanel brand.
“I tell my friends,” says this woman who doesn’t think the lights just go out when your heart stops, “that if you start seeing a whole lot of nickels around to know for a fact that is me.”
At that we both laughed, but not for too long.
A couple of minutes earlier an old friend from Toronto had called. Over the speaker phone I could hear the emotion in her voice as she spoke to Parker.
“She knows this is probably the last time we will talk,” she said before I let myself out.
Parker, you see, wanted to get back to her friend. It was getting late in the day. Her buddy sounded like she could use a little cheering up.
