Shannon’s old boyfriend overdosed on carfentanil. The Valentine’s Day loss still haunts her, she reveals in “Love and Grief”
Shannon MacKinnon still can't explain it.
She sat alone in her bedroom with her laptop on the evening of Valentine's Day 2019, when she heard a sound that she could have sworn was the laughter and voice of her ex-boyfriend Jason Kerr, but that made no sense. She hadn't seen him in five years though she had thought of him often over that time.
As she writes in her story Love and Grief," she froze at the eeriness of it.
However, I smiled at the memory and hoped Jason was well. Being curious and equally freaked out about the mysterious voice I had just heard out of nowhere, I decided to Google Jason's name, and my heart dropped ..."
What appeared was his obituary. He had died, only 32 years old, of a carfentanil overdose, just two weeks earlier, on Feb. 1, 2019.
The memory of Jason, whom she met when they both worked at Costco and really hit it off, has not dimmed over the years. She reconnected with his family. She wrote a play about him. Dear Jason," that was performed at The Staircase later that year, 2019.
The loss devastated her but she took her grief and made of it a kind of positivity. That is Shannon's way. She not only wrote the play but every year, on Feb. 1, she donates a blanket to the homeless in his honour, with a patch sewn on saying, Made in Loving Memory."
Shannon's story is one of many featured in a collection called We Are All Made of Love: Restoring Your Faith in Humanity, One Story at a Time." It is published by Heart & Soul Author Collective, co-ordinated by Andie Eygenraam.
When I submitted the book in January to Amazon for review, expecting it to take a few weeks like the other one I helped with in May 2021, it actually took them less than 12 hours to approve it" says Andie.
After all the activity and hard work of the authors, we woke up on Feb. 3 to our book being No. 1 in our two main categories, and charted bestseller in 15 international categories total. It was so exciting.
The comment I hear on repeat from anyone who reads Made of Love' is this book is so needed now; this is so important right now,' and my landlord even said she was going to hug the book everyday because it gave her hope."
Shannon has several stories in the volume, including the script of the play she wrote and performed in 2019, a work that is built around her actual diary entries from her time with Jason, roughly 2013 to 2015.
The other writers featured, including Andie, cover a wide range of subjects and themes - many of the pieces have to do, like Shannon's, with love and loss, grief and coping, but others are simply reflections on life, celebrations of beauty and triumphs over adversity.
I'm proud to have my stories in this collection; it makes you feel less alone," says Shannon, an actress and writer who works as a porter at St. Joseph's Hospital. We wrote about Shannon before, in 2015, when a piece she wrote about the death of her 19-year-old friend from an aneurysm was included that year in the famous series of Chicken Soup for the Soul" book.
Now 29, she says she wonders if she hasn't experienced more grief than some do in a lifetime, what with her friend, her ex-boyfriend and the loss and suffering she has seen, especially through COVID-19, in her hospital work.
Her relationship with Jason was a gift in her life, she says - they had a great energy together and shared a compatible sense of humour. But," she adds, I was so naive. I knew nothing about addiction." They went out for about a year, through most of which he never used or drank, not that she saw, but by the end there were signs.
I think the love we had still coexists with the grief, and I think of him - hope for him - that he is in heaven and in a way my guardian angel," says Shannon, who lives in Mount Hope.
For more on the book and to purchase, Google We Are All Made of Love."
Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator.jmahoney@thespec.com