In memory of Jack Sikorski - Oct 5/51 - Nov 19/18

When she opened the door to the fridge repairman, she didn’t foresee all the doors on the other side.

She couldn’t imagine that she would pass through a portal into a world of Polish culture, less about pirogi and polka and more about Eastern bloc bread lines, Warsaw’s uprising, and being tongue tied by complicated consonant combinations.

She might not have considered the door to the suburban three bedroom home she would soon share with the man who fixed her fridge and defrosted her heart.

She didn’t know that through a further door, she’d stepmother four grown children, two in Europe, two in Canada, and acquire eight step-grandchildren in three countries.

She wouldn’t predict the number of appliance doors she would own, all second-hand, some cobbled together by her talented appliance-Frankenstein.

Had she noticed his yellowed fingers, she might have anticipated revolving through the door into Toronto’s cancer care system daily for six months’ radiation and chemo when his 40 year habit fertilized tumours in his lungs.

She would never have guessed mid-way through treatment she’d push open the heavy teak door of City Hall and exit laughing 30 minutes later a first-time bride at 49 to a husband who bragged about third-time marital luck.

She couldn’t know that two years later, she’d resume her regular revolutions through the hospital door, this time behind a wheelchair, because continued smoking spread the cancer to her repairman’s brain, and through his spinal fluid.

And she certainly had no way of knowing she’d be beside Jack as he passed alone through Canada’s newly created door to medically assisted death.

Nine years from fridge repairman door to MAiD door. Door to door service.

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