EVERYONE LOVED MERCEDES

The first time I really saw Mercedes-Rae Clarke, she was in Grade 7,
standing in the schoolyard, a tiny bird of a girl with big brown eyes
and an impish smile. She was 12 years old and my daughter Kate's new friend.

I had heard about "Merch" from Kate for months. Mercedes had moved
into my daughter's French-immersion class in Victoria earlier that
year, a new kid from Calgary thrown among a tight group of students
who had been together since kindergarten. Soon she was among the most
popular in the crowd. All the boys had a crush on her, and all the
girls wanted to be her friend, consulting her on hair and clothes and
music and all the things 12-year-old girls spend so much time talking
about. Kate would say, "Merch says this" and "Merch does that."

But this was the first time I'd had a good look at her. And I
thought: What a beautiful girl. What eyes! She had a big smile and a
big laugh for someone so petite and delicate. The other girls towered over her.

Over the next 18 months, I got to know her, driving her in a carpool
to dance class each week, often hosting the sleepovers that seemed to
occur almost every weekend at someone's home. This is the Mercedes I
knew: an adventurous, outgoing sprite who loved to shop and
socialize, excelled at dance, loved to try out new hairstyles. My
daughter Maddy, two years younger than Kate, idolized Merch because,
unlike with some of the older girls, when Merch came over, Maddy
wasn't excluded. Merch would brush Maddy's hair and give her a new
hairstyle and include her in all the talk.

A video of Mercedes from a school camping trip last spring shows her
sitting by the campfire at night, stuffing one marshmallow after
another into her mouth until she reaches an astonishing ten, cheeks
puffed out like a crazy chipmunk, and her classmates doubling over in
laughter. That was a typical Mercedes moment: an imp with eyes
dancing in merriment, playing the crowd.

A few times, on dance-class nights, her mother, Sherry, would call to
say she couldn't get away from work just yet. Could Mercedes stay
with us until she could pick her up? Sherry worked at a downtown
funeral home as a mortician. I knew her call meant a family was
having trouble with a death and she needed to spend extra time with
them. "Of course," I'd say, knowing first-hand the juggle working
mothers do to keep children safe, with friends.

Sherry was a hard-working, compassionate, strong mother of three.
Along with Mercedes, she had two sons: Chris, a married adult, and
Kody, a year older than Mercedes. Sherry had mustered the courage to
leave an unhealthy relationship with Mercedes's father to forge a new
life on her own in Victoria with her two younger children. They lived
in the suburbs, but Sherry wanted Mercedes to have the benefits of a
French-immersion program near her work, and that entailed a long
commute to and from town for the two of them every day.

The last time Mercedes was at our house, before the fateful day that
changed everything, Kate and Mercedes spent a lazy August afternoon,
hanging around our backyard, jumping on the trampoline with Maddy and
mugging and posing with our digital camera.

And then, around dinnertime on Monday, September 5, 2005, the day
before she was to start Grade 9, Kate burst out of her room, tears
streaming down her face. Mercedes, she wailed, had tried the drug
ecstasy. She had never tried any drugs before. She was now in
hospital on life-support!

Our first reaction was utter disbelief. After phone calls, however,
our disbelief turned to shock and despair. The day before, on a sunny
Sunday afternoon in a lush Victoria park, Mercedes had decided to
swallow a tiny pink pill given to her by a friend. She was with two
girlfriends; one had tried ecstasy before and said it was fun. That
girlfriend had bought three pills for about $10 each from a guy on
the street in downtown Victoria.

When the three girls swallowed the little pink pills, Mercedes began
almost immediately to vomit. Soon she complained of a terrible
headache and that she couldn't see. Then her eyes rolled back into
her head, and her body contorted in a seizure. One of the girls ran
to the nearby house of a family friend to get help.

When Sherry arrived at the hospital about 90 minutes later, her child
was unconscious, medical staff working around her. Mercedes never
woke up again. Over the next 24 hours, she continued to have
seizures, her blood pressure skyrocketed, her temperature soared, she
had multiple heart attacks and resuscitations. She was placed on
life-support on Sunday night. Everyone prayed a miracle would save her.

By late Monday night, Mercedes's brain scan showed no activity: The
tiny pink pill had rendered her brain-dead. Sherry was then faced
with what must be a parent's most agonizing decision: to disconnect
her child from life-support, donate her organs and let her die. The
medical staff gave the family time to say goodbye. On Tuesday, the
halls outside Mercedes's room were full of people: cousins, aunts and
uncles, and friends. Sherry asked that close friends such as Kate
come to see Mercedes.

For kate and me, saying goodbye to Mercedes in the pediatric ICU is a
devastating memory that will never leave us. She was lying, pale and
motionless, in an ICU bed surrounded by machines, tubes in her arm
and throat, her lungs rising and falling to the whoosh of a
ventilator. Her beautiful brown eyes, once so lively and bright,
stared out, vacant and dull.

Mercedes was removed from life-support that Tuesday evening. Her
organs were harvested for transplantation. Because Sherry was a
licensed mortician, the hospital allowed her to collect her
daughter's body directly from the operating room. Sherry and her
trusted friend and colleague Bill wrapped Mercedes in a blanket and
took her that night to the funeral home. There Sherry washed and
prepared her daughter's body for her funeral. To me the tenderness
and despair of performing such a final act for one's own child is
heartbreaking.

For Sherry there are important messages she needs the world to know:
Mercedes was a good kid from a good home who made a single bad decision.

Sherry says the coroner's office told her a few weeks later that the
drug was pure ecstasy--not laced with crystal meth, as rumour had it.
Sherry also wants the world to know: "Ecstasy is seen as the fun
drug, the one to take to a party and have a good time with, not
nearly as bad as crystal meth. But ecstasy can kill, too."

And Sherry wants other kids across Canada to remember Mercedes. If
they hear friends talking about trying ecstasy, she pleads, have the
courage to tell a parent or a teacher: It could save a life.
"Mercedes made a mistake for all of you," she says. "Learn from her mistake."

A few weeks ago, when we pulled out the digital camera for a family
occasion, we stumbled upon a forgotten picture of Mercedes: that last
day in August, caught in mid-air while jumping on our trampoline, big
smile, hair flying, skinny arms and legs flailing--so alive and
vigorous. So full of promise.

And, for the hundredth time these last few months, my heart broke anew.