When Carol met Anas: A story of friendship, love, and death

When Carol Taylor ended her life with medical assistance final week, a Kelowna woman spent her last moments surrounded by her beloved friends. But closest to her, holding her palm until she passed, was a immature male from Syria she lovingly called her grandson, Anas Qartoumeh.

Theirs was an doubtful friendship, and one that will continue in Qartoumeh’s heart for a prolonged time. 

“She was my all in Canada, and we mislaid her,” he said, his voice breaking.

The 80-year-old, whose two-year conflict with cancer had taken a spin for a worse, chose genocide in a approach she had lived her life — with bravery and conviction. 

“I’ve had a many smashing life. It’s time to pierce on, and I’m on my approach happily,” she told CBC a few days before she died.

Taylor, who hailed from a family of “lefties” from a San Francisco area, primarily came to Canada to criticism a Vietnam War, and activism remained a crux of her life. She protested opposite chief proliferation in a 1980s, opposite homophobia in a 1990s, and in her after years, co-founded a Dying with Dignity section in Kelowna. 

One hairy print of Taylor shows her during one of a initial honour marches in Kelowna in a late ’90s, surrounded by her friends from a Kelowna Women’s Book Club. 

“We were on a front lines 20 years ago [and] a mayor refused to pointer a commercial [in support of a LGBTQ community],” she said. 

“We were vilified … they were saying terrible things to us.”

In 2015, Taylor, whose common-law father had died a few years earlier, was looking for a approach to assistance a liquid of Syrian refugees nearing in Canada. Living alone, she figured she could horde a family in a additional bedrooms in her house. 

“And Anas came into my life … with a 22 kilogram suitcase.”

Qartoumeh, now 36, came to Canada as a interloper to shun a Syrian polite fight and a regressive culture that forced him to keep his homosexuality a secret. 

When he arrived in Kelowna, he found in Taylor not only a roommate, but a consanguine spirit, mentor, and someone he could disclose in. 

“She was there to support me given a day we arrived,” he said. “She stood up for me when we was vulnerable.”

Taylor introduced Qartoumeh to her far-reaching round of friends, and she watched closely as he blossomed in his adopted home. 

“He was invited to his initial happy New Year’s celebration and we gathering him to it,” she recalled. “Up in Glenmore, somewhere snowing.”

The following morning, Taylor pronounced she listened delicately as Qartoumeh recounted each fact of a party, generally because, she joked, she hadn’t been invited.

“Anas said, ‘Carol! we have had my initial happy kiss!’ And he told me about what it was like and [how] this male kissed him.”

With Taylor’s encouragement, Qartoumeh got a job, altered out, and took on a prominent, outspoken purpose in Kelowna’s LGBTQ community. Qartoumeh was named the Grand Marshal of a 2018 Kelowna Pride March.

“I knew he could pronounce well. He looks good, and he’s unapproachable and out as a happy man,” she said, beaming. “He’s a print male for inclusion in Canada.”

But to Taylor, who has no children of her own, he was more. 

“He’s a grandson we would have wished for.”

When Taylor motionless to have a medically assisted death, she told Qartoumeh. He immediately altered in to the residence to be with her in a weeks heading adult to a day she had selected to die.

The night before her death, Taylor hold a living wake for her tighten friends. She insisted on happy song and no tears. 

Qartoumeh said a event, finish with a rebellious coming from Kelowna drag black Freida Whales, was joyful. But he certified to escaping to his possess room to cry. 

“I do not wish to defect her — I’ve never unhappy her — and uncover her my sadness, though when we am in my room and on my own, we only do it,” he said. 

When he insisted on being there for her final moments, Taylor hesitated. She said it would be too emotional.

“Then she altered her mind and she said, ‘Yeah I’d like we to stay with me,'” he said.

“I hold her palm to a really end.”

As Qartoumeh moves on in his possess life, Taylor will always sojourn tighten to him — like an old hairy sketch of a dynamic woman, marching with a hand-written sign during one of Kelowna’s initial honour parades, that sits framed in his home.  

When Taylor was shown a sketch before her death, she laughed.

“I had said, ‘Anas, take anything we wish since I’m removing absolved of things here.’ And he took it. we kind of forgot he took it,” she said.

“I was so celebrated that he would do that.”

Listen to an audio version of this story, including conversations with Carol Taylor and Anas Qartoumeh, by clicking on a play symbol next or in a CBC Listen app.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/carol-taylor-death-1.5438183?cmp=rss