Terry and Kymm Down the Road

My friend, Terry, and I volunteer at the local foodbank. Once a week we drive the foodbank van to make a regular series of pick-ups from the nearby grocery stores, collecting excess produce, day old bakery and other food stuffs. It hardly seems like work to me because I spend most of the time laughingTerry has an incredible sense of humour that he delivers in an almost deadpan manner - he is a very funny guy.

Terry was putting up Christmas lights about 10 years ago and fell off the ladder, banging his head on the sidewalk he landed on and ended up with a brain injury.

(I don't have a particularly wide circle of acquaintances, but I still know more than a handful of men who have come to serious disadvantage as a result of falling off ladders while putting up Christmas lights - consider yourself cautioned.)

As a result, Terry had to stop working and go on disability. Although he is fully recovered now, he is still reluctant to sit in the driver's seat, quite content to leave the driving to me.

And he’s always a reasonably calm passenger - he hardly ever screams when the old man driver (c'est moi) distractedly runs a pink-ish traffic light.

I haven't always been able to make the drive with Terry, sometimes Mrs. B and I would be away travelling somewhere. Terry would always be interested to know where we were going and, as our trips were usually in the winter to someplace warm, he would feign indignant outrage.

Terry would announce to his family, over the dinner table, what new junket Mrs. B and I were going on and, in the telling, would refer to me, (almost fondly, I think) as "that f****r".

(How could you not warm to a guy with a sense of humour like that?)

Terry and his wife, Kymm, have four children, all adults now, 3 sons and a daughter.

About 17 years ago, their eldest son, Bryden, who was about 15 years old at the time, became very sick and had to be airlifted from Victoria to the Vancouver Childrens Hospital, a much larger hospital with many more resources, to be diagnosed and treated.

by Brian Brannagan

After all the tests were done, the family was gathered around Bryden's bed, waiting for the doctor who was coming to deliver the results of the tests and the final diagnosis.

The doctor walked in with a very somber look on his face and in a very low tone and sympathetic voice, pronounced that Bryden had cancer - the leukemia kind.

The whole family gasped, shell-shocked, and time stood still while all the oxygen got sucked out of the room.

And into that terrible, horrible, quiet moment, Terry announced, in a very straight-faced, matter-of-fact voice, “I know how you must feel, son. Just last week the dentist told me I have gingivitis."

There was another terrible, horrible, quiet moment, this time occasioned by Terry's out-of-left-field dark humour, and then the whole family, patient and doctor included, cracked up and burst out laughing. And oxygen re-entered the room.

That humour, Terry's humour, is what got them all past that heart-stopping, gut-wrenching moment that always follows a diagnosis of cancer, a heartstopping, gut-wrenching moment that is infinitely magnified when the diagnosis is of your child.

Fortunately, with aggressive treatment, Bryden recovered and his leukemia went into remission. Today he is 17 years cancer-free, working as a butcher in a large grocery store and leading a full and productive life.

Kymm, too, has a very active sense of humour, though perhaps not as deliberate. Terry and Kymm have a backyard pond that they stock with goldfish.

They need to restock the pond from time to time, because the goldfish keep disappearing. Turns out the pond, with its "fish in a barrel" motif, attracts all sorts of pesky forms of pescatarian (fish-eating) wildlife: raccoons, otters, cats.

Kymm was out in the backyard one day, by the pond, carrying her toddler grandson when an otter popped his head up out of the pond, startling Kymm. She screamed, "Alligator, alligator" (even Kymm can't explain why she used that particular word) and she ran around the pond, still screaming and hugging her grandson to her chest and escaped into the house, slamming the door behind her.

Terry was in another part of the yard and immediately rushed over wielding the shovel he had been using in the garden to replant a small rose bush. The youngest of their sons, Tristan, also alerted by his mother's screams, came rushing out of the garage where he'd been working on his car, holding a wrecking bar like a spear, a stone-age warrior prepared to do battle.

Terry and his son both stood by the edge of the pond, their 'weapons' poised over their shoulders, breathing heavily, adrenaline-charged, fully primed and prepared to beat and stab into submission the "alligator' that had so rudely and obnoxiously threatened Kymm and the innocent little grandson.

The poor old otter - the "alligator" - who had only been looking for his version of 'fish sticks' for breakfast, had already beat a very hasty retreat.

Terry was very understanding of Kymm screaming and running into the house and out of danger - that was the right thing to do, he said.

And Terry was also very understanding that Kymm would slam the door closed after entering, also the right thing to do, he said.

What Terry couldn’t understand, though, the part he still wonders about, is why Kymm, after slamming the door behind her, why she then locked it.

Kymm just smiles.

Terry and Kymm have been married for 40 years this summer and are still in love.

Kymm says about Terry: Every day I tell him how lucky I am to be married to him. And Terry says about Kymm: Every day I tell her she's not as lucky as me.

Watching Terry and Kymm together is like watching sunlight bounce off a lake - there's lots and lots of sparkle.

And lots and lots of laughter.

Happy 40th, Terry and Kymm.

We reserve the right to edit copy for libel or other legal, spelling or grammatical errors. We accept no liability for any such errors.