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OTTAWA — The photo was supposed to capture a sweet slice of a late-summer road trip to an amusement park. But when Kadra Koulmiye saw the image of herself in front of a man-made waterfall at Canada’s Wonderland, flanked by two of her four boys, her eyes went to her belly.
“Why do I look so fat?” she asked her eldest son.
Taib, 19, also noticed the swelling of her abdomen.
Ever practical, he offered to go with his mom to the Merivale YMCA, where they often worked out together, to do some extra stomach crunches.
But she confessed she was so very tired.
“Us brothers, we could all think of so many reasons why she would be tired,” Taib recalls.
On school days, their mother rose at 5 a.m. to make their breakfasts and lunches before going to the first of her two jobs. She was a beloved educational assistant at Churchill Alternative School, and worked at a group home in the evening. Between shifts, she tutored six-year-old Bilal to give him a leg up. She worked the two jobs to afford the rent on a townhouse near Carlingwood Shopping Mall, and the many after-school activities she insisted her sons do to stay out of trouble, stay healthy, achieve.
Of course she was tired.
The fatigue became intractable, as her stomach grew. She developed a chronic cough that one doctor said was pneumonia.
Then, on Dec. 23, Taib was called to the Queensway-Carleton Hospital, where he found his mom folded over in pain in a wheelchair.
Doctors ordered diagnostic tests and then tried to send her home. She insisted she stay. That night, a tumour in her abdomen ruptured.
Kadra Koulmiye, 37, sole caregiver, biggest cheerleader, inspiration to and proudest mama of Taib, Tyler, 18, Jamal, 12, and little Bilal, had Stage 4 gastric cancer that had spread to her lungs.
Taib was there when the blow was delivered.
“I will never forget that she didn’t ask about herself. She asked what this would mean for us. She asked who would take care of us? She asked how we would get by with out her?”
It was truly a mother’s worst nightmare; the fear that she might not be there to see them grow up, or help them grow up.
And Kadra’s boys had many difficult questions of their own. Some were basic: How would they pay rent? Buy food and gas and pay for football and soccer, school supplies and field trips?
But the hardest questions were of the heart, asked in the moments when these four boys feared she wouldn’t survive and they would be lost.
Who would love them? How would they grow up to be the impressive men their mother hoped they would be?
***
Taib and Tyler believed their mother’s “survival instinct” would clobber the cancer. She was the human embodiment, says Taib, “of where there is a will, there’s a way.”
She’d taught her four boys how to take care of themselves, in large part, because she’d had to fend for herself when she was young.
Kadra was from a wealthy Somali family that lived in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. When she was around 12, she and her younger sister were sent to Canada with their older brother in search of a better education.
But while in Ottawa, their brother learned he was terminally ill. He placed his sisters with the Children’s Aid Society and left for Africa to die alone. He never told their mother where the girls were. All family ties were severed and the sisters were lost to their family. Abandoned to foster care, they did not find opportunities greater than they would have had in Ethiopia.
Kadra was still a teenager when she met the man with whom she would have four sons. When the relationship ended she raised the boys on her own, determined to give them all she’d never had.
And before she fell ill it seemed that she would.
Taib, in second-year at Carleton University, studies political science. He paid for most of his school through awards, bursaries, loans and a part-time job as a clerk. Thoughtful, soft-spoken and responsible, he is the man of the house. But it is a role he shares with Tyler, a year younger.
Tyler’s top marks at Nepean High School earned him a full scholarship to the University of Ottawa, where he takes conflict studies and human rights. Like Taib, he played football, and also earned a black belt in karate. He tutors learning disabled students.
Lanky Jamal, mature beyond his years, is in middle French immersion at D. Roy Kennedy Public School, plays the bass and football. Bilal, with an infectious and toothless smile, plays soccer and steals hearts.
Kadra insisted on strong morals and good judgment. “She always told us, ‘Have friends that will make you better. And if they need your help, be there to raise them up but don’t hang out with people that bring you down,’” Taib says.
She would take on more work to give her boys opportunities, like when Tyler was earning his black belt.
She also expected much from her boys. Taib and Tyler cared for their younger brothers by picking them up after school and taking them to practices and playgrounds. They pitched in to cook and clean.
By all accounts they are good boys. “She did a wonderful job raising them,” says her friend, real estate agent Cheryl Brouse. “They hug each other to say ‘hello,’ they are so polite and decent, hard working.”
Last fall, Brouse recalls sitting with Kadra watching their boys play football. “She talked about how much she loved them. How she would do anything for them. Then the cancer.”
***
As Kadra’s younger sister arrived from Ajax to help the boys, parents in the Churchill school community prepared meals, bought groceries, gave rides to practice, raised money to cover rent and gas.
Taib calls them “angels.”
“Every time I think what they have done for us I get so emotional. I don’t know any of these people. They have been the biggest blessing of my life.”
With practical worries taken care of they focused on their mom.
At her strongest, Kadra danced with Bilal down the hospital hallways, laughing and singing, sharing her hospital Jell-O, while shielding her sons from crippling “pain crises.”
“In her heart, I think she thought she was going to die,” says Taib.
Whenever the older boys expressed hope, she urged them to be “realistic.”
She coached them on how to keep the house functioning and care for Jamal and Bilal. She reminded them to eat healthy and make school their highest priority.
She asked Tyler, “Can you promise me you won’t get angry with the world if I’m gone?”
***
In early March, Kadra’s breathing became laboured. Her lungs were like hallways, ever narrowing.
Her sharp mind dulled and she confused easily. Chemotherapy had not stopped the spread. The cancer was in her brain.
Taib and Tyler finally understood their mother was dying.
“I told her I loved her as much as I could,” says Taib.
Kadra’s sister moved mountains to bring their elderly mother to Ottawa. They had reconnected a few years earlier after finding relatives in Toronto. Kadra was barely conscious when her mother, who she had not seen in 30 years, arrived to embrace her long-lost daughter. But she made it.
Little Bilal, too, came to say goodbye.
Say Taib, “I didn’t want to take the chance away from him to see her. When we were leaving, I said, ‘Give mama a kiss.’”
He sent Jamal in by himself. “I told him that even though she is asleep right now, she can still hear you. And he told her everything he ever wanted to say.”
She died the next day, Saturday, March 17.
***
Taib confesses he is overwhelmed. He talks of meeting lawyers, insurance adjusters, social workers, teachers and school administrators. He and Tyler, who have maintained full course loads, must take exams and write papers that were deferred.
Sadness infuses everything.
“Our biggest challenge is dealing with our grief and not knowing how to,” Taib says quietly. “We have so many emotions and we don’t know if they are the right emotions or the wrong emotions.
“I feel like my life could explode because mom did everything and now it’s up to me.”
Tyler says they try to wrap the younger boys in their mother’s lingering love. They have Bilal say ‘Good morning’ to their mother, and at night, he tells her about his day.
There are still significant unknowns, especially around where the boys will live, and how they will support themselves.
Parents and staff from Churchill and D. Roy Kennedy schools have set up a trust fund to help with immediate costs, and maybe even help send Kadra’s two youngest to university one day. So far $10,900 has been raised, while raffles and bake sales are planned.
The boys’ grandmother, on a six-month visa, is getting to know her grandsons.
“She tells us that she saw her daughter for only two days, but at least she left four pieces of her.”
Four sons. Four brothers. Four lost boys.
Taib pulls out the picture of his mother from last August, the one that hinted at all that would happen. He looks at it hard before asking more piercing questions.
“How is anyone else going to ever know us the way our mom did? How is anyone ever going to love us the way our mom did? How is anyone going to care for us the way our mom did? I don’t want to trap myself into this negative thinking, but the truth is no one else can do this for us.”
See the link about the trust fund set up for the boys.
http://kadra-koulmiye.ca/
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
