Watch above: Global’s Tracy Nagai begins a three-part series on grief with the story of a young man killed by a drunk driver, and his family’s struggle to move on.
CALGARY – On New Year’s Day 2014, Grace Pesa lost her son, Francis, to a drunk driver. The 20-year-old spent five days in hospital before dying in front of his family. It’s a scene Pesa thinks of often as she tries to deal with her grief.
“He would just cry,” said Pesa. “His tears would just be falling. And that’s why I know he was with us. Up to the very last second he was shedding tears.”
Too depressed to leave her home, Pesa and her husband stopped working for many months.
“Our oldest son literally became the provider of the family. And he was only 22 then,” she said. “He was paying for our mortgage. He was paying all the utility bills.”
The three-year sentence for Kulwinder Singh Chohan devastated the family.
Pesa now advocates for mandatory minimum sentences—a temporary distraction from her all-consuming pain.
The Calgary Police Service Victim Assistance Support Team (VAST) receives 11,000 files per year, trying to help people through tragedies such as Pesa’s.
Police Sgt. Brent Hutt says initially a lot of the people he works with think once they reach a certain point in the justice system, they’ll feel better.
“So for example, once there’s a conviction, that will help…Once their sentencing is complete, that will help,” said Hutt.
“I have a lot of people tell me that didn’t really meet their needs of what they thought their needs were going to be.”
Experts suggest there’s no one formula for how people navigate through loss.
Though psychologists use a working model for the five stages of loss, they admit many people go back and forth through the stages for the rest of their lives.
“The idea is being aware of your emotions,” said Ruddell. “Not keeping it in and bottling it up and diluting yourself, thinking everything is better than it really is. As long as you can be genuine and understand your emotions and work through them, it doesn’t matter what you’re experiencing and feeling.”
READ MORE: Social media and grief – how we experience loss is changing
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