A Morinville woman is commemorating Remembrance Day with a special type of poppy – a handmade one.
Lauri Allen, 45, joined the military in 1998 and has been posted in Manitoba, Ontario and Alberta. She also completed three tours overseas.
Her first, in Israel, was a six-month peacekeeping mission that she calls an “eye-opener.” Then, from 2006 to 2007, she did a tour in Afghanistan and Dubai – one that would change her life.
Allen, who worked for the operations centre, saw 13 fallen soldiers sent home during that tour. One was a soldier named Darryl.
“I was asking him what it’s like to be combat camera, what is involved. He was explaining it all and telling me what was involved. Then two days later, I’m sending him home,” she said.
“It’s so unreal. It just kept coming and coming. It just didn’t seem like we were going to stop sending soldiers home.”
Allen describes that tour as a dark period in her life.
“There would be days after the repatriations, I would be so numb. I would just go back to my room and I would just sit and cry for hours.”
When she returned from her tour, she started battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“Things were haunting me. I didn’t even know what to do. I didn’t know if I was going crazy,” she said.
“I’m a prisoner in my own body, in my own mind.”
To cope, Allen crochets and when Remembrance Day rolls around, she crochets poppies.
“I needed to do it to distract my mind. It makes me feel good that I can give back. It’s definitely a therapy for me,” she said.
Allen makes poppies for those in uniform who have fallen, including soldiers from the Second World War and Afghanistan, RCMP officers who have battled mental illness and soldiers who died in training exercises. She then attaches information about those in uniform who have fallen to each poppy, including their hometown, where they were when they died and the context of their death.
“It’s an honour but it hurts.”
“Each and every single stitch I do, I’m thinking about the soldier or whoever. I’m thinking about them every time I make a poppy.”
The soldier calls Remembrance Day “extremely hard” and has not attended a ceremony for two years.
“It is so difficult for me to see people in uniform, to be in crowds, to hear Amazing Grace, to hear the Last Post,” she said.
But this year, she decided she would attend the service in Morinville.
“I need to face this. I can do this.”
Allen attended the service with the help of a friend, staying away from the crowd but close enough to watch some of the ceremony. Her pain was visible on her face and she closed her eyes at times.
But there were moments when she smiled, like when she noticed those around her were wearing her crocheted poppies.
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