Celebration in Honour of the Life of Anne Schlenker McBryde (May 16, 2026) “I love you all the time/ And I’ll love you forever.”

On April 30 of last year, when Anne and I celebrated our 46th anniversary of conjugal life  by feasting on Ottawa’s finest Chinese food,  Anne was herself: healthy, feisty, full of life.

 

The following week she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive, incurable, and lethal form of brain cancer.

 

Anne had emergency brain surgery on Monday, May 12. Her last words to me before entering the operating room were, “I love you all the time. And I’ll love you forever.”

The operation lasted about five hours and was deemed a “success” in so far as the surgical team managed to remove as much of the large malignant tumour as possible without causing her to become physically disabled or speech impaired, or to “lose” her personality, at least not right away.

 

She left the hospital lucid, gentle, and sometimes very funny.

 

The large, malignant growth in and swelling of her brain ironically resulted in her becoming less anxious and more mellow.

 

Immediately after the operation, when the highly skilled surgical team asked her where she was, Anne replied, “China.” (Those of you who knew Anne will recognize her fascination with Asia.)

 

We were even able to laugh about our nightmarish  six-day pre-op stay in the hospital, which included Anne being parked for nearly four days and nights in a bizarre dome-like holding pen, which resembled a refugee camp in Bedlam.

 

Her inherent kindness, tolerance, and dignity, along with the location of the tumour, led Anne to handle the horrific diagnosis and prognosis, as well as the degrading and unhealthful conditions of her pre-op and post-op confinement with equanimity, grace, and good humour.

 

She would wolf the bland and mushy hospital food with gusto and good appetite that astonished and tickled staff and family members alike, and she never complained about the fellow patients interred in the ER overflow holding pen, even those who whinnied and bleated or snored like Vesuvius erupting throughout the entire night in adjacent cots separated from her miniscule cubicle  by the thinnest of curtains.

 

You will find a picture of Anne about 12 hours after surgery was completed. She was preparing to single-mindedly devour some delicious hospital fare.

And she no longer believed that she was in China.

 

The tragically hip and the tragical blip: Anne faces glioblastoma

 

We soon learned that Anne had a life expectancy of about 12 to 18 months.

 

About 1,000 Canadians per year fall victim to glioblastoma (GBM), this cruel affliction, i.e. approximately 3 per 100,000 people.

 

Anne drew the short straw, the square of paper with the black dot.

Anne also learned that Gord Downie, an iconic Canadian rock legend and front man for the group The Tragically Hip, was felled by this scourge.

Until she was stricken , Anne had never heard of Gord Downie or The Tragically Hip. We had lived far away from Canada frequently in recent years and were residents of Quebec province for nearly 45 years –  including 35 years in Quebec City – so we’d been outside the English-Canadian loop for a very long time.

 

Anne may not have been up on The Tragically Hip, but she had practically memorized all the novels of Jane Austen, having devoured them, like she came to gobble hospital meatloaf, dozens of times per year. In fact, Anne also memorized huge chunks of poetry and prose in the course of her lifetime, including “The Lady of Shallot”, numerous poems by Leonard Cohen, swathes of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Haiku poetry, The Importance of Being Earnest, and so much more besides.

She would have made a fine librarian or library technician, a vocation that she pursued in Vancouver before being displaced to Quebec by a French-Canadian love interest in 1977.

 

Anne could rhyme off the entire lineage of the British monarchy, starting in early medieval times, and would do so, unprompted, after a glass or two of wine.

 

She also loved Fawlty Towers. Our particular personal code was laden with Fawlty Towers quotes and references. From The Life of Brian too.

Given that she invariably experienced buyer’s remorse, Anne always shopped at Simons, and was known to be so startled by the jarring sound of a cell phone that she hurled the offending device across the waiting room of a bus depot.

Anne was “no logo”; she never wore garments garnished with slogans, as opposed to her ridiculous husband.

 

People frequently told her that she looked like the writer Virginia Woolf and the singer Celine Dion.

There were also those who made gratuitous, unwelcome comments about her height such as, “Aren’t you a tall girl.” “How tall are you?”

 

Or her weight :“How much do you weigh?”  “You’re awfully thin !”

 

“What would you like me to do about it?” She had taken to ask.

 

Our sons called her “couth” and found her endearingly quirky. Since English was not her first language, she sometimes garbled common expressions, pronounced words in the Slovak way, and used vocabulary from Jane Austen or other 19th century authors.

 

She never told anybody to “Have a good one,” and joked that my English-Canadian manners and mannerisms were “nauseatingly friendly.” She could be untragically flip!

 

She loved decorating homes, her own and those of others.

 

Anne spoke six languages and was a certified translator, working from French to English. She also worked as a counsellor and tutor for Indigenous students of the Quebec Cree Nation for a number of years during the 1990s, the favourite professional pursuit of her lifetime.

 

As mentioned, Anne and I lived in Quebec City for over 35 years, and we resided  in Montreal for about 6 years after I retired from teaching college English. We were also residents of Dijon and Menton (France) for the better part of 5 years before moving to Ottawa toward the end of her life.

Anne loved travelling and throughout her lifetime spent a great deal of time in Mexico, much of Central and South America (with her French-Canadian boyfriend), and a numerous European countries, in particular her beloved France.

 

She carried her Eastern European heritage within her like an undigested lump.

 

Her life was anything but easy:

 

On August 21,1968, her country was invaded by the Soviet Union. The invasion of Czechoslovakia took place the day before Anne’s 10th birthday.

The experience of the Soviet invasion left Anne with what was diagnosed as ongoing symptoms of post traumatic stress. For obvious reasons, she also suffered from separation anxiety, claustrophobia, and a mortal fear of confinement as well as from severe trigeminal neuralgia which made it impossible for her to tolerate earrings or necklaces, any form of face covering, or even gusts of wind. These caused her excruciating pain.

 

In the wake of the Soviet invasion of her country, her family emigrated to Canada with no money or possessions. None of them spoke a word of English when they arrived in Vancouver in the fall of 1968.

 

Anne’s dedication to struggles for social justice and human rights stemmed from her childhood trauma. She was a woman of great strength and courage and I loved her to death.

 

Anne was the true artist in our home. She developed a unique aesthetic, creating  pared-down floral arrangements, which others have defined as reminiscent of Japanese Ikebana.

She had never heard of Ikebana until this affinity was pointed out.

 

Anne despised clutter. She often deemed herself “constipated,” metaphorically speaking of course.

 

In short, Anne was a complex human being, as are we all, and she has left this vale of tears, as will be our common fate.

 

She has left her mark in the areas of art and social justice, but most of all in the midst of our cherished friends and immediate family.

 

During the past year, we savoured every moment that we had left by her side.

 

Her time with us was too short, but very funny; and we won’t allow her time on earth to be any sort of tragical blip.

 

Our family is asking that kind readers consider making a donation to the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada. I have created a page for Anne and will walk for her and all other victims of this scourge on June 6 during the annual Brain Tumour Walk . See Anne’s page here:

https://btfc.akaraisin.com/ui/BTW2026/p/RobertMcBryde

 

If you feel like reading more about Anne’s cancer journey, I’ve chronicled it in prose and poetry here:

https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/news/

 

Your friend,

Robert

https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News

, , , , , , , , , , , ,