Falling Backwards: A Memoir (36 page)

I went home afterwards and waited on pins and more pins to hear back from Neil about what Allan thought. It was an eternity. It was longer than an eternity.

I found out later from Neil that Allan had listened carefully and hadn’t commented at all. He’d just sat there looking at me and bobbing his
head back and forth. At the end, as they made their way out of the theatre, Allan said to Neil, “Let’s make a record.”

Neil had done what he had told me he was going to do five years earlier—help me navigate the complex world of the music business. He called me later that night to tell me the good news.

“You just got a record deal, Jann. Congratulations.”

I hung up the phone and cried for hours.

I was nearly thirty years old.

I was in a wonderful, beautiful, blissful state of shock. It took days, if not weeks, for the whole thing to settle in. I walked down the street with my feet barely touching the ground. My parents were beyond happy for me. My mom told me that she always knew I could do it. My dad was excited too. He wanted to know about the practical side of things, contracts and the like. I knew he would be looking out for me, and that he wouldn’t take any crap from anybody. I was glad to have him on my side. Neil told me that we had a lot of challenges ahead of us, and that the real work was about to begin. I didn’t care how much work it was going to be. I was willing to do whatever I needed to do to succeed.

But just as excitement and happiness swept over my entire family, pain and anguish were on their heels.

I had seen my brother Duray a few days before we got the call. He had decided to move to a little town in British Columbia a couple of months after getting out of jail, where he’d been for something minor. He phoned to tell us that he was coming back to Calgary to pick up some of the things that he’d left behind and wanted to meet us all for dinner. Patrick and mom and dad and I met him at Boston Pizza. We had a good visit. We laughed a lot. My mom and dad
thought that maybe this would finally be the end of his problems. He was moving away and making a fresh start. He seemed in good spirits, happy to be free and moving forward. He was excited about his new job and his apartment. He was so happy and excited for me. He was so proud.

“You’re gonna be a star, Jannie. You’re gonna be rich!”

Duray explained he wanted to go somewhere where nobody knew him, and I can’t say I blame him for that. He had so much baggage in Calgary. The police followed him around like a jilted lover. He couldn’t do anything without them breathing down his neck. We ate our pizza, visited some more, and then we all went outside to say goodbye. Mom and dad and Pat and I stood and waved to him as he pulled out of the parking lot onto Sarcee Trail. He had no muffler on his car, and there was a huge plume of black smoke trailing behind him as he hit the gas.

It was the last time I saw him free.

A few days later the RCMP called my parents at home and told them that Duray had been arrested for the first-degree murder of a young woman named Carrie Marshall.

Our lives stopped. Everything stopped. I worried that my parents would die right then and there, but they didn’t. They broke into a million tiny fragments of themselves, but they didn’t die. They kept standing. They are still standing.

It hit the news the following day. We had thirty or forty calls to the house from people we hardly knew, all wanting the gory details. We wanted to disappear.

My brother has denied having anything to do with the murder since the day he was arrested. The RCMP had no other suspects
but him. They didn’t look for anybody else. They said they had their man.

—

Life is so random.

It picks you up and drops you off wherever it likes.

It breaks your heart into tiny shards of glass.

It humbles you.

You cling to love like it is the very last breath of air you will ever take.

I do.

For every line I have written down here, there are a thousand lines in between. There are so many moments that are floating through time and space that I will never be able to save or document. I don’t think they’re gone, I just don’t think they’re mine anymore. They belong to God. They belong to the incredible force of will that made me and made Duray and made Patrick and my mother and father.

My memories are strings of lights wrapped around everyone I have ever known and loved.

I know that all of this, all of what is around me, will be taken away, but also I know that what is truly important to our humanity is indelible and eternal. We may not be able to touch it, but it’s there just the same.

What a journey.

To have been here at all has been remarkable.

To have lived.

To have lived.

My brother Duray has been in jail for twenty years. He is married with one son and three stepchildren. He continues to fight to prove his innocence
.

Patrick is a successful businessman in the petroleum industry. He has two amazing sons, one who has cystic fibrosis and the other who suffers from severe autism. They are both doing well, despite their challenges
.

My mom and dad live fifty feet from me on an acreage we share, five miles from where I grew up with Leonard and Dale. They are healthy and well and truly amazing souls. They are my heart. My dad has been sober for over thirty years
.

I have been with Universal Records for twenty years. I have made eleven albums and am about to make my twelfth. I wrote a book called
Falling Backwards,
and I am really proud of it
.

Thank you to my wonderful, kind-hearted, exceptionally brilliant editor, Michelle MacAleese, for making me feel like a real writer and making sense of my meanderings. And to Anne Collins and everyone at Random House of Canada for their hard work on this book.

To Michael Schellenberg, for starting this whole project off …

Thanks to my manager, Bruce Allen, to Jo Faloona and everyone at Bruce Allen Talent for their attention to detail, support, and enthusiasm for not only this, but everything I take on.

Thank you to my assistant, Chris Brunton, for making my life easy, organized and a lot of fun!

I would like to thank my family and my friends and everyone I have written about in this book … Thank you for being such a beautiful and inspirational part of my life.

Jann

Since releasing her debut album in 1993, Jann Arden has had seventeen top-ten singles from eight albums including “I Would Die for You,” “Could I Be Your Girl” and “Insensitive.” Winner of eight Junos and recipient of the National Achievement Award from SOCAN, Arden was also inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and was the winner of the International Achievement Award at the 2007 Western Canadian Music Awards. She is the author of
If I Knew, Don’t You Think I’d Tell You?
and
I’ll Tell You One Damn Thing, and That’s All I Know!