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In Loving Memory of
Agnieszka Kinga Nyvik
January 18, 1970 – May 13, 2007
Agnieszka (also known as Aggie), my beloved wife and mother of our boy Zachery, died at age 37 after a four year battle with breast cancer. She carried her crosses and left Earth to be with her Lord and Savior, Jesus.
The name Agnieszka is Polish in origin derived from the Greek word, “hagnos” meaning, “clean”, “saint”, “pure”, “without scratch”. Her name suited her perfectly.
Agnieszka was born on January 18, 1970 in Kolo, Poland to Michal Tomasz Zielinski and Malgorzata Danuta Lisowska. Michal was a building engineer from Poznan. He met Malgorzata in Kolo, Poland when he was on a work project. They married and lived in Konin (a small city 30 km from Kolo) and then at Aggie’s age 2, the family moved to Poznan.
Agnieszka received her Masters degree in Biology from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan in 1994 (the university was founded in 1519 by Bishop Jan Lubrañski). After graduation she worked a few months with the Red Cross Blood Bank in Poznan. As this wasn’t the kind of work she enjoyed, she got her teaching certificate and taught English to children aged 10 to 14. But as the wages were low and there were no other opportunities, she decided to leave Poland. With a backpack, suitcase and hope, she went to New York. Her uncle Mirek picked her up at the airport and took her to their home in Trenton, New Jersey. She lived with Mirek and his wife Agnes for one month, then went to Pennsylvania where she was babysitting two boys (ages 4 and 1). After six months she moved to New York City. She found an apartment in Brooklyn where she lived for 3 ½ years.
In 1998, Agnieszka broke up with her boyfriend. She bought a Mac computer and got set up on America On-Line. Agnieszka was thinking of moving – maybe Australia or New Zealand; maybe West coat of Canada. Someone told her that Vancouver was beautiful, so she did a search on AOL and found me in September 1998 – her first search!! We talked every night on the phone for three months. And then I flew to New York and spent three weeks with her. But she knew even before she laid her eyes on me, that we were meant to be together. For me, it was when she made me dessert, that’s when I knew she was the one.
When I arrived in New York, the movie, “You’ve Got Mail” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had just come out. That movie is about a couple that met through the internet – like us. The movie was made in New York and many of the places were the same places we walked, the same romantic Italian restaurant we had dinner, the Lincoln Centre theatre room was in the same room as when they went to a movie, etc. To us, this was like a sign from heaven saying we were destined to be together. And it made our time all that more special.
When I left after those three weeks, I felt incomplete. My world was turned upside down and no longer made sense. I was aching for her. When I was back home, the bed was too empty and I couldn’t sleep. From that night, the only thought was that of bringing her home to me where she belonged.
As soon as I left, Agnieszka was packing – she mailed most of her stuff to my parent’s home and then gave everything else away. She bought her wedding dress and when it was done, she flew to Poznan to start the task of getting a church to marry us. This was no easy ordeal as I was a Lutheran – at that time it was almost unheard of for a Catholic girl to marry a non-Catholic in a Polish church). Her home church would not marry us – it took many priests and many bribe attempts to find someone to agree to marry us. Three times I had to delay my flight to Poznan. But ultimately she found a parish that would marry us. Since it was all arranged at the last minute, there was no big wedding party; just close family members invited. Our church wedding was on May 1, 1999. One of the best parts of the wedding was when we went to a special shop for wedding pictures – they put us in positions to pose us and we had such a good time. We then went for a family dinner at the Hotel Poznan – the fanciest hotel in the city. I must have caught something on the plane as the evening of the dinner I was getting very weak. The rest of my trip I was in bed extremely sick. But it was ok as Aggie was taking care of me.
Back then there was a waiting period for when you apply to marry to when you have permission to get married. So we were not able to arrange for the civil wedding during that trip. I had to fly back to Poznan since the church wedding didn’t count for Canadian immigration purposes. Our civil wedding was at the town hall on July 3rd, 1999. Agnieszka wore a white dress and had colored her hair – to me this was the image I always had of her – my beautiful blondie. She was the most beautiful woman I had seen in my life and she took my breath away. I was so happy to be her husband. After our civil wedding, we took the train to Warsaw to go deal with the immigration problems. In one day we saw the manager of the Canadian Consulate and found out what was missing (thank you Sven Robinson – he made calls for us to get things moving with the consulate and immigration). We then went to the Central Police office and visited the Director. She was so uncooperative – but I opened her door, walked right into her office and sat down. Agnieszka translated for me and though she tried to kick us out, in the end, she decided to help us. Then it was a matter of paying money and we got the documents needed and took them to the Canadian consulate. On August 17, 1999, Agnieszka came to Vancouver.
A week after her arrival we started looking to find a place to live. We found our first home at Suite #1805 – 1331 Alberni Street (“The Lions”). It was a one bedroom condo, some 600 square feet and rent was $1,100 per month. To me that place was wonderful. I came home every day for lunch and we’d watch, “All My Children” cuddled together on the couch.
Aggie had a desire for a professional career. I remember working together with her creating a resume and then looking for work in pharmaceutical sales. Even though I had an MBA classmate in that field, we had no luck. As Aggie was a very talented artist, our thoughts turned to graphics illustration and design work. She took graphics and web design courses at BCIT in Burnaby. You know I think she finished the program but don’t think we applied for the associate certificate.
As to children, my plan was that we’d wait for maybe 5 years until I could afford a down payment for a house. But in looking at Aggie, I knew something was missing from her life. So we decided to go for it. The very next day Aggie knew she was pregnant – and nine months later Zachery was born! When I held him, I couldn’t believe we waited so long. Zachery was exactly what was missing to make our lives complete.
Those were the best of times. I remember how magical it was to take Zachery in the stroller around the seawall with Aggie hand in hand as the sun was about to set. But Zachery grew quickly and in a few years we had to move to give him more space so he could move around.
In September 2002, we bought a townhouse at Unit 20 – 6577 Southoaks Crescent in Burnaby. We had looked all over the area around the Patterson, Royal Oak and Edmonds Sky train stations. We were thinking of renting because we had no money to make a down payment. We actually put money down to rent a place on Elwell Street, but my parents said no way. Then they decided to help us out by loaning us $25,000 for a down payment. We were tired of looking and then my dad came across the place which became our home.
It was a few months later that Aggie was complaining about a lump in her breast. But her doctor, Claire Cameron, told her cancer wasn’t like that – it was simply plugged milk ducts. But the hardness in her breast continued to grow bigger. We went back to the doctor as the lump was getting so big that it wasn’t comfortable for Aggie to sleep on her breast. She told us to massage the lump and not worry. We even went to Zachery’s doctor who arranged for a biopsy at St. Paul’s hospital. Unfortunately they didn’t take a large enough sample so it came back negative.
Aggie went to Poland that summer. And when she came back, we went to the doctor to arrange for a surgeon to get what felt like a rock out of her breast. Dr. Cameron referred us to Dr. Noelle Davis. Dr. Davis took one look and said it was definitely cancer. We got into the cancer agency within two days, took another biopsy and ultrasound and met with Dr. Kennecke. He confirmed the worst – that it was cancer and that it wasn’t early. We both cried – it was one of the saddest days of our life.
It was here when Aggie picked up her crosses and when things went from bad to worse. Aggie fought for a cure trying all sorts of treatments – the traditional route of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation, to alternative medicine – she’d take forty or fifty pills breakfast lunch and dinner, to naturopathic treatment, to qi-gong healing, to praying the rosary every night and meeting with the Bishop of Opus Dei, and lastly doing some terrible remedies.
In the midst of the chaos, Jesus granted her peace and gave her the strength to make it to the end.
Aggie was my love, my soulmate, my angel – the person I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with. She was a fantastic wife. She was an incredible mother. And she was a loving and faithful daughter. The inscription on her burial marker is, Kohanna mama i zona – loving mother and wife.
Burial:
Ocean View Burial Park, Burnaby
British Columbia, Canada
Plot: Plot #500, Section: Superior; Grave #5
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