"In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make."
- The Beatles
A few weeks before she died, Amy Doolittle wrote that line in her monthly e-mail chronicles of her fight with ALS. Over a period of five years her diaries and comments were followed by friends, relatives and colleagues in different parts of the world. She described her moods, celebrated her life - even as it became more and more difficult - and railed, to the end, against a system that denies choice to victims of debilitating, fatal illnesses.
This was an important issue for Amy: She was active in Dying With Dignity, and she and her daughter made a TV presentation to further that organization's goals.
Amy was a vibrant and outspoken person all her life. The youngest of four children of Joyce and Quenten Doolittle, when she was a child her brother and two sisters were intrigued by this little person who talked back to the television, confiscated their belongings and named all the squirrels in the backyard of their big old family home in Calgary.
Being a musical family, the Doolittle children all chose instruments and took lessons, but finding an instrument was difficult for Amy, who rejected both the piano and the violin and decided her husky contralto precluded a classical music career. She finally settled on the flute and studied with renowned teachers, including Robert Aitken. She especially liked to play in small ensembles, and championed new music.
Amy never doubted that life in art was best. She collected a bachelor of music degree in Victoria along with the first of her three husbands. "I love being married," she said. Then she lived with her second spouse and her daughter, Carolyn Hyde, near Haliburton Lake, Ont.
In Mississauga she settled with her third mate, Don Dickson, a mechanic and welder with a hobby of making metal sculptures and jewellery. It was characteristic of Amy to convince Don to quit his day job and to devote himself full time to art. Together they formed Metalgenesis, which took them around the world with sound sculpture, commissions, sculpture symposiums and public-art installations. They also founded 2 Music Studio, a professional duo performing folk, classical and Celtic music. Amy and Don recorded two CDs, 2 Music Live and Everything So Far, the latter produced after Amy's ALS diagnosis, but before the disease left her too impaired to perform.
As a testimony to her gift for friendship and a tribute to the courage of her last years, hundreds gathered to celebrate her life in a ceremony for which, of course, she had left detailed and precise instructions.
Joyce Doolittle is Amy's mother.