"By all accounts she was on her way to healing, having a job she loved and a relationship that was blossoming.
She was at the prime of her life, albeit a life full of struggles and triumphs.
But on the early morning of Tuesday, August 3, 2016, Rani Rivera’s lifeless body’s was found by Toronto police in her bathroom floor and her depression medications all around her.
She was 35.
For the family and parents Joe and Patria (Patty), that was the end of her journey. “… (T)he broken type of journey where she experiences so many different disappointments, struggles and dealing with relationships,” mother Patty said after her death.
Until she discovered her writings in her computer. Poems that she never knew existed until her boyfriend gave her Rani’s computer, just a month after her death.
Patty, an accomplished and published poet knew Rani shared her passion for poetry.
But to find more than a 100 poems written in 10 years overwhelmed her, she told The Catholic Register in an interview during the launching of Rani’s book ‘All Violet’.
“It’s like a young woman’s journey and hers is not of a typical, straight-laced young woman,” she said.
“Rani had a real, lifelong struggle with finding her identity and finding what she really wanted in life… but in the end, she found that it was not in seeking happiness for herself but it was in seeking happiness and wellbeing for others that she could find happiness. I think that’s one lesson I got from her.”
Patty knew he had to fulfill Rani’s dream to be a poet and went to work with her contacts.
The result was All Violet, published by Dagger Editions, an imprint of Caitlin Press in Vancouver in September 2017, a year after her death. All proceeds of the book benefit Progress Place."
-Ted Alcuitas