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Suddenly, swine flu has a face.
A sweet, all-Canadian, little-boy face.
Evan Frustaglio's face.
Suddenly, swine flu is no longer medi-speak -- H1N1 -- or vague projections or vaccine debates or something that happens in Mexico.
Not since Evan Frustaglio, 13, collapsed in his dad's arms and died of the flu.
A bit close to home, eh?
Look at that face. You know it, or one like it. That face says hockey and Halloween and Harry Potter. My boy Jackson, 19, looked much the same six years ago.
"My son," says Paul Frustaglio, 46, trying to keep it together, "my son loved his family, he loved hockey, he loved his friends. He was the happiest he'd ever been in his life."
Paul is slumped on his front steps. A hockey net is off to one side, sticks piled on top.
This is a leafy corner of Etobicoke. An all-Canadian neighbourhood. Not too plain, not too ritzy. Maybe like your neighbourhood.
Recess is in full swing at the school across the street.
Good people live in this stucco home. You can always tell. No blade of grass out of place, not a paving stone ajar. The windows gleam. Evan's brother Will, 10, peers from one of them. (He and his parents are on flu serum, as a precaution.)
The lad is distraught, says his dad. Few things are worse than losing your big brother.
Out front, pumpkins glower amid cornstalks and straw bales, and ghosts sway from lamp posts, awaiting Halloween.
Evan helped Will and their mom, Ann-Marie, 40, a surgery nurse, put up those decorations two weekends ago.
That day, he and his dad cleared the backyard, ready for the skating rink Paul builds every year. As Walter Gretzky did for Wayne, maybe the way your father did for you.
The rink will rise again, for Will's sake. But the Frustaglios will take down the Halloween decor, says Paul. They're just not up to it. Not after what happened. Not after the last conversation Paul ever had with his oldest boy:
"Evan, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm just going to the bathroom, Dad."
"You sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine, Dad."
'Lightning bolt'
But he wasn't. Five minutes later, Paul found him lying on the floor. He helped him up, but Evan collapsed again. This time for good. His dad tried CPR, paramedics worked on him, the docs at St. Joseph's pumped him full of drugs. But he was gone.
"Like a lightning bolt," says his dad, stunned by fate's sudden turn.
On Saturday, they were at a hockey tournament in London, for crying out loud. Evan is, was, a speedy right winger for the AA Mississauga North Stars, and before that the AAA Senators.
Evan complained of a sore neck and throat, and on Sunday he still felt lousy, but a walk-in clinic sent him home. The old standby: "Flu-like symptoms."
That night, he threw up four or five times and his dad stayed home with him Monday. The fever seemed to fall. The boy took a bath and his dad bundled him back in bed.
That last banter between father and son happened as Paul was calling the family doctor. There was just something he didn't like. His son was fit and strong. He should have felt better sooner.
The end came around 11 a.m.
"He was with me, then he wasn't," says his dad.
Fate is a trickster. Paul and Ann-Marie, who help run a Markham clinic that screens for colon cancer, get flu shots for their family every year. H1N1 shots were in the works.
The cruel twist, the lesson to parents, is not lost on Paul Frustaglio. So he answered every media call yesterday, never begged off.
Over and over: Don't panic, but don't ignore your kid's symptoms, either. If he's sick, don't send him to school. Rest. Wash your hands.
On Bill Carroll's CFRB show it got pretty gripping -- two dads choking up, one in pain, one in sympathy.
"He was a wonderful boy," Paul managed to say. "Twenty-four hours ago, he was talking with his dad and now he's not here and it doesn't seem right at all."
If any good can possibly come of this, it is that Evan's death has shocked us into taking this pandemic, or whatever the hell it is, seriously.
"Maybe it's not a high percentage," says Frustaglio family friend Anthony Cella, "but there's a chance.
"I mean if it can happen to Evan, a good, strong boy ..."
A boy who has put a face on our fears.
Mike Strobel's column runs Wednesday to Friday, and Sunday. 416-947-2265 or mike.strobel@sunmedia.ca