Big Sky Day

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 was a pretty big day for Verna Marzo. And also for everyone she shared it with, for reasons that will become clear. Here’s how it all went down.

5:30 AM

Many of Verna’s days begin this way – eat, pray, exercise (lots and lots of situps). But not all in that order, and not this early. Can’t be helped. She’s scheduled to be at the jump zone at 11, and there’s a lot of blacktop between her apartment in Southwest Calgary and the skydiving outfit in Beiseker.

Verna’s mother, Avelina, who’s visiting from the Philippines, whips up breakfast for the both of them: toast with peanut butter, a mango, a pot of tea.

Verna hadn’t told her mom about this skydiving thing until a few days ago. She didn’t want to worry her. Avelina’s a bit of a Nervous Nelly when it comes to her daughter. Then again, it’s understandable. Avelina has seen Verna through trials most people cannot even conceive of.

Weather forecast: Sunny, a little hazy from area wildfires, a light wind. Good to go.

9am

Nearby, in their own homes, supporters are getting ready to go watch Verna jump. The cheering section, eight in all, includes friends from Vancouver, Ontario and Australia.

In the car, Verna’s mom is very quiet. Verna knows she is praying.

Usually, when people do scary things, the run-up is as nerve-wracking as the thing itself, if not worse. So Verna ought to be getting major butterflies now. But she isn’t. One reason: she’s done this once before. She and her bestie, Leah, and a couple other friends and her sister, took the plunge a decade ago. But things were different then for Verna. In fact, her life then and her life now were about as far apart as two parts of a life can be.

11am

Arrival at Extreme Skydive Calgary. Windsocks at 45 degrees. Looks borderline too gusty to fly but the flight instructors say no problem. It’s a great day to fall from the sky.

Verna’s instructor, who she’ll be strapped to in this tandem jump, is an Aussie named Scotty Rumble. He has more than 1700 jumps under his groovy belt. (On twenty five of them his main chute failed and he had to deploy the reserve. The fact that he considered this more a nuisance than a worry tells you all you need to know about his temperament.) Scotty has taken people with disabilities skydiving before, even amputees. But never a four-limb amputee.

“Have you ever skydived?” he asks Verna in the lounge area. Verna allows that she has, once, around ten years ago. That was in the beforetimes.

A waiver is placed in front of her. “Time to sign your life away.”

The thumb and finger of Verna’s prosthetic hand come together to grasp the pen. (She has to look at the pen to accomplish this. Without the visual conformation that the pen’s in position, the bionic pincer would likely crush the pen, or drop it.)

Height and weight. Verna hesitates. ‘With or without my legs?’ she wonders. She chooses the second option, and puts down three feet tall, 35 kg. Basically the height and weight of her torso and head. After the sudden illness seven years ago that reconfigured her. Verna is now a brilliantly minimalist work of art. A haiku.

She signs her name with a flourish.

Because of her dimensions, a few things need to be McGyvered for Verna. The flight suit picked out for her is the smallest they have. Scotty ties off the legs at the knee so they won’t flap around up there. Verna is leaving her prosthetic limbs on the ground. (Though someone makes a joke about “I thought you were meant to keep your arms and legs inside the ride.”)

Because she’s so light, the videographers, Keagan and Anastasia, make adjustments so they won’t fall faster than her. Keagan puts on a different, baggier suit to create more drag.

A golf cart pulls up to take Verna to the waiting Cessna. Five people cram into the tiny space. The engine roars to life. The pilot taxis down the runway to the end of it, pivots to face the wind and throttles up. Liftoff.

12:15

There are probably things people want to say right now but those things would be lost to the engine noise. Verna feels her ears pop as the airplane climbs to to altitude. It hurts a bit – especially in her left ear, for some reason.

12:30 pm

At 10,000 feet the plane flattens out. Scotty pops open the door. A sudden blast of air, the blare of the engines, a literal slap in the face of “this is about to happen.” Verna feels her nerves now for the first time.

Down on the ground, her mom is praying again. The spectators see the Cessna pass across the sun. And that, as it happens, is the precise moment Verna tumbles out.

Freefall.

Years ago Verna bungy-jumped, and that was stomach-in-your-throat terrifying, because you’re diving head-first into dead air. This is a little less scary, because there’s immediate hard wind resistance that makes you feel like you’re already starting with speed.

But holy cow, the acceleration after that. Like screaming down the highway in a racecar, except there’s no racecar. Nothing between you and the fields of wheat and canola.

Videographer Ana appears from above and fins in close, flashing a gigawatt smile. Verna tries to smile back. But the instant she does the wind, slamming her at 180 km/hr, snags her lips and spinnakers her cheeks out, which feels extremely weird, so she closes her mouth up tight again.

There are three live cameras going. Together these images will triangulate to capture, in three dimensions for all time, the pinprick flash of an adrenaline rush at terminal velocity.

Anais Nin said “life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.” That was pretty much Verna’s m.o. even before the accident; since then … it absolutely is. Able-bodied or down some limbs, it’s the same one life that we all get. You can choose to live it right to the edge of your skin. Wherever that ends.

A 45-second freefall lasts an ice age. Also, it is over in a blink.

Scotty pulls the ripcord, releasing the pilot chute, which in turn pulls out the main chute, and Verna feels herself yanked up. And now, abrupt as a needle lifted from a record, all is silent. The Alberta prairie below, with its hands open to receive them.

In a few moments, Scotty puts them into a gentle spin. “More like that?” Verna says you bet, and Scotty yards a little harder on that stall, and Verna can see the parachute canopy, bright as a popsicle.

Ground rush. Flare. This is where a jump instructor usually asks their guest to lift their legs – no need today. Scotty lets his own legs absorb the landing and they end up on their sides, laughing, the canopy slowly collapsing behind them. Half a dozen people converge on Verna like an Indy pit crew. High fives all around. For Verna: a squeeze on the shoulder.

2:30 pm

Verna has been down for a couple of hours now but part of her is still up there. The adrenaline has drained from her body, leaving a drowsy buzz.

They are in Drumheller, which some of the visitors wanted to see, since they’re so close. Land of giant rents in the earth, and dinosaur bones everywhere. It’s the least exciting thing to happen to Verna today. They munch sandwiches, and Verna and Avelina get some photos atop a hoodoo.

7:30 pm

Home. Light dinner. Systems starting to shut down.

9:30 pm

The day is done. Verna’s second-ever skydive is in the books.

After the first one, with her bestie Leah, the two of them were so stoked they immediately vowed to do it again one day, together. That possibility ended on August 18, 2018, when Leah, hiking the knife-edge ridge of a mountain trail in Kananaskis, slipped and fell to her death. Verna vowed to keep her end of the deal. She’d jump for Leah.

Why she, Verna, is still here to reflect on all that – having been given a two-percent chance of surviving the sepsis that raced through her body and forced surgeons to take all four of her limbs to save her life – and Leah is not, well … that’s too much to process on a day like this.