It's been 28 years since my dad celebrated his last birthday (his 60th). He had been hospitalized a number of times in 1988, and between heart attacks and strokes, we weren't sure how long he would last. Thinking back on it now, as the pain of loss has faded, there were so many bittersweet yet funny moments ...
My mother was called up to the hospital every afternoon to be with him, as his vitals were so low that they thought he wouldn't make it ... yet, he consistently woke up the next morning and shocked the nurses singing "God Bless America." In hospital, with the curtain pulled around his bed, Dad was convinced he was in a tent. I think he may have thought he was in a firefighting camp with his brother, who used to work for Forestry in BC. He spent Father's Day in hospital but came home on a day pass for his birthday. His brother, Ted, called to chat and Dad said "I don't know why I'm in hospital. I'm not sick. I'm just weak." A week later, he was sent home ... the doctor said they had no clue if he was going to die or to live for weeks, months, or years. I came over to supervise him at lunch, and he was eating pudding ... sort of. He was definitely spooning pudding into his mouth, but he wasn't swallowing -- and when his mouth was full, he decided maybe a drink of water would help the pudding go down.
Even at the funeral home, there were moments of humour. The funeral director had parted his hair on the wrong side, and we thought it should be the way he usually wore it. Resting the water glass on Dad's chest, the man combed his hair to the correct side, and we broke into giggles picturing what Dad would do if the water spilled! The funeral director also asked how Dad would have felt about having a hair clip holding his hair until it dried. Mom related a few incidents about Dad's hair-dressing experiences ... this was not the first time there had been a clip in his hair, apparently.
I should have more memories of my father, but I was quite young when I was born, and didn't have a chance to record my thoughts. We have pictures of him in my crib because I wasn't sleepy and he was. We moved every few years ... Mom's conclusion was that he was a gypsy. Those were the days when employment was readily available, and if he didn't like his job, he got a new one, and another one, and so it went ... and we went with him.
I know that we have a lot of similarities ... the dark eyes and eyebrows from the McRae family are only the beginning. He loved jokes and puns ... and this has come down to me ... and my children get a double dose if this is passed on genetically, because my husband has the same crazy sense of humour as well. My mother just shakes her head when I come out with some of the same kinds of puns that he would have used. He had thick hair, and in photos, he looked like Elvis ... yet he said he wanted to be bald so he could wash his face and head all at once in the morning.
He loved his uniform. He was too young for the military in World War II, but years later, he had fun trying on his younger brother's RCMP uniform for a photo. When he was hired to work at the weigh scales, I think he must have hit a high point on his bucket list and wore that government uniform with pride each day. I have the same feeling about going to work at O'Keefe Ranch in costume, with an official name badge.
He wasn't afraid to try things, even if some would have said he wasn't qualified. (He said his reason for not finishing school was that his dad was in the grade above him and he couldn't go further.) When asked if he wanted to join the choir, the question was whether he was a tenor. Dad's response: "Tenor eleven."
Because of his underlying illness (tumour of the pituitary gland), his hair went grey very early. When I was hospitalized in Alberta to have my tonsils out, Dad had left a crossword puzzle book at the nurses' station for me. The nurse who brought it to me informed my that my grandpa had left it for me. Even at age 7 or 8, I was laughing inside because both of my grandfathers had already passed away, and the "grandpa" was my dad (probably only 40 at the time).
My sister and I were rivals for his attention. She had very short hair and (before she went to school), got to go places with him, so he called her his "little boy Charley." One day, I decided I was going to get to him first, so I walked by myself to the main avenue he would turn off to get to our street. Even a half block ride with him was worth it, if I could get to him first. Yet I'm sure he loved us equally ... just differently.
Our lives would have been different if he had lived past 60. There were physical and mental health issues that would not have allowed him to be the grandfather he would have wanted to be. But. my children missed his presence and influence (whether for good or bad) ... when we would go to the playground, they would see a grey-haired man pushing little ones on the swing, and they would ask "why don't we have a grandpa?"
Random rambling as Dad's birthday closes ... his first grandson (my sister's oldest) shares the same birthday and turned 22 today. My older son bears Dad's name as his middle name. Whenever Facebook tells me whose birthday is on June 25, I remember that this was Dad's day ... and now there are 6 months until Christmas!!
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Unearthing buried treasure
What to do on a rainy Saturday? Well, my mother is de-cluttering and so am I. Our houses are across the street from each other, so we alternate whose house gets de-cluttered every weekend or so.
Today was my mom's turn, so after examining a couple of boxes of books in the garage and only taking a few books out, we adjourned to her storage room, where she informed me that "these boxes are yours." Apparently, today my address has changed to Memory Lane (which also happens to be the name of my Royal Albert china pattern).
Books: well, that's easy. Either I love them, in which case I keep them, or I can't remember them, deny they are mine, and put them in the garage sale/giveaway box. Some books have to be kept ... like the Tonka Trucks book I read over and over to my sons when they were small. Others I look at and wonder why I still have this. Some things have been packed away since I finished university and got married. I guess I didn't have room for all my odds and sods, so Mom boxed them up for the day when I would have a house of my own. 32 years and a number of residences later (3 houses of my own), these things are still in her storage room ... and they've sat there since her last move 17 years ago.
What kind of treasure did I find? Mostly paper -- which doesn't sound interesting until you realize what is on it. Some of it goes back to grade 5, when I did a project on Mealworms & Earthworms in Science. There were compositions from grade 9, my Kangaroo Rats project from grade 6, algebra and chemistry notebooks (those headed speedily to the recycling bag). There were projects I did for Pioneer Girls, which must have been from the early 1970s, for my Travel Badge ... complete with postcards from Stanley Park, Vancouver Aquarium, the Vancouver Airport, and Barkerville (yes, I lived in Terrace, BC and no, I didn't travel much) and narrative describing the places I'd been. There were pieces of paper where I had labelled all the first and last names of all of the dolls and stuffies my sister and I owned, along with their occupations! (They lived on an island community self-sufficient from the outside world).
There were letters ... and oh, my goodness, if I sat down and read them all, I would never be seen again. I ditched the ones from the kids from summer camp ... both the camps I attended and the ones where I worked as camp counselor. Wow, back in the day, we apologized for the length of time it had taken us to write a letter, said it was the other person's turn to write, and then proceeded to write about nothing at all. There were letters from boys!! I looked at a few and consigned them to the recycling as well.
After a couple of hours, my mother decided we needed to surface from the basement for some lunch. Lipton's chicken noodle soup and a slightly charred grilled cheese sandwich fueled our enthusiasm for the "olden days." Mom was finding equally entertaining relics of her youth ... and I collected a few specimens of her schoolbooks, but I have a new hiding place that is not my house.
I hit the box with my university years ... souvenirs from my Literary London trip that didn't make it to my photo album. School newspapers, programs from concerts I don't remember attending, course outlines and random notes from classes, and a booklet (9 sheets of paper, some double-sided) explaining how to register for my 4th year classes. Yes, children, this is long before the Internet was invented and on-line registration would become possible. Another brochure, explaining in very simple instructions with diagrams how to use an ATM ... "Personal Touch Banking. -- How It Works!" And there was a four page skit that my roommates and I performed at our home church Christmas talent show explaining all the trials and tribulations of our second year of university.
Even without being a hoarder, it is amazing how much I have accumulated over the years and years and years. There's still a lot of reading and purging to go, but we got a good start and had an excellent adventure travelling back and forth through time.
Today was my mom's turn, so after examining a couple of boxes of books in the garage and only taking a few books out, we adjourned to her storage room, where she informed me that "these boxes are yours." Apparently, today my address has changed to Memory Lane (which also happens to be the name of my Royal Albert china pattern).
Books: well, that's easy. Either I love them, in which case I keep them, or I can't remember them, deny they are mine, and put them in the garage sale/giveaway box. Some books have to be kept ... like the Tonka Trucks book I read over and over to my sons when they were small. Others I look at and wonder why I still have this. Some things have been packed away since I finished university and got married. I guess I didn't have room for all my odds and sods, so Mom boxed them up for the day when I would have a house of my own. 32 years and a number of residences later (3 houses of my own), these things are still in her storage room ... and they've sat there since her last move 17 years ago.
What kind of treasure did I find? Mostly paper -- which doesn't sound interesting until you realize what is on it. Some of it goes back to grade 5, when I did a project on Mealworms & Earthworms in Science. There were compositions from grade 9, my Kangaroo Rats project from grade 6, algebra and chemistry notebooks (those headed speedily to the recycling bag). There were projects I did for Pioneer Girls, which must have been from the early 1970s, for my Travel Badge ... complete with postcards from Stanley Park, Vancouver Aquarium, the Vancouver Airport, and Barkerville (yes, I lived in Terrace, BC and no, I didn't travel much) and narrative describing the places I'd been. There were pieces of paper where I had labelled all the first and last names of all of the dolls and stuffies my sister and I owned, along with their occupations! (They lived on an island community self-sufficient from the outside world).
There were letters ... and oh, my goodness, if I sat down and read them all, I would never be seen again. I ditched the ones from the kids from summer camp ... both the camps I attended and the ones where I worked as camp counselor. Wow, back in the day, we apologized for the length of time it had taken us to write a letter, said it was the other person's turn to write, and then proceeded to write about nothing at all. There were letters from boys!! I looked at a few and consigned them to the recycling as well.
After a couple of hours, my mother decided we needed to surface from the basement for some lunch. Lipton's chicken noodle soup and a slightly charred grilled cheese sandwich fueled our enthusiasm for the "olden days." Mom was finding equally entertaining relics of her youth ... and I collected a few specimens of her schoolbooks, but I have a new hiding place that is not my house.
I hit the box with my university years ... souvenirs from my Literary London trip that didn't make it to my photo album. School newspapers, programs from concerts I don't remember attending, course outlines and random notes from classes, and a booklet (9 sheets of paper, some double-sided) explaining how to register for my 4th year classes. Yes, children, this is long before the Internet was invented and on-line registration would become possible. Another brochure, explaining in very simple instructions with diagrams how to use an ATM ... "Personal Touch Banking. -- How It Works!" And there was a four page skit that my roommates and I performed at our home church Christmas talent show explaining all the trials and tribulations of our second year of university.
Even without being a hoarder, it is amazing how much I have accumulated over the years and years and years. There's still a lot of reading and purging to go, but we got a good start and had an excellent adventure travelling back and forth through time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)