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Saturday, October 20, 2007

The Box

The young guy in the seat next to was an airline employee deadheading to his home city. He asked the question everyone asks if they are in a talkative mood on a plane, "What brings you to Calgary?". "I am headed to Halifax for my Father's funeral." I replied. "Sorry." He said and I knew he meant it. "It's all right. " I responded not wanting him to feel ill at ease. "He was 87, he had a good life." It was true. He had a good life. Yet, if he was 157 I would still miss him. He was my Dad after all. We were close, like brothers. We did everything together.

When in my teens while my friends discovered the generation gap and kept there distance from their "Old Man" I was tromping the backwoods of Hants county with my Dad. Watching sunrises over Granite lake and chasing grouse and rabbits around Scotch Village and Lakelands. I was having too much fun to realize that we were supposed to be poles apart. We drank tea from a billy can over an open fire. For the uninitiated a billy can is made from a one quart juice can, you punch two holes in it with a nail and make a bail (handle) out of a coat hanger. The can blackens with use and the heat distributes more evenly. You wrap it in newspaper to keep your pack clean. It was cheap and it kept us from ruining one of Mom's good pots. Dad was a great woodsman, he could get a fire going in any weather. He knew about game and how the animals would behave. He showed me how a mother grouse will drag a wing and fake injury to lead you away from her chicks. I learned lots and I loved every minute of it. Dad and I were kindred spirits. I loved spending time with him. It was so hard to believe he was gone.

It was March 17th when I received the call I had been dreading. Dad had pneumonia and wasn't expected to live. It could be hours it could be days. I live in Tulita a remote community on the MacKenzie river in the NWT, It was Saturday, it wouldn't be easy to get out of here on a weekend, I started making arrangements immediately but could not get a flight until Monday. Dad didn't make it to Monday. Late Saturday he succumbed to the pneumonia. Part of me was grateful that he did not suffer. Another part of me was wrought with guilt for not having been there. I could have changed nothing but I could have shared the load for my Mother and siblings. My brother had held his cell phone out so I could say my last goodbyes as Dad passed. I felt helpless and wanted to be moving, just to feel like I was doing something. It would be Tuesday evening before I made it home. Dad had suffered from Geriatric Dementia, He had been in the Veterans Memorial building in Halifax (known as Camp Hill Hospital) for eight years. The staff there were wonderful, after nearly a decade they were like family, especially for my Mother. She had been the very definition of the word caregiver. At first she would go everyday and spend hours with Dad. Toward the end her own health was suffering so the visits had become less frequent, she still made it at least five times a week. There is a special place in heaven for my Mother, she is as close to a Saint as you can get.

There were many things to be done and there was the question of who would give the eulogy. There was no doubt in my mind who would do it. He was my Father and my best friend. I would be honored to do it, yet I was scared that I would choke up and not be able to get the words out. I didn't have much time to write anything down as I scrambled through eight airports and six airplanes to get home. The funeral was Wednesday. I spent Tuesday night at my brothers and used his computer to make notes. I knew some of what I wanted to say. I wanted to give people a snapshot of the whole man. Everyone knew him in their own way. I wanted them to see it all; the loving son, cherished brother, adoring husband and devoted Father. I wanted them to see the hero who had rescued two girls from drowning. The Fire Chief who had fought back the forest fire that nearly leveled Mt Uniake back in '48. The baseball coach, the Tyro leader, the Cub leader. I wanted everyone to leave that church feeling that they had known a very special man. I didn't want people to feel sad. Dad's was a life lived not a life lost. I spoke of Tom Brocaw's book "The Greatest Generation" and how my parents generation had survived the depression, won the war against tyranny and built the country we now know, the most democratic, caring and free society than the world has ever known. My Dad was part of that. I was very proud of him. When the funeral was over people said it was a moving eulogy without dwelling on loss. My Dad's dementia shrank his world but did not diminish his ability to enjoy the simple things, his existence while not perfect was not suffering. I wanted to have him for every second the Lord would give us but I would not make him stay any longer than he had to just for my sake. It was his time.

After the funeral I spent a week with my family and we shared stories and memories of Dad and some of the cherished moments we had spent with him. All too soon it was time to head back to my job and my life in the north. Dad had been cremated and the interment still lay ahead. I thought that somehow it would be easier as I would not have to speak. Of course it wasn't. We did it on Father's day weekend in June. My wife Lina was there this time and that made it easier. Following the internment my Mother asked me to help clean out Dad's closet and drawers. He had been in the VMB for almost a decade so there was not a lot lot of his stuff there. We gave his suits to the Salvation Army and threw away a lot of things they would have no use for. He was a pack rat, like me. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I took the hunting knife I had bought him. It was when I first moved out. I wanted to give him something special. I had some extra money in my pockets as I was single and had no expenses. I went into a sporting goods store in Edmonton and asked for the best knife they had. It had a bone handle and a brass hilt. It was a thing of beauty. It lay in Dad's drawer in the original box, with the gift tag still in the box. Never used. "It's too good." He said with a smile when I chided him about using his old one when we went out in the woods once. "I'm scared I'll break the tip opening canned milk!". That was Dad, he would "save it for good.". I held it gingerly, wondering if I would ever use it. "There are some other things in the basement." My Mother's words brought me back to reality. I went down the basement steps, memories of Dad sweeping the floor when I was a kid, sunlight streaming through the basement windows catching the dust in shafts of golden light. On Dad's old workbench was a number of old boxes. I opened one which contained a lot of paper. I took it upstairs to my old bedroom and began to spread the papers on the bed. My wife wrinkled her nose. "It sure is musty." She said. "Mom says that Dad never unpacked it after they moved here."

That was in 1957. Many of the documents were even older. I began to sort them and read them. I became fascinated by what he had saved. I set aside the love letters to and from my Mother (those were too personal) There were other things that covered the entire spectrum from the mundane to the sublime. I began a journey that would leave me with a greater understanding of the man. I would run the entire gamut of emotions from grief and tears to joy and laughter.


The mundane items still had a fascination for me. There was a receipt for an Electrolux Vacuum cleaner that cost $151.50 in 1951, a small fortune at the time. I chided Mom about such extravagance. "They are good vacuums, i still use one!" she retorted. There were insurance receipts and a letter from Roger's Furniture in Yarmouth dated 1945 (They are still in business) thanking Dad for a recent purchase and pointing out that they had a new shipment of carpets if he would care to have a look. There was a 1951 property tax bill for their house in Mt Uniacke for the sum of $20.90." We paid more than $80.00 when we got this place." Mom informed me. There were receipts from the two grocery stores in Mt Uniacke. They were the handwritten type and were evocative of the era.First of all the fact that they were hand written speaks of a day and age when time was less pressing. One, from R.A.Blois' store featured a wicker basket with the word "Groceries" under it. "Phone Ring 5" over that. The other from J.M.Cole's Store featured a uniformed attendant pumping gas into a forties style sedan, while on the left an apronned clerk behind a counter piled with goods says "Yes Ma'am fresh groceries and cheap too!". They speak volumes of the time they were printed. A time when clerks actually served you when you went to the store, of a time when you knew everyone who walked through the door and there was enough time to have a conversation and perhaps exchange a bit of news or gossip.
The most moving artifacts in the box were the letters, to and sometimes from my Dad. There were letters there from almost everyone important in his life, his brother, his sisters and his father. I began reading and became fascinated. some were letters written to Dad while he was in the Army during the war. Dad had contracted Rheumatic fever when he was in Yarmouth. He spent a year in hospital on Cogswell street Halifax. The disease so weakened him that he had to reach down and lift his feet when he came to a curb. He was so weak at first that he could not even sit up. The first letter I read was from my aunt Violet she talked of how they all had the flu there and how Charles had bought a new car and how she hadn't heard from sister Edith although she had written her over a week ago. The next letter was from Edith and said that they all had a cold and that Charles had bought a new car and that she had gotten a letter from Violet but had not had time to write back. There was a letter from Dad's youngest sister Katherine (We all call her Kay) who thanked Dad for the dollar he had sent her. There was another letter from aunt Edith which talked about the baby she had just lost. You could tell so much about them all from the letters, even if you did not know them. There was mention of how beautiful a spring it was in one of Violet's letters she mentions the honeysuckle and the lilacs. She talked of putting in some seeds in a week or so. Violet loved plants and animals, anything really, she could bring even the most abused house plant back to life. My mother once gave her a potted African violet which was little more than a stub. Months later we visited Aunt Violet and Mom remarked " Where did you get that lovely violet? I've never seen so many blooms!". "You gave it to me,, don't you remember?" Violet replied. Was ever anyone so aptly named?

One envelope bore no postage. I examined it curiously then I saw the censor's stamp in the corner and realized it had been mailed from the front. It was from my Uncle Charles when he was serving with the West Nova Scotia regiment in Italy in August of 1944. He was driving and ambulance and had enclosed a copy of the Maple Leaf a paper published for servicemen. I felt a chill go down my spine as I realized that it had been written on the dashboard of his ambulance during a lull between two major battles. In the lines there were no mention of the horrors that I know he had seen. The details were mundane, a request that Dad send him a watch., mention of a mutual friend that Charles has seen, and a wish that Dad get better soon and maybe he should reenlist in the air force this time. Charles loved cars and he mentions that in his letter and how he slept in the ambulance or under the stars rather than in the barracks.

In one envelope was an unmailed card to a friend of Dad's in Mt Uniacke. The writing is what hit me he hardest. It was not like Dad';s at all, it was a child like scrawl and spoke volumes of just how weak he was. It occurred to me that these letters were as important for how they looked as for what was written in them. What I mean is that you can tell so much by the envelope, the way they are written, the handwriting the ink, the very paper itself. Many letters contained no dates, Aunt Edith rarely dated any of her letters but the envelope had the date and very often the time they were mailed and often the place where they had been mailed. The censors mark on Uncle Charles' letter and the way Dad had written the letter from the Army hospital. All these things spoke to me as clearly as that which was in the letters. In this day and age of email and computers I wonder what will survive us.?Will other generations ever read that which we have written? So much of it will have vanished with the stroke of a delete key.What can be told from a keystroke. Would we ever know how ill the person was who wrote it?


In all Dad's papers there was only one letter from his Father. It was written in 1968 when Dad was again in hospital. It spoke of how Grandad wanted dad to get better so he and Dad could go fishing, a bond that they too shared. Grandad lamented the fact that he had not been fishing the previous year although the stream ran only feet from his door. The MacKenzie river runs as close to my door as Moose River did to Granddad's door. I never fished this year either. The apple and the tree again I suppose.

I took it upon myself to sort and file the letters and documents in the box. I copied them and shared them with those of us who remain. I sent my cousin Kevin a copy of the letter written by his Dad in far off Italy in 1944 no so very far from the echos of the guns. I sent my Aunt Kay (Dad's only surviving sibling) a copy of her letter and some of her sisters and brother's letters. I found a diary that Dad had briefly kept in 19454 while he worked at Caines Groceteria in Yarmouth. He often talked of working in the store all day and then spending the evening reading the newspaper or going to the movies with my Mom. Sometimes he spoke of a quiet evening at home and how wonderful it was just spending time with Mom. I thought of our own, often quiet life where we would work all day and spend a quiet evening at home and how wonderful that was. How the simplest things often bring the greatest pleasure. I had begun this project expecting to fill a garbage bag. instead I had found a new appreciation for this man I loved so much. I knew him better and Loved him more. I still miss him. I always will. I am thankful, though for the box, one last gift from my Dad who was just doing what he always did. In that box was something for many of us who loved him. Thanks, Dad.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there

Awesome blog, great write up, thank you!

Anonymous said...

Hi, very interesting post, greetings from Greece!

Anonymous said...

This is wonderful blog. I love it.