Goodbyes

         

5

         

Goodbyes

The first and last time that my father hugged me was also the last time that I saw him. He was also crying, but then I was crying too. We hugged, we cried, and we said our goodbyes. Then I watched him climb into his rusting and dented 1978 red GMC and head home. Somehow we both must have known that this was the last time that we'd see each other.

It was eight months later when I was called into the office at the logging camp I was working at. It had been another long day of dragging my chainsaw up and down the mountainsides of coastal British Columbia. I was tired, dirty, and ready for a shower, but my name was on the notice board that the crummy parked next to. I made my way to the construction trailer that served as the main office. The clerk had seen me coming and handed me a yellow square note. It read, "Your sister called. Your father is dead".

I should have been ready for this. Since he was diagnosed with diabetes, he'd had a major stroke and a heart attack. I should have been ready, but I wasn't. It was like getting punched in the chest. All the air went out of my lungs and my heart seemed to stop beating. I stood there for the longest time just staring at those six simple words and tried to grasp what it really meant. Dad was gone.

For the next few days, I wasn't the thirty-five year old man that spent his days knocking down trees. I was a lost eight-year-old boy. Outwardly I was able to do all the right things. There were all the family calls, the funeral arrangements, talking to the executor of his will, and getting out of the woods, and driving 1200 kilometers north to the small community where he had live, died, and would be buried. Inwardly, there was a huge black hole of loss that when I stopped moving pulled me spiraling into the depths of misery and pain. So I kept moving.

Three days later I was in Hudson's Hope. Population 1012, three liquor stores, two bars, and a community that had been holding on since 1805. It wasn't surprising that Dad had chose to live here. Dad has spent a lifetime finding the most remote spots on the planet, had settled here after retiring. He had bought a little place just north of town. Where there was just enough room for him and his horse.

After I had arrived, I met with my sister and Dad's executor in a little restaurant. It was part of a hotel that had once been construction trailers back in the 60's. That was when they were building the hydroelectric dams that were located on the Peace River just west of town, and Hudson's Hope had been filled with construction workers. I had been in this same restaurant in the 70's as a child. Thirty years later it looked exactly the same. It had the same pictures on the wall of the pioneers, trappers, and miners that had pioneered around Hudson's Hope. I was sure that the kitchen probably had the same grease in the deep fat fryer, and the same dust in the corners.

My sister, the executor, and I talked for about an hour. There were lots of details that I can't recall most of now. There would be no autopsy. He had been found in his Lazy Boy at the nursing home room that he had been living in since his last stroke. Whether it was a stroke or a heart attack, there was nothing of use that a corner could tell us. Dad was gone and the funeral was to be the next day. At Dad's request there would be no formal service at a church or hall, and no wake. He wanted it simple. We would honor his wishes.

It was early May, as we made our way to the graveyard outside of town. This far north, there was still snow under the trees, but the dry brown grass from the previous year covered the graveyard as the sun had melted all the snow. However, it was still too early for anything green. Life was still waiting for warmer days to explode. Then the grass, the leaves, and all things that move under the sun would begin their rush to live. For now, all was dormant and quiet. I sensed all of this as entered the graveyard, but really the only thing I saw was the open hole and the pile of dirt where a few people had already started to gather. Today was not for the beginnings of spring, but for an ending.

I was surprised to see two RCMP Mounties in full red serge uniforms. One came over, introduced him self, and offered his condolences. He had known my father quite well, and was one of the few people who new he was a veteran of World War Two. They were there to be his honor guard. As I thanked him, memories flooded through my mind. I had learned of Dad's war service when I was about twelve. It was during a trip down on the ferry from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy. It was an overnight ferry, and we had a room that had a window. As the darkness came and we watched the coastline darken, Dad had shared with me a bit about his life.

He had his father's name, as did I, but he never knew his father well. He had gone back once to visit him. Granddad lived in South Carolina and was a member of the Klan. Dad couldn't abide that view on things and words were exchanged. Dad never went back. He never mentioned his mother. He said he had been sent to his aunt in New Jersey when he was quite young. He had asthma as a child and in the late thirties and early forties it was often fatal. There were no effective medications, and one either survived attacks, or didn't. He had survived. Often sleeping on his aunt's front porch as the air was better out there. As he reached puberty, the asthma went away and he was never bothered again with it.

When Dad was 15 he had enlisted in the Army. It was 1941. Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, and the Army was not looking to closely at the ages of those that enlisted. In Dad's case, they knew he was underage, but during basic training he showed that he was a capable soldier and a good leader, so he was kept there to help train the thousands of men that had enlisted. After his sixteenth birthday, he was sent over on the ships to invade Africa. It was there that he said he had learned that he had been training his men the wrong way to shoot. On a shooting range, they were trained to extend their elbows to stabilize their weapon when they aimed. In Africa, they learned the hard way that when you are on the open desert where there is no cover, you needed to make yourself as small as possible. After a number of men had their elbows blow off, they began to tuck their arms as close to their bodies as possible to make as themselves small a target as they could. I could tell by what Dad said and left unsaid that the war in North Africa had been bad.

There had been more war stories that night on the ferry. How he had gotten his Purple Heart after being transported to a Mosquito squadron in Greece. There he had been assigned as gunner. While on a mission attacking the oil fields held by the Nazis along the Black Sea, a fifty caliber round had made its way through the armor in his seat and lodged itself in his butt. He had spent some time in a hospital and had a lot of discomfort, as the painkillers never did seem to help. There was another transfer and he ended up in Germany when the war ended.

After the war, there had been had been a stints as a junior mechanic on merchant ships.  He had seen a lot of the world, South America, Asia, and Africa again. In the fifties, Russia became our enemy and the DEW Line had started. Dad signed up as mechanic and worked his way across the Arctic as they put in radar station after radar station. It was in Fairbanks that he had met Mom. She was a wide-eyed schoolteacher fresh out of a college in Buffalo New York. Alaska had needed schoolteachers, so she went, and there she met Dad. I have pictures of them from that time. In one of them, they are sitting on Dad's motorcycle that they had rode on the dirt roads between Fairbanks and Anchorage. They looked so young. Those had been happier times for them both. Together they had raised my sister and I, and lost another boy at birth. In the late 1970s, Dad had left Mom. She had married again and was happy.

So many memories of Dad, but I was brought back to the present by the start of the service. The two RCMP Mounties snapped to attention as the pallbearers opened the hearse and the pulled Dad's casket out. I'm glad that the executor had warned me that one of Dad's last requests was to have a simple casket. In fact, he had wanted a friend to build it, but apparently in Canada you are not allowed to do that, so they had purchased as simple unvarnished pine box, with yellow ropes for handles.  There would also be no headstone. Dad wanted it simple, so simple it would be.

My Sister and I stood next to the grave as Dad's coffin was put on to the device that would lower him. Our tears flowed freely and we held each other's hands. The minister spoke for some time, but I don't remember anything of what he said as I didn't pay much attention. In my head, I was saying my goodbyes to my Dad. Telling him that it was okay, and that I had forgave him. That I knew he had forgiven me. How I wished I had told him that in life, and that while he had never said it to me, he had shown it and I knew it in my heart. Sometimes one hug is all you need to know that the past is the past. In the end, I knew that my Dad loved me as best as he was able. That in the end he was a man, an imperfect human being, doing the best he could to do better. I can only hope to achieve as much.

After all the words had been said, Dad was lowered into his grave. My sister and I waited while they filled it in. The dozen or so people that had attended the funeral came over and offered their condolences. Some of them told stories of how Dad had touched their lives, and others just shook my hand. To me they were all strangers, but there was the comfort that in the end Dad had people in his life that he cared about and that cared about him.

Once the grave was filled, I went over and laid a bouquet made up of spruce boughs and mountain flowers. I had picked it out at a small flower shop in a nearby town. I had been unsure about what to get. It seemed that something was needed. As I laid it on his grave, I realized that the flowers were not for him, but for me. I could do no more for Dad, and he could do no more for me.  We had already done our best, and in the end we had made our peace and accepted each other as best we were able. That was enough.

Of course I still wish there had been time for more. I wished for more time to know the man who had raised me. Not as a boy, or a teenager, but as a man. I think we would have become good friends. As time passes, more and more I see things in myself that reminds me of him.

Many sunsets and sunrises have come and gone since I buried Dad, but he is still with me. There are still tears at times, but more often there are quiet dialogues to him inside my head. Occasionally, I go back to his grave. There is no tombstone, so it is hard to find the exact spot that he is buried at, but that is the way that he wanted it. Sometimes there are tears. Sometimes there is quiet contemplation. Sometimes I just sit and watch the birds, and deer that come to feed on the grass, and remember him.