Too Much Walking Dead?

I had the weirdest dream last night. My father had died and we were all at the funeral home, when Dad sat up in his coffin. He wasn't all zombified or gross or anything. Just confused. We told him to lie down, but he wasn't having it. So we helped him up and he shambled around the funeral home, then down the street, then back home. We didn't have the heart to tell him he was dead – I mean, how do you break that to someone? Awkward, right?

It reminded me of a story Dave likes to tell. His parents used to butcher their own chickens and it's apparently true that when you chop off the head of a chicken it continues to run around the yard for a bit. This one day their friends were over visiting and for some reason they were watching Dave's dad kill chickens. Maybe there was nothing on TV, who knows. It's not my idea of a good time, watching someone kill chickens, but hey, if it floats your boat ...

Well, this one hen lost her head then ran, spurting blood, over to the visitors, where she proceeded to corner the woman against a fence.

"Get it away!" she screeched. The woman, not the hen. "Do something! Kill it!"

"It's already dead!" howled Dave's father. "What more can I do????"

Last I saw my dead dad he was sitting on the couch, watching the news.

Happy December 6th!

Book me a room at the home, Mabel, I'm coming in.

I have no brain left. I've said that before, but I was lying then because obviously I had a little bitty bit of brain left. Now? No brain.

The sixth anniversary of my father's death was approaching. Now, as any of you who have lost a parent knows, this is a tricky bit of business. You want to call the living parent and offer moral support and comfort on a yucky day. But what do you say? "Happy anniversary of Dad's Death?" There's no Hallmark card for that.

The other thing is, I can never remember the actual date of Dad's death. After much brain prodding and memorizing, I can now remember he died in December 2006. But did he die on the 6th? Or the 9th?

"When did my dad die?" I ask my husband – every single year.

"You ask me this every single year," he replies, every single year.

"I know, I'm an idiot. But please tell me. I'll remember this time."

Dave sighs ... every single year he sighs just like that ... and tells me he died December 6th.

Yay! Thanks Dave! I burn Dec. 6 into my beleaguered brain and swear to the great gods of merciful memory that I WILL REMEMBER next year.

When Dec. 6 rolled around I phoned my Mom, who sounded perky.

"How are you doing?" I asked in a sombre, I-am-worried-about-you tone.

"Pretty good," she said. "My leg is really bothering me but other than that I'm fine. How are you?"

"Oh good," I said, brushing off her question. "But really, Mom, how ARE you?"

There was a pause, then she said, "I'm fine, Cathy. Why? What's up?"

I got all awkward and didn't know what to say so I mumbled, "Well, it's, um, Dec. 6 and I thought I should see how you are."

There was an even longer pause, then Mom started laughing. "He died Dec. 9! Not Dec. 6. You do this EVERY SINGLE YEAR!"

Then it was OK. We laughed like looney tunes. The awkwardness of not knowing how to mark a terrible anniversary dissipated.

"I'll phone you on Dec. 9," I said, just before I hung up.

"Oh, you don't have to do that," Mom said. "It's fine."

But I did. I called her last night and, as soon as she answered the phone I said, "It's Dec. 9," and she laughed, real unabashed laughter, all over again.

I think I might have to do this again next year – in fact, every single year from now on. Because if it can make my mother laugh on one of the saddest days on the calendar, well, there's no need for a card from Hallmark, is there?

***

Speaking of brain-dead, I had forgotten that today was a special day for everyone's favourite Ninja blogger, Alex Cavanaugh. If you'd like to drop by his blog and wish him well and thank him for being such a bright spot in the universe, do so here.

Alex is one of the most popular and generous bloggers I've ever come across and it's absolutely no wonder that everyone loves him so much.

On this special day I would love to say that the world is a better place because of you, dear, sweet Alex. I wish you nothing but all the very best, on this day and all the ones to come.

(Is there a Hallmark card for Alex's Special Day?)

The Descendants and aprés-show tearfest

Saw The Descendants last night, thanks to the FREE movie tickets we snatched up from a local car dealership who was giving back to the community for March Break. (YAY MUSKOKA KIA! You guys rock!)

I'd been wanting to see this movie for some time but we've been so broke lately that a movie night just wasn't in the cards. But you can bet my non-existant bottom dollar that I could have talked Dave into seeing some new comic book hero flick – but that's another story. Fact is, even he couldn't refuse what he thought might be a sappy chick flick when the door fee was free. So off we went, using our last-day-before-payday change to buy popcorn and Twizzlers.

Let me just say even Dave was impressed by The Descendants. It was a phenomenal movie. Funny and sad, brilliant and quirky, with outstanding performances by everyone in the cast. Yes, Clooney deserved an Oscar. That first scene, where he promises to be a better husband and father, just blew me away. And Hawaii as a set? I want to go there NOW.

One of the best things about the movie is how they don't play the tear-jerker card. It isn't maudlin. It isn't sappy. Even though, on the surface, it is about a woman in a coma, it's no Terms of Endearment or Notebook. Thanks to some fine writing it actually has a light pace, a gentle humourous touch that won my heart. Still, there's a woman on the bed, in a coma, dying. And wow, she really looked like she was dying. I say that from experience because I have seen more than one person in that state and it isn't pretty.

But here is where my revelation comes in.

When my father was bone-rack thin on his death bed, when he was in his casket as emaciated as a skeleton and unrecognizable as the dad I had knew and loved, I thought I would never be able to think of him as anything but sick – ever again. People trying to comfort me said, "Don't worry. Time will erase these images and eventually you will be able to remember your father as he was when he was healthy." I didn't believe them. How could I? He was sick for so long ...

Dave and I were on our way home from the movie last night and our thoughts were with our fathers – he lost his two short months after I lost mine. It's partly what binds us, this experience. After seeing the movie-woman dying in her bed I couldn't help but think of Dad on his deathbed. That's when I realized I was picturing him healthy! He wasn't emaciated, he was portly! There he was with his beer belly and his muscular arms, his strong back and his thick neck. He was lying in his hospital bed, hours from death, and yet I couldn't see anything but a healthy man.

And then I realized I couldn't remember what he looked like in his coffin. I mean, if pressed, I sort of remember. But I can't see it CLEARLY.

All of that – it's GONE.

This tremendous revelation hit me hard. I started bawling so bad I couldn't catch my breath; big gasping, ugly sobs.

It was true. What they said – all true.

I have been surrounded by death lately. So many dear friends have lost loved ones; others struggle with critical illnesses.  Like the ones who told me that some day I would be able to see my healthy father again, I can honestly say that there will come a time when you will only remember your mother, your partner, your spouse, your child as the healthy person he or she once was. It might take years, but that day will come.

Love to you all.

And go see The Descendants.

Christmas photos from the chocolate box

"Christmas isn't the same anymore." That's what my mom said last night.

"Your father loved Christmas and it doesn't seem the same without him."

I found these old photos in a long-empty chocolate box when I was looking for photos of him and Aunt Judy for my last post. When all of these were taken, Christmas was pure, unadulterated magic. My siblings and I would get so wound up on Christmas Eve that we'd puke all night. My poor mother. It was bad enough, doing all the work she had to do to prepare, without the added burden of holding back hair, wiping foreheads and cleaning up from those who didn't make it down the hall.

My mom says Christmas isn't the same without Dad, but it has always been Mom who has made the holiday spring to life. She never missed a beat: all the food was homemade and fabulous. Her fudge was neighbourhood renowned. She stored it in a green Tupperware crisper in the bar fridge in the basement, making it in advance so there'd be plenty on Dec. 25. We'd steal it every chance we got in the weeks before, until, invariably, she'd be forced to make fudge on Dec. 24 because we'd cleaned the Tupperware out of everything but crumbs.

Mom had a record book for Christmas cards. In the days before computers, this was her storage unit of addresses, births, deaths, who sent a card last year, who was sent a card, new people, old people – it was all there. As a result, our own house was filled with cards from well-wishers from far and near. Mom hung them all over the house, resplendent in their own Christmassy glory.

She shopped, she wrapped, she decorated, she baked, she worked and worked and worked and I never heard a word of complaint.

Mom, maybe you're feeling a little down this year, maybe you do feel Christmas isn't the same without Dad. But I can tell you, without any word of a lie, that as long as we have you, we will always have Christmas.

Top photo: My mom on Christmas morning in Markham, Ont., mid-1970s.
Above, family photo in Midland. That's me, Mom, my brother Billy and my Dad.
We were posed in the parlour of the old Victorian house on Seventh Street.
 It was a room we were almost never allowed in – the exception
was piano practice and Christmas Day. This photo was probably taken in 1965,
before my sister, Liz, was born in 1967. I remember that old teddy bear.
Much loved, it was.

My parents, probably at a New Year's Eve party.
Look how young and adorable they are.

Christmas, mid-1970s. I think I was in Grade 11 because I remember that stupid haircut.
That's my cousin, Karen, in my lap with one of her ratty dolls. She got a new doll every Christmas
and then proceeded to demolish it with bubble gum and jam and other muck.
On the couch is her brother, Paul, with her parents, Uncle Howard and Aunt Mary,
as well as my brother and my dad.

Once Christmas morning was out of the way we went to my grandparents' house in Buttonville, Ont.
That's a photo of me with my Grandma, Hazel Hooper (and my cousin David in the foreground).
Grandma's house plays a big part in the novel I'm writing. This room, in fact, stars as
Weezie Polk's refuge from the big bad world. The house is torn down, has been for decades,
to make room for a stupid industrial plaza, but I'll never forget it.

Bill, Liz and me, probably around 1973.
Doesn't everybody look kind of dopey and messed up on Christmas morning?
Or was it just us? Liz certainly looks raring to go!

Not sure what year this was, but I was probably a senior in high school, judging by my haircut.
(How I judge everything but I really am terrible at remembering dates.)
One of our family's many traditions included a photo of stocking hanging on Christmas Eve.

Check out the tape recorder one of us got for Christmas. At the time it was
pretty high-tech equipment.

Faces in a Crowd

Ghosts are everywhere.

In a flash, in a breath, on one tactile whoosh of heart.

I am adjusting a newspaper photograph taken at a children's Christmas party. The computer screen is lit up with squealing children dressed in their dime store best, sateen dresses with tube socks and scuffed running shoes; daddys' ties hanging crookedly under grinning freckled, dimpled chins; cheap, borrowed Santa suit, velvet rubbed off the elbows and knees, stomach pillow protruding beneath matted fake fur.

A woman in the background catches my eye. Smiling, middle-aged, with loose bleached blonde curls and dark roots, big-bosomed, blue frosty eyeshadow gleaming in the mid-audience gloom.

Aunt Judy.

Big laugh, terrible cook, huge heart.

Scrappy. Punched out my uncle's first wife at the side of a highway one day.

Grew up hard but knew the meaning of love. Survived a first husband that beat her and a fire that destroyed everything in her house but hope.

Forearms ringed with deep, ropey scars.

Had a thing for angels.

Never anything but wonderful to me.

Dead for five years; cancer. I went to see her on her deathbed. She was conscious, eyes sharp-lit with pain. Her children and grandchildren waited outside. I held her hand and remembered the time she made lemon meringue pie from scratch, only she forgot to add sugar and our mouths puckered up like they'd been slapped then turned inside out.

"I can't talk," she had said. So I talked for both of us, stupidly.

***


I am at the fall fair watching the horse pull. Surrounded by old farmers in suspenders and young bucks in John Deere ball caps, air redolent with manure, chewing tobacco and cotton candy. Sun too hot for autumn sweaters, tied carelessly around women's waists. Kids whine, kids puke, kids are kids. A swift breeze riffs through my son's still-10-year-old hair.

I see him in the crowd. Plaid long-sleeved shirt tight over a round Molson muscled belly. Black vinyl eyeglass case in his front pocket. Blue work pants, filthy cuffs. Silver hair, barely thinning.

Dad.

Five years gone.

The blood thins through my heart in a fractured sigh.

Photos, from top: Aunt Judy and Uncle George at Christmas in our rec room in Markham, Ont., circa 1975.
Dad heading off to work at the Canadian Pacific Railway in Midland, Ont., sometime in the early 1960s.
Heading off to work again – this time from our home in Markham, probably in the late 1970s.
Mom and Dad on a trip out west, circa 1988. This was Dad's 'uniform' of his later years. Plaid shirt, suspenders, ball cap.
Dad on a snowmobile trip in the Haliburton area, sometime in the late 1970s. I love this photo of him. So handsome. My son, Angus, now drives this snowmobile, a 340 Olympic Ski-Doo.
I miss my Dad, so much. This photo brings me to tears.

Love You and other baloney

"Love you," said my ex-husband.

To me.

Last night on the phone.

OK, so it's just a lingering habit after 19 years of marriage. Or maybe he still does love me because, frankly, who doesn't love me (HAR), and he finally realizes that I was the best frickin' thing that ever happened to him and now he's sorry. Probably though, he only said it because he says it all the time to the kids, his mother, his stepfather, the cashier at Scrawl-Mart and whatever young figure-skating, money-counting ditch pig tart he's seeing; whoever. Whomever. Whatever. He hasn't said it to me, though. Not lately. Not since his cheating shit hit the family fan about a hundred years ago.

He said it and then he realized what he said and then the bluff blustery apologies spewing out of his gob made me feel like puking. And then laughing. Hysterical laughing.

"Yeah, yeah," I said. Brusquely. (I love the word brusque – it's so curt, even when it's an adverb.)

And I hung the hell up.

(That's our wedding photo. August 16, 1986. It was the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. We got married at sunset, on the edge of the pond on my parents' farm. Our reception was held in the barn they had just built. There was a corn roast and porta-potties and food from the ladies of the Eastern Star. We forgot to cut the cake. Marvellous Marvin was the DJ and he was anything but marvellous. I was young and cuter than I thought and stupid as hell. My father looked handsome in his tuxedo, though pensive. He looks like he knew what I was in for, and was worried.)

Remembrance Day

I can't hear The Last Post without crying.

As a reporter I went to countless Remembrance Day services, taking photos of the veterans and local dignitaries placing wreaths on the cenotaphs while young cadets stood guard. I vowed, every time, that I wouldn't cry, not at this one, but the solemnity of the occasion always got me, always made me think.

The glistening tears of grown men, old men, tears almost freezing on their tired faces, because it is always cold on Remembrance Day, pressed a cold finger on my own heart, made their memories current and real. By the time the sobering strains of The Last Post were played the tears were falling freely down my own face, hidden behind my camera, not naked and brave like they were on the faces of the Legionnaires.

This morning there is snow on the ground, the first snow of the season.

Of course there is.

The Secret to Happiness

I should be in bed. Dave's there already, watching Hang 'Em High on the Drive-In channel. Every Wednesday night is Western Night on this station. Yee haw. He likes Squint McClint. I like the dancing hot dogs leading into commercial breaks. They remind me of the Midland drive-in my parents took me to when I was young. I loved the dancing hot dogs. I'm hungry just thinking about them. I still don't know what they have to be so darn happy about. They're about to be eaten, for god's sake. Still, they're happy.

Why are the hot dogs so happy?

What is the secret to all this happiness crap anyway?

Dr. Oz ... (oh please, please don't mistake me for someone who watches Oprah's latest protege. He drives me crazy. He comes across so PERFECT but he's obsessed with eating nuts and goat cheese products and his ears remind me of Spock and he always makes me feel GUILTY for not being more like him. Just the mere sight of him drives me to the kitchen cupboard to open up a bag of Old Dutch.) 

... Dr. Oz says people's happiness is largely genetic, which means, I guess, that you're hardwired to either be deliriously happy or hooked on Prozac. Or something in between. 

I don't want to believe that.

I don't think we're hardwired for anything. Although my late father's favourite expression was, "Are you wired up right, or what?" And I think that is a very, very good expression.

I find myself wondering if my father had a happy life.

I don't know.

He never talked about stuff like that.

He never talked much at all, come to think of it. Not to me, anyway.

I regret many things in life ... one of those things is not knowing my father better.

A month or so ago I was painting the entryway into the log cabin on the Muskoka River Dave and bought this summer. I was painting and listening to music and suddenly I had a vision of my father coming through the front door. He was wearing a navy blue sweater and walking with a cane, but he looked healthier than he was in the last year of his life. He walked in and looked at the paint job and said, "That looks good, Cath." 

I start to cry again just thinking about it. But hey, I'm 49 years old, mired deeply in peri-menopause, and I cry at the drop of a hat. 

Anyway, this is my first blog.

Like I said, I should be in bed. I could hardly get up this morning. But I felt an overwhelming urge to write something.

Somehow, I think "writing something" could be key to my own happiness. Oh, and doesn't that sound like complete baloney?

OK, so maybe it won't make me happy.  Can't hurt, though.

And its gotta be better than watching Dr. Oz.