Does my dad's spirit live on after death?

A few days ago I had a strangely mystical experience while snacking on my back deck. It was a lovely summer evening and I was going out in an hour to meet friends for drinks, but I thought I should eat a bit before I went out so I pulled a box of crackers from the cupboard and found some cream cheese in the fridge. That seemed like a boring combination on its own so I delved further into the fridge and found an open jar of jam. It was quince marmalade that my dad made. It was the last jar I had. I'd opened it several months ago, and I'd been using it up slowly ever since. It seemed like it would go well with the cream cheese, so I took my snack ingredients out to the back deck and started assembling cheese and crackers and jam.

I should say at this point that months I've been feeling distant from my Dad's memory. My friend B who was close to my dad says sometimes when he's feeling sad or confused he wonders what my Dad would say, and then he feels a warm glow like my Dad's really there, and then he knows what to do. I know B's trying to comfort me when he says that - as if to say my Dad's not really gone - but it actually makes me feel sadder because I never feel my Dad's presence the way B does. I just feel like he's gone.

I thought about that while I sat eating on the deck, and I also thought about a Fringe Festival show I went to a few weeks ago. It was a one-woman show by the wife of a guy in my writing group - it was called "What! You're a Medium?" and in it my friend's wife told us the story of how she'd come to feel connected to the spirit world (it started when she was eight) and how she'd grown up to become a professional medium giving people messages from beyond the grave. She asked people in the audience if they had photos of dead loved ones they wanted to hear from and several people held up their hands. She did about a dozen "readings" saying things like - "This is your mom? She worries that you work too hard," and "This is your wife? She's happy you've found a new girlfriend. She likes her." Everyone who had a reading done looked very moved.

As I sat on the back deck eating my dad's jam I was aware of feeling disconnected from my dad, and it occurred to me that where B and the medium were choosing to connect I was actively choosing not to even try to. When I feel sad and confused I never wonder what my dad would advise. And at the Fringe show I could have given the medium a photo of my dad but I'd decided not to. I'd felt sure that even if she conveyed a "message" from him I wouldn't have believed it and that would have made me feel even more alone.

After I'd thought about that for a while and gone through about a twenty crackers with cheese and spoonfuls of jam on them, I wondered what it would be like if I made a different choice. How would it feel if I actually tried to reach out?

I breathed in, breathed out. I thought of the last time my dad sat on my deck, how he'd closed his eyes and almost fallen asleep. I imagined his spirit out in the universe, watching me now as I ate the last of his jam.

Then, as I was scraping the very last bits from the bottom of the jar I heard a clap of thunder. I looked up to see that where blue sky had been just moments earlier there was now a small thundercloud. Gentle rain began to patter. Then a rainbow appeared. The rain never got hard. The cloud passed quickly. And ten minutes later it was over.

In life my dad was always quiet man, never one to roar and shout. But that thunderclap did remind me of him at the hospital in a moment just before he died. He was unconscious by then and after several hours of strange, increasingly intense breathing he let out a long moan. It went on forever, as if his lungs were emptying out every molecule of oxygen. It was probably some automatic thing his body did, some convulsion as his organs failed, but what it felt like was the moment he stopped fighting death. It felt like the moan was his spirit yelling "Okay, here I come!" He died a few minutes later.

I don't really believe that me scraping out the bottom of a jam jar caused that freakish isolated thunderstorm. Or that the thunder was my dad yelling, "I'm still here. Don't forget me!" Or that the rainbow was his way of reminding me that life is beautiful. Or that the gentle rain was his blessing. 

But for the last few days since it happened, I have felt closer to my dad in spirit than I have in months.

Dances with Aki: Vacation diaries Day 12

September 2: There is a very nice gentleman on board this Danube cruise who loves to dance. The musicians who play each night in the Panorama Lounge aren't very good, but that doesn't stop Aki. 

I told him my mom used to like to waltz with my dad and then the next time a tune came up with a waltzable beat he asked her. 

As they glided around the dance floor one of the women watching exclaimed to the friend next to her "look at the smile on her face!". 

Then she looked at me and saw I was filming it all. "Look at the smile on your face too," she said to me. 

Which was when I realized I was grinning. It was lovely to see my mom up on the dance floor, though of course it also made me think of my dad. I've never seen my mom dance with any one else.

Later Aki asked me to dance to a salsa tune and then a pop tune came up after that and a whole bunch of people got up to dance freestyle. My mom watched from her seat and when I sat down she said "I've never seen you dance before." She said I'd looked good, and that my dad would have been proud - which brought tears to my eyes.

It was odd to think my mom had never seen me dance. It's something I enjoy a lot, and yet not something she knew about me.  She's never been to a club with me, or gone to any of my friend's weddings.  

Spending these two weeks together means I am revealing parts of myself that I'd kept hidden without thinking.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. It seems both nice (she's finally getting to know me) and scary (what else will I accidentally reveal about myself?).

My mom gets confused: Vacation diaries Day 7

Today we went for a walk in Durnstein.

August 28: My mom gets confused each time I go to take her photo. When she travelled with my dad she was always the one who had the camera, so there aren't many photos of her on those trips.

Now every time I point the camera and tell her to smile she and gets this look on her face like "why would you want to take a picture of little old me?" Then she smiles obediently, humouring me in my mysterious wish to capture her image.

In this habit of photo taking I'm clearly reinforcing my "not-husband" status in our relationship.

I find looking at these photos afterwards oddly reassuring. Seeing her grins captured in pixels helps convince me she's having a good time.

"I am not taking your husband's place"

The dining room table today.

Diary of a vacation with my mom: Day 1, August 22 

“I am not taking your husband’s place.” I remember saying those words to my mom last year, and lately they've been ringing in my ears.

It was a few days after my dad died. My brother had gone back to Toronto after the funeral, and I was staying on for a few more days. My mom and I were about to sit down for dinner.

The dining table at my parents’ house is eternally cluttered. On a typical day you might find three days’ worth of newspapers, a tin full of cookies, a silver tea pot, dozens of letters from charities asking for money, an arrangement of flowers long past their best before date, the program for a concert, a jar of homemade red currant jelly, and the paper napkins saved from yesterday’s meal because they aren’t all that dirty yet – and all of that that would just be covering one corner.

From this miasma I had cleared two places for my mom and I to eat, and set out cutlery and glasses. I was pouring the wine when Mom brought in the frozen spinach pizza she’d heated for us.

She looked at the places I’d set out.

“Well you don’t have to sit at the end anymore,” she said, her tone suggesting the spot I’d chosen was obviously undesirable. She pointed to the place across from her. “You can sit over there now.”

I looked where she was pointing and said, “I am not taking your husband’s place.”

The words hung in the air, both of us realizing the deeper meaning my words unintentionally carried.

Then my mom put the pizza down and we didn’t say anything more about it.

I’ve thought about that moment many times. Because the reality is, over the past year I have taken her husband’s place, in more ways than one. When I’m in Ottawa I drive her around as he did, I sit beside her at church, and I pour the wine when we sit down for dinner.

Each time I feel like there’s an awkward a process of adaptation underway as we figure out together how to feel like mother and daughter together, instead of not-husband and not-wife. 

Today our journey into his territory will go one step further. Because today I become my mother’s travel companion.

The tour starts with three days in Prague and then we cruise down the Danube through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. We fly out today, and for the next two weeks we’ll be together constantly, sharing a room.

As I sit in my old bedroom, contemplating the map of where we're heading, and listening to my mother puttering downstairs with her last minute packing, I worry that I’ll be so preoccupied about her health and happiness that I won’t remember to have a good time on this trip.

While we’re on fantastic trip, will I be able to remember I’m not just doing this to take her husband’s place? Can we just be two women, travelling together, seeing the world and enjoying each other’s company? I’m about to find out.

Time has passed once again without my consent

It was a year ago today that my father died. Tonight I was trying to remember if he died at 2PM or 4PM (not sure why that seemed important, but it did). I went to my computer and looked in my "Dad" directory, wondering if I'd saved a note that day that would give me a clue. I found this bit of writing I did at his bedside:

"There's a new crackling sound behind his breath. And is it my imagination or is his chest heaving even more than it was a moment ago? Each time he takes a breath it's like he's run a long distance and is trying to catch his breath. It's hard work - dying. That's what people keep saying.

I welcome the change, in a morbid way. This sitting around with nothing to do except listen to him

He did not die

Here's a piece honouring my dad that I read aloud tonight at the Moosemeat Chapbook launch: 

"I'm still enjoying life," he says as the month of June begins. We've just been walking.  Now he sits beneath a tree.    

       Weeks later comes a celebration for the anniversary of my birth. The neighbours bring champagne. He smiles, takes some sips, then has to go upstairs to rest.

       His weight slips away.  My mother brings his meals on trays. One morning as he weeps he tells me of a nightmare: frozen Boost impersonating ice cream, Ensure in his coffee in place of milk. "It's terrible stuff," he says, still shaken from the visions.

The empty chair

One year ago on a day with crystal blue skies in early June, a day just like today, my father sat on my back deck for what would be the last time. When my brother came by and asked how he was feeling, my dad smiled up at him from the wicker chair where he sat and said "Oh, I'm still enjoying life."

I'd just got back from my four months in Cuba, and my parents had come to Toronto for the weekend to celebrate. My dad had just finished four weeks of radiation treatment for prostate cancer and he was feeling tired, but that was to be expected, since it takes a while for that to leave your system. We all expected him to feel better soon.

My dad saved it for 55 years...

One of the strangest things my mom and I ever found among my dad's possessions was something we found in the very first week after he died, and now that it's in the Christmas season I find myself thinking of it again - an Esquire Magazine from December 1959.

My mom seemed to feel in those first few days of grieving that it was very urgent to clear out his office so she could "get things organized". I found this upsetting. I wanted his things to stay just as he'd left them.  But I figured the clearing out frenzy was part of my mom's process, so I didn't try to stop her. I just sat in there with her to make sure she didn't throw anything out that I'd want to keep.    

Then there it was, at the bottom of a pile of stuff on the floor by his desk, under a bundle of tax returns from the 1990s - a dusty volume with a shiny gold cover.  

"Well I don't think we need to keep this" my mom said and tossed it in the recycling bin.  But I couldn't resist digging it out.  It was a enormous - 10 by 13 inches and 382 pages thick - and the cover promised pieces by William Faulker, Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, and George Bernard Shaw. 

As soon as I started leafing through it I found myself mesmerized, but not by the writing.  It was the Christmas edition, chock full of gift ideas and I couldn't stop staring at the ads.   

The first thing I noticed was how many of the images looked like they'd come from straight out of Mad Men. There was one that looked like Roger Sterling's office, full of men drinking Rye over the course of a business meeting.  And another with a grateful "Girl Friday" that could have been Don Draper's secretary.

Then there was this one - the spitting image of Don Draper himself.

  

The next thing I noticed was the weird way the women were smiling. 

Did women really smile with their mouths open back then? 

Next came an ad from the Cuban Tourist Commission. I recognized the view right away.  It's from the Turquino Room of what was then then Havana Hilton (now the Habana Libre). I noticed only one thing missing - the 24 story Hermanos Ameijeras Hospital which was completed in 1982.  Other than that, not much has changed. 

At first I thought the timing of the ad was funny.  It came out in December of 1959, just before the Cuban revolution was about to triumph in January, so they were inviting people to visit what would soon be a very different place. But then I realized my timing was off.  Fidel Castro took power in January of 1959, not 1960, so when the magazine was printed he'd already been running the country for almost a year.   

The text alludes to the change only peripherally. "Havana has come a long way since Columbus found shelter for his ships in her protected bay...  Now skyscrapers cut through the clouds to herald the new age and a future that promises to far outstrip the past."

I guess at this point Castro's economic strategy still included attracting American tourists? Apparently it took a few years for relations to decline so much the U.S. imposed their travel ban.

  

Given the magazine is from 1959, I wasn't surprised the portrayals of women aren't very feminist. Mostly they're devoted-looking wives or sultry-looking girlfriends, all enraputured by gifts of jewellery, flowers and perfume. 

I was surprised though by the ad below, which proclaims unabashedly that "Men are better than women!" and shows a woman dangling by a rope.  It goes on saying "Indoors, women are useful - even pleasant. But on a mountain they are something of a drag. So don't go hauling them up a cliff just to show off your Drummond Climbing sweaters. No need to. These pullovers look great anywhere." 

What did my father think of this? I like to imagine he disapproved. After all, he married my mother two years later - a chemist who had more education than he did. 

But perhaps these types of portrayals were so prevalent in they didn't even bear noticing, they just blended into the scenery.   

The thing I really don't understand is what the Esquire was doing on the floor of my dad's office. Why did he buy it in the first place? And what possessed him to save it for 55 years?  The father I knew read Macleans and The Economist, not men's fashion magazines. He used to wear suits all the time, even when he was gardening, but he took no notice of his lapel widths and whether they were the latest fashion (there's an article about lapel widths on page 190).  He wore his suits until they were threadbare, much to my mother's chagrin. She always hoped to get him into clothes she considered more "stylish". Over the years she tried buying him jeans and bolo ties and turtlenecks, all to no avail. 

He didn't meet my mother until 1960 though.  Maybe in 1959 he was a different?   

It's also possible he bought it to peruse the gift suggestions. Maybe he wanted to know what the best gift would be for his boss ("Walker's Deluxe 8 year old bourbon comes already wrapped in glittering ribbon and foil, topped with a luxuriant bow" - page 109).  Or what kind of radio to buy for his dad ("The Sony TR 810 is the world's slimmest 8 transistor radio - only one inch thin - and comes complete with battery, earphone, and carrying case, $49.95" - page 290).  Or what kind of coffee maker to buy for his mom ("The Gold electro-plated West Bend Flavo-Matic Percolator brings you the utmost in elegance and makes 6 - 8 cups, $24.95" - page 333). 

Or maybe he was like me - enticed by the promise of fiction by William Faulkner, Thomas Mann and Arthur Miller. And maybe, like me, he kept getting so distracted by the ads he never remembered to read those pieces. Maybe that's why he saved the magazine for so long. Did he keep thinking one day he'd get around to reading it?






UPDATE - December 14
Apparently the open mouthed smile isn't just a thing of the past.  I was waiting at grocery check out yesterday, getting my weekly update on gossip by reading at the covers of the magazines (apparently Angelina Jolie has a new man in her life) when I saw this photo on the cover of Woman's World:

Should my dad still be driving? Plus two other questions about cars.

1) Should my dad still be driving? 

Two years ago, at the age of 87, my dad bought a new car. It was a pale gold Toyota Corolla. I wasn't pleased. Not that it was a bad car. I actually quite liked it. But I'd been hoping he'd take the death of the old Ford Taurus as a sign he should stop driving.

In those days whenever he drove me somewhere I'd start wishing it was me behind the wheel, not him. I looked for slow reaction times, and took notice if he drifted in his lane, and I got especially nervous if he had only one hand on the wheel. But then I wondered if I was being ageist. I myself drove with one hand on the wheel all the time. So if he were a younger man and drove the exact same way would I have worried? I wasn't sure.

It would mean a big change if he had to quit driving. My parents' house was twenty minutes from the closest store on foot, and my mom didn't drive, so they'd have to move or take a lot of cabs. 

I decided as long as I didn't actively fear for my life when he was driving, or the lives of other people, he was probably fine. And I was grateful that each year he had to get tested before his license was renewed, even if it was only a written test.  

Then this year, in the middle of June he handed me the keys when we were on the way to get him an ultrasound. He said he felt tired. So I finally ended up behind the wheel instead of him. After that I drove him all the time, but the only places we ever went were doctors' offices and the hospital. 

2) Mitten, marauder or moustache? 

Edwin the brave kitten investigates (Photo Anita Ayres).

My dad's gone now, but the Corolla is still parked in my parents' garage. The estate lawyer said it didn't make sense to put it in my mom's name because she couldn't drive it. So in September on my monthly visit to Ottawa to make sure my mom's okay I went to the Service Ontario office with a pile of paperwork (the death certificate, the will, proof of insurance, safety check, etc) and walked out with a pink slip that had my name on it.

I've never owned a car before. One thing I hadn't anticipated was how hard it would be to keep track of which car was mine. I see gold Corollas everywhere now.

After my parents bought it, they started noticing gold Corollas too.  It turns out 2012 was a very popular year for Corollas.  It was the year the Corolla overtook the Ford F-150 as the best selling vehicle of all time. 

To keep track of which was theirs, my parents made up an acronym to go with the license plate, so BNMP 453 became Brave Neutered Male Pussycat.  (I like to think the name was a tribute to my Edwin, who at the time was a brave recently-neutered kitten.)

Sadly, transferring the ownership meant getting new plates for the Corolla. Now my mom and I are having trouble coming up with an acronym that's as memorable for BVRM 875. My favourite is Big Velvety Red Moustache, but my mom says moustaches can't be velvety. Others we've tried and rejected include:

- Beth's Vehicle Remember Mother (too literal)
- Big Venomous Reptile Marauder (too evil)
- Beautiful Violet Reflective Mittens (too random)

I've always thought vanity plates were a bit silly.  But maybe one reason people get them is just because they have bad memories? 

3) Is my car haunted? 

For the longest time, whenever I got behind the wheel of my new car, the first thing I'd notice was the dust on the dashboard and the salt scum on the floor mats.  It made me feel like a bad car caretaker. I'd think about how unwell my dad must have been feeling last spring, that he never took it in to get cleaned. A lot of dust is just dead skin, so I'd think about how I was sitting there in a cloud leftover from my dad. I kept wanting to clean the car, but my visits to my mom are always rushed, so I never had time. 

This week I'm in Ottawa again, and I was driving past the Minute Car Wash today when I realized I actually had the time to stop in.  Never having owned a car before, I wasn't sure what to expect.  I had to hand over my key to an unenthusiastic man in a parka. He gave me a ticket, pointed me to a waiting room, and said it would be twenty minutes.  The waiting room did not inspire confidence. There were plastic plants, and a table set up with stale coffee, and a Cold Drinks vending machine that looked like it had been there since 1973. But there was also a big glass window from which I could watch the team of three cleaners go at my dad's car, and they seemed to be doing so with great efficiency. There were vacuums and hoses and spray bottles all being deployed. 

When I got back in, the car smelled of Windex. The salt gunk was gone from the mats, the windows were spotless, and the dashboard was dust free, except for some clinging to the steering wheel base. 

I thought about complaining about those bits of remaining dust, but then I realized I was glad.  There are still a few bits of my dad left to keep me company. Me behind the wheel. Him not. 

I thought my mom would be my nightmare

Given that men's life expectancies are shorter, I always thought my dad was likely to die first. And

I'm not proud to admit it, but I dreaded the time that would come after. I imagined my mom becoming my worst nightmare: an unreasonable, self-pitying, burden that I would feel inescapably responsible for.

Mom and Dad on his 80th birthday

Mostly, this was because there were so many things about my mom that drove me crazy, like the way she never asked me any questions when we talked on the phone. Whenever I called, it would be my dad who would answer, and he and I would often chat about life for quite some time. I'd ask for his advice about a home repair, or he'd tell me about what was going on at the foodbank where he chaired the board, and after that if there was any specific business to take care of, like the arrival time of my train for an upcoming visit, it would be my dad I'd make the arrangements with. 

When mom got on the phone, and she and I would talk for a while too, but with her it always felt like she was reciting a list of things they'd done recently, like plays they'd seen, or concerts they'd been to. It never felt like a conversation. 

My dad passed away on July 18, and although it's been very, very sad there is one small miracle that's come out of it: how much I enjoy my mom now. I go to visit her in Ottawa for a week every month, and stay with her at the house to make sure she's okay. I look forward to those visits. I enjoy her company when I'm there.  And when I come back home to Toronto I miss her.

It's as if my dad came between us in ways I wasn't aware of. There were things about my mom that I'm quite sure drove my dad crazy too, her shyness, her messiness, her anxiety about jaywalking. He rarely complained, but I sensed his impatience. And I think out of loyalty to him I felt contempt for those things in her too. Now that he's gone, I feel as if I've been released. I can forgive her flaws. It all feels much less fraught and complicated.

It's also that my mom seems changed. Now when we talk on the phone I feel like she's more interested in my life. She asks more questions. Part of it is we have business to take care of now, we need to make decisions together, and so the give and take of sharing opinions makes it feel like a conversation. But I wonder if there's more to it than that.

Over the years I've come to realize that being in relationship changes people. I have one old friend

Mom at their 50th Anniversary Party

(lets call him G) who is very nice, and we normally get along great, but for one year when G was dating a particular man, he started taking advantage of me in ways he never had before. Eventually they broke up, and I was relieved when G reverted back to his normal self. Now G is with a different man and he's changed again, but this time for the better: he's calmer, happier, more self-aware.

Next week on November 25 it will be the first wedding anniversary for my mom since my dad's death. They would have been married 53 years. 

They were together my whole life, so ever since I was born the only mother I've known is the person she was when she was with my dad. Is she changing because she's no longer with him now?

This new mom isn't "unreasonable" and "self-pitying" like I'd feared. She's actually sweet and funny, and she loves being taken care of. She's like a cat, you can almost see her purr when Martha from across the street offers to driver her to her doctors appointments. Or when Wayne the neighbour mows her lawn. She's so appreciative it makes it a pleasure to take care of her.

I find myself feeling guilty sometimes about all the nice things the neighbours are doing. Never mind the impracticalities, even though I live 500km away I still feel like it's my duty as a daughter to take care of my mom. I feel like I owe the kindly neighbours a debt.

When I mentioned this to G he pointed out my mother is still a person. It's actually her that owes the debt not me. Tears welled up in my eyes. I knew he was right and I wished I could believe him, really believe him, deep down inside. I realized that the "inescapable burden" part of the nightmare scenario was also something I'd constructed in my own mind.

As this new relationship with my mom unfolds, I suppose it will change me too. I hope for the better.

What Einstein taught me about birthdays, grieving, and relativity theory

Photo: Mark Groves

Ever since my dad got sick, I've been thinking a lot about the inevitability of time. Months have passed since he died and I feel the pain much less than I did. And that's good, because there's no point in wallowing. But it also makes me sad, because every day takes me further from when he was alive.

Back in July, after he was admitted to hospital and the doctor told us he had days to live, I found myself living in a fog of astonishment, a fog where time was not marked by hours and days but by the inexorable decline of his condition.

At first it was just weakness he suffered from, then confusion, then he had trouble drinking from a straw. Next he found it difficult to walk, then difficult to stand, then difficult to even hold a spoon. His arms were weak, but more than that each day it seemed as if his hand was folding in on itself, becoming more claw-like. 

It only took ten days to go from the doctor's prognosis to my dad's last breath. The whole time I kept wishing time would slow down, so I could treasure the moments that were left.

I remember the last full sentence he said out loud:  it was "I guess I'm not perfect," after a scary moment when he almost fell.

I remember the last meal he ate: it was Breyers vanilla ice-cream. The day after his hand stopped working, he let me feed him. Spoonful after spoonful it went down. I refilled his bowl twice.

I remember the last word he spoke: It was "Yes", after I came back after dinner one night asked if I should put some music on.

Mom and Dad on their 50th Anniversary, 2011

I remember his last laugh:  It was just a grunt really, later that same night, after I put on the Baroque Harp music that was his favourite. I lay down next to his mostly immobile body, not sure if he could hear me, or if he was even awake. I wasn't sure what to do, so I started telling him some of my favourite memories. I talked about the time when I was eight and he visited me at summer camp and I was so glad to see him I wouldn't let go of his leg for fifteen minutes. I talked about the time when I was twenty and I forgot my birth control pills at their house, and when he mailed them to me he enclosed a beautiful letter. And then I talked about the time when I was in highschool and he took my mom out on a chilly November night to the Chateau Grill for their anniversary, and I was sitting cozily at home watching The Dukes of Hazzard until the phone rang, and it was him, saying he forgot his wallet, and could I bring it out to them. It was the forgotten wallet that made him laugh.

They were far too fleeting, all those "lasts."  And now I'm confronted by firsts. December will  be the first Christmas without him. And before that November will bring the first wedding anniversary my mom will have to celebrate alone. And six days ago on October 24th, it was his birthday; he would have turned 90.

I had strange dreams all last week leading up to it. In one I walked into a room and there was my dad, sitting at a table, talking to a couple of people. "But you can't be here," I said. "You're dead."  Since he was a figment of my imagination I expected him to disappear, but he didn't. He just kept talking to the two people, until eventually I woke up. Later, I was full of regret. Even if he was a figment, why did I try to make him disappear? I should have gone to him, hugged him, told him happy birthday at least.

  

It was Wednesday when I had that dream. Then Thursday came. And then Friday, his birthday. I felt like anything I did to mark it would feel unsatisfying. Because he's gone, and nothing can change that, not lighting a candle, or saying a toast, or writing a Facebook post. I went through my day as if it were ordinary, and at the end of it, as I went to bed, I picked up a book that's been at my bedside for months.

 

When I signed The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory out from the library, I wanted to occupy my brain with something that would make day to day life recede into insignificance. It's worked for the most part. Climate change and ISIS and even my dad's death are hard to keep in mind when I'm trying to get my head around why the fundamental building blocks of matter are supposed to be tiny wiggling rubber bands. Apparently one of the first things you need to understand is Einstein's theory of relativity, so on Friday night I read about that.

I used to think I had a handle on relativity: time slows down when you approach the speed of light. That's why in Planet of the Apes, when Charlton Heston comes back from his 18 month voyage he discovers an earth where two thousand years has passed. But beyond the potential for clever plot devices, I'd never thought about the implications. It turns out time slows down exponentially the faster you go, and ultimately when you reach the speed of light, time does not pass at all.What that means for photons, which travel constantly at the speed of light, is that time does not advance. The eight minutes it took for the sunlight in this picture to travel from the Sun to my Starbucks cup, from the photons' point of view, did not happen. Photons do not age, or get wrinkles, or celebrate birthdays.

On Friday night as I put down the book, I found this idea comforting. Perhaps the passage of time wasn't as inevitable as I thought.

The last minute memorial request

Last week, we were about to approve the final version of the program for my dad's memorial service.  But then Lingchang called - an old friend who once lived in my parents spare room. 

He was so sad he couldn't be at the service that he sent us some "mourn words" he wanted to be read. With four speakers, two hymns, two prayers, a eulogy, and a chamber music quartet, we were already expecting the service to run a bit long. But when we read Lingchang's words, they so beautifully captured my dad's generosity of spirit that we asked the Minister to squeeze them in.

I'm so glad we did. The service happened this past Saturday. I was touched by all the people that came - almost two hundred, we figured. They made the trip to Ottawa from as far away as Halifax, Hamilton, and Haliburton.

It's hard to describe just how lovely it was to have so many people gathered together, celebrating the lovely man that my dad was. But perhaps Lingchang's words can help convey some of that spirit:

悼念词 （Mourn Words for Mr. Harold Jones）

I deeply sorrow to hear my dear friend Harold Jones passed away two months ago.

I remember clearly the first time I met him and his wife Merle at Erskine Church in 1990 when I was a visiting scholar in Carleton University according to the agreement between Jiangsu Province of China and Ontario Province of Canada.

When he learned I stayed in Chinatown, which was quite far from Carleton University for me without a car, he generously invited me to stay with them and offered me the room where his daughter once lived. Mr. Jones’s home is very near Carleton University so it gave me great convenience.

Jones not only helped me resolve the problem of accommodation but also spent a lot of time to correct my reports grammatically again and again.

Once when he and his wife found out my birthday, Merle herself made two birthday cakes and Harold invited all the choir members of Erskine Church to their home to celebrate and shared the birthday cakes with us, because I was one of the choir members at that time.

During Christmas, his son and daughter came home from Toronto. The Joneses made five Christmas socks to distribute to every member of the family. That means they took me as a member of their family.

Before I finished my studies in Carleton, he learned I had not chanced to go out of Ottawa to look at other nearby cities. He automatically spent the whole day in driving me and my Chinese colleagues to Montreal and enthusiastically showed us around the city to let us enjoy the beauty and grand churches and the different buildings with the unique architecture styles.

When he and his wife Merle learned my daughter Beiling Yan would come to Canada to study, they once again stretched out their genuine and generous hands to invite my daughter to stay with them. If necessary, they were ready to offer financial assistance.

A proverb arises from my heart: “A friend in need is a friend in deed.” What Mr. Jones did for me made me feel very warm and happy.

They treated me as their close brother. It reflects their high internationalist spirit.

Several years later, I was promoted from associate professor to professor due to my research achievements. Frankly speaking, my achievements were closely linked with the Jones's assistance.

After I went back to China, another visiting scholar from South Korea came to stay with them. They treated him just as they did me.

Harold has set us a brilliant example, just as great Canadian internationalist Dr. Norman Bethune did. I will learn from him forever. Harold Jones will live in my heart forever.

Now I sit at his desk

My father, Harold E. Jones died peacefully on Friday at 4:20 in the afternoon. He was a lovely, lovely man - quiet, unassuming, wise, funny, responsible, generous, and always curious about the world.

Now I sit at his desk, afraid that with each object I touch I am erasing him, because if I move something it will no longer be in the place he last put it. But I can't stop myself. Looking through his things is a way of feeling close to him, to breathe in the workings of his mind and his heart.

In the central pile that built up over the recent months when he was feeling unwell I find prescription receipts, the owners manual for his car, direct mail solicitations from Oxfam and the NDP set aside for consideration, and lots of notes about the local food bank board, for which he served as chaired up until last month. (When he delivered his chair's report at the Annual General Meeting in June he got a standing ovation).

By the lamp base there's a pencil sharpener, a fortune cookie he never ate, and an old roll of brown string - Three Bee Gimp Superior Quality, 90 yards, Made in the USA. The paper wrapper on the string claims it is "Ideal for Knitting and Crocheting berets, hats, scarfs, bags, and collars, etc." (Why did he keep these last two objects? Did he have a plan for the string? Was he keeping the fortune cookie out of superstition?)

On the bookshelf he had arranged his dictionaries in chronological order by year of publication (I think it's fair to say he was a little bit OCD). He also taped notes to himself for things I suppose he wanted to remember: A phone number for Monica (who is she?), instructions on how to reset his watch (counterclockwise to change the date, clockwise to change the day), and a sticky note that says "Iraq oil costs $1-3/barrel to extract, Economist, Aug 16,2008, p.47" (Why did he care about that particular fact? I will never know now).

By the phone there's a note dated 18 March 2014 that says "Radiation Therapy North, room 1121, my first appt on Mar 28, 20 treatments, 4 weeks."

He went faithfully to room 1121 every day for a month, and his doctor told him the treatment would probably bring about a remission, but sadly that wasn't so. His PSA levels rose instead of falling, and by the end of June the cancer had spread widely into his bones.

He had always been extremely healthy. He was 89 and had never spent a day in the hospital, never even had a headache. Almost every day he found a reason to walk over to the shops on Bank Street, a forty minute walk there and back, but it would almost always take longer, because so many people knew him and liked him, and he would stop to chat.

I wonder if he went so quickly in part because he had never been sick? After all, it only took five weeks to take him from chairing an Annual General Meeting to lying in his deathbed. I think his body didn't know how to fight an illness once it had set in.

Bedside visitors, baroque harp, and what Cuba taught me.

It will happen soon now. He's stopped moving his legs around and kicking off the sheets. Now it's just his feet that shift a bit from time to time, or he moves his claw-like hands up and down his chest. His hands didn't used to be claw-like. When did that happen?

When I cry the pain is visceral. Any thought of him can bring it on. Tears well, my eyes clench closed, my head turns down and to the left, and then it's like being electrocuted. I can feel the charge shoot from behind my collar bone and down my left arm. It passes through the inside of my elbow and then goes to my wrist, where it radiates in pulses from the pad of flesh behind at the base of my thumb.

"You're wonderful," our old friend M said to me today. He's a good friend of my parents, and also a former minister, so I suppose he's used to visiting the bedsides of the dying - it would have been part of his job. He came and sat with my mom and I for about half an hour and we talked about memories of my dad, and Bermuda, where M was born, and Cuba, where I have just been. 

When M hugged me goodbye he said "You're wonderful." He pulled back to look in my eyes. "Such great caring. Where did you learn that?" I looked at my dad and mom and said "I had good teachers, I guess." It was the thing to say. But I'm not sure I knew this was in me: the patient caregiver I've become in the last few days. It's not something I'm sure I could replicate. Perhaps there's a bit I learned from Cuba, actually. This acceptance of life's tragedies and making the best of what there is.

After M left, I turned the music back on. We're playing classical music for him. My mother brought in a bunch of CDs that he liked. Right now it's Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Before that it was Schubert. So far my favourite is the Baroque Harp - it seems to hit the right gentle, peaceful note.

How much longer? Dying isn't easy, people keep telling me. I guess the timing is all up to him now. Which piece will he choose as the soundtrack for his transition to whatever comes next?

The last nap?

My parents are taking a nap together. Is it for the last time, I wonder?

It's a relief to watch my dad sleeping so peacefully, after all the restlessness he's been suffering for the last few days. But it's also impossible to contemplate that sometime soon he just won't wake up.

He and I have learned to "dance" together in a new way over the last few days. When he needs to go to the bathroom (which is agonizingly often) I help him transfer to the rolling commode chair. It takes a long time and tremendous effort for him to sit up in bed. Then he stands on his shaky legs and we do a kind of hug as I help him shuffle though the quarter turn so he's got his back to the chair. "Okay you can sit now," I say but it's hard for him to initiate the descent. I have to bend my knees to lower us both a bit and then he gets the hang of it. I've always been a follower when it comes to dancing. This must be what it's like to lead. 

He can't speak much anymore. His eyes rarely focus. And swallowing is getting difficult, except for ice cream which was always his favourite. I'm so glad we thought to bring some in for him this morning. He had it for breakfast.

What I found in my father's wallet

Yesterday, along with many other thoughtful tips, my friend Tricia suggested I go through my dad's wallet with him. I was out in the hospital grounds on a lunch break from my normal bedside vigil, and I'd called her to ask for advice on what to expect once he dies, since it's clear that very soon I'll become an executor. She said going through his wallet together could be a good way to learn about things like his bank accounts, etc.

When I got back to his room he was awake and alert so I took the opportunity right then. The most surprising things I found were in a little plastic case for cards which he said was where he kept his memberships. Tucked in amongst cards for the National Art Gallery and the Friends of the NAC Orchestra were two timeworn slips of paper.

One was his pledge as an engineer, which he would have signed when he graduated from university, the other an old Aztec saying he'd copied down from the wall of the Mexican pavilion at Expo '86.  "Why did you keep this?" I asked of the Aztec saying.  "Well they seemed like good words," he replied.  

Aztec Military Code:

The dignified man, he who respects his fatherland his family and himself is not made by pleasure and leisure, but by penance and fasting, knowledge and discipline 

Such were the words my father strove to live by.  I always knew he worked hard to be a "good" man, and I suppose that is why he felt compelled to hold those two pieces of paper so close to him.  But together they seemed too stern and serious to sum him up as a man.  Because he was also very kind kind and generous. "My philosophy is that God is Love" he said to me yesterday.  

That was yesterday. Today he is too tired to do anything like look through a wallet. He was awake in the morning but had become almost non verbal, only answering questions with an occasional word. Now he is sleeping soundly again.

His engineer's iron ring is still there on his pinky.

A good day

This morning my dad was very happy to be able to sit in a wheelchair in front of the bathroom mirror and give himself a shave. Kara the nurse got us a portable oxygen tank so he could make the trek across the room without removing the tube supplying his nose.

He had insisted I bring in his travel toiletry kit - the khacki bag shown in this photo. When Kara came to wheel him to bed again he explained proudly that both the bag and the shaving brush had been his own father's during the First World War. I gave my dad a new shaving brush a few years ago but he still held on to this ragged old thing to use whenever he travelled.

My father has never been one to give up on an object until he's squeezed out all possible use.

It's so strange now to contemplate how little time he has left to squeeze out of his life.

Yesterday he had a good day. He stayed awake until dinner time and had a better appetite than he's had in a month. But it was just a temporary boost from new steroid medications. Today he's tired again, his voice is weak, and his hands are disturbingly cold. After the shave and his lunch he had to lie down. Now I'm watching him sleep. Sweet dreams my dear father.

Bad news

July 9: My dad declined overnight instead of getting better. The doctor gave us the news today that it's only a matter of days before he goes. This has been astonishingly fast. It was just five weeks ago that he came to Toronto for the weekend to welcome me home from Cuba.

At the ER

July 8: At the Ottawa General emergency room where my dad is getting a blood transfusion. Hopefully this will make him feel better. He's had very low blood pressure and hemoglobin levels which have made him increasingly weak over the last three weeks. His prostate cancer has moved into his bones where it is compromising red blood cell production.  This has been a difficult week, and it's only Tuesday!