Smoke On the Water
When I was a kid, there were several holidays that seemed kind of pointless, or at least, not really important.
Christmas was important and fun, because it seemed it was built up for months, with Christmas festivals and present-shopping and toy commercials and tree decorating and Christmas songs. Not to mention you got presents on it, and it was Jesus's birthday.
Easter was important, because that was when Jesus rose from the dead to save all our sins. And I got lots of chocolate.
Halloween was important, because though it didn't really celebrate anything religious and was even vaguely devil-worshippy to me, what kid is going to turn down the opportunity to dress up in a fun costume and get so much candy it would take a week to eat it all??
Valentine's Day was kind of lame, but still important because you hoped you got enough Valentine's from classmates to look cool, and there were always cinnamon hearts to eat, and it was fun choosing the best Valentine for any specific person.
Thanksgiving was important, because you got together with family and had a huge meal like at Christmas, but it wasn't as important because it had nothing to do with Jesus, and there was no presents, just lots of stuff involving turkeys and cranberries.
My birthday was important, because though not strictly an official holiday, it was an entire day dedicated to me, filled with presents and friends and cake and family members. Might as well be a holiday!
But other holidays were not nearly as cool.
Remembrance Day was important in theory, but it was hard to care in any real sense about wars long past, and mostly it just involved being made to make posters for the Remembrance Day poster contest held by the Legion, and seeing how much better everyone else's posters were, and having to buy poppies. It wasn't a total bust, though--we got the day off school.
Canada Day was lame, because we didn't get it off since we were already off school for the summer, and what? Canada was turning 127? Whatever. Sometimes Mom and Dad got it off, sometimes they didn't, and only one year did we ever do anything fun on it by going to the Canada Day festival in Edmonton.
Labour Day was another bad holiday, because rather than being a holiday, it usually just amounted to being the last day we had off of summer holidays before going back to school the next day. Who wants to sit around all Monday with your stack of school supplies in your room, your new school clothes folded up on your dresser, knowing that starting the next day it was back to the multiplication table grind?
New Year's Day sucked, because New Year's Eve was lame as a kid. Though we were occasionally allowed to stay up late to wish everyone a happy new year, the next day seemed a bit of a let down when you realized that the new year felt and looked and was a lot like the old one, and there was never anything interesting to do.
Mother's Day, too, seemed pretty lame, though, I mean, you couldn't fault the fact that mother's deserved recognition. Mom was the one that raised us mostly, and punished us, and was pretty much the primary parent. She put up with a lot, so having a day when we would perform Mother's Day songs or whatever in Sunday School, and then go to Oma's and celebrate Mom with the whole family, well, it was kind of justified, I suppose.
But the lamest holiday of all, I felt as a kid, was Father's Day.
No one made nearly as much big of a deal of Father's Day as they did of Mother's Day. Moms got flowers and chocolates and breakfast in bed; Dad's got... I dunno. There were ads for golf clubs in fliers. And Dad was never the primary parent. We loved him, sure... but he worked till 5:00, would appear for dinner and then after dinner would usually stretch out on the couch, or go work in his workshop outside, or maybe do chores around the farm. He was there.... but really, Father's Day just felt like it was invented because a bunch of father's eventually got mad that there was so much hoopla made for Mother's Day and they didn't have anything, so someone made up a holiday to satisfy them.
That said, it has thus become surprising to me that Father's Day is the holiday I find one of the saddest of the entire year.
After my dad passed away, I realized just how much I loved and needed that man who had always been there my entire life. The passing of my father left a gigantic gaping hole in my heart that just can never be filled, only grown used to. Now, whenever Father's Day rolls around, I am left wishing I could take out my dad for lunch, or help him in his workshop, or crack a joke with him and see him smile or laugh the way he used to. It reminds me that he is gone, and I will never be able to see him again.
My dad was one of the best men to ever live--at least in my books. He was gentle, he was kind, and he very rarely got angry. I can only remember a few times when my dad was really, genuinely mad. Most of the time when us kids acted up, he just got disappointed. He wasn't a superman--he wasn't the tallest guy around, he was skinny and lean. But he worked in construction, so his muscles were taught and lean and he was very much stronger than he looked. His hands were always sore and cracked and bandaged from handling wet pine wood when he was working, and there was always a huge tub of orange-scented industrial hand cleaner in the bathroom for him to clean his hands when he got home.
My dad had a big green van full of rust holes that he carried all his tools in. It had no muffler, so you could hear it rumbling from miles away whenever he drove it. When he got home from work, you could tell it was him about a minute before he turned into the driveway. In that van, he had a mobile phone--the old kind, that were installed into the van itself and were huge and very unreliable. His business was named Spectrum Enterprises, and he struggled to keep it afloat, and he managed despite lean years.
My dad was the fun parent, the one that would break the rules a bit if Mom wasn't around. When she worked Sunday mornings, we would always go to McDonald's for lunch after church. Sometimes, after church, we would go to Red Deer and check out the malls there--usually the bookstores, because Dad loved cool books just as much as I did. I credit my love of World War II history with him, because he loved to get and read books all about the subject. One of my most prized books on that subject is one my mom got him for Christmas one year from Reader's Digest. When he passed away, I took that book as my own. I love it, and it sits on my shelf and I will occasionally pull it down and look at it, remembering my dad.
My dad was always a bit disappointed that I was never interested in construction or working on the farm like he was. My mom says she remembers one time when I was maybe 12, when my dad was working around the house, and he was going to replace a doorknob. "Come on, Cameron! Come help me and you can learn how to replace a doorknob!" Mom says I said, really unenthused, "Why??" "Because what if one day you need to replace a doorknob around the house?" he said. My answer was to the point: "Then I'll just hire someone to do it for me." Mom says it was all she could do to hold back her laughter, because my dad looked so disappointed she didn't want to laugh and make it worse. He always said that he would build each of us kids a house for free, as long as we supplied the materials, and he was serious. If we told him what we wanted in our dream house, he would build it and design it for free for us. That was something each of us kids always remembered. When he passed away, my sister brought it up, and me and my brother both immediately nodded--Mom had forgotten entirely that he'd ever said it, but as soon as she was reminded, she recalled in wonder that he had said it, and was amazed that each of us kids remembered. My house was going to have a full library, and a widow's tower to write in.
Despite that, I know my dad was proud of me. He was always so proud of how well I was able to do in school, constantly saying how he had no idea how I could get so smart, because I was way smarter than him. He supported every academic endeavor I embarked upon. He encouraged me to write and become a writer. When I came out to him, he was confused and didn't understand, but he was more supportive than my mom was at the time--he told me, "It just breaks my heart, because I know that gay people have to put up with so much extra hard stuff in the world, and I don't want you to have to put up with that kind of shit from people. I want your life to be as easy and happy as it can be. But I know that for that to happen, you have to be able to love who you want to love. So though I don't understand it, you are my son and I will always, always love you and be proud of you and support you." And hearing that from my dad--who very rarely talked about how he felt, or his emotions, preferring to keep them locked tight inside as he felt a man should--hearing that from him felt unbelievably special and supported, even though it was never mentioned again. Just knowing it was there, was enough.
When I had my first seizure in sixteen years, the first one I had since the spat of them I went through as a three-year old, the one where I broke my back, I was taken to the hospital, where I was in the hospital bed, tired and sore and feeling betrayed by my body. My mom was in there, just talking to me, upset as well. She must have called my dad, because he appeared in the door, still dressed in his work clothes, and saw me on the bed, made sure I was all right, and then he turned to my mom and collapsed into her arms, his entire body wracked with sobs he wasn't letting himself let out. My mom just hugged him as he cried through the frustration. He had to take his glasses off and rub his eyes, and he just kept saying, "I thought this was over. I thought he was free from this. I thought this was over." And my mom just held onto him and the two of them rocked back and forth and clung to each other in support, my mom saying, "I know, I know," to each of his statements of frustration. Seeing my dad like that almost broke my heart.
My dad did so much stuff for me. When I was in Cadets (the Christian kind, not the Air Force kind), he helped me earn my badges. He built my Cub Car for me for the Cadet Rally each year. One time, he built me an awesome replica of an original Star Trek Type II phaser out of wood, complete with a nail as the nozzle. I loved that gun. He went on a camping trip with me, my brother, and my best friend when I was nineteen, just because he knew I wanted desperately to go to the Rockies that year. It was only a night, but it was an awesome night. My dad taught me how to play chess, though he almost always beat me. He loved to take me and my brother and sister out in the truck at night and dodge around the field, where the deer would appear in the headlights, and we'd bomb around, bouncing up and down insanely, chasing the deer throughout the field, all of us laughing our asses off. One time when we were camping, it was pitch dark, everyone was lying there, trying to drift off, when he decided that no--we weren't going to sleep yet, and he turned on the lights, and got up and made toast over the motorhome's stove by holding bread above the small flame. He made it for every one of us, in the middle of the night, in his briefs, while all of us laughed and talked and watched and enjoyed middle-of-the-night toast. When I was a kid and teenager, it wasn't uncommon for him to wake the entire family up at midnight to go on a surprise "nachos and cheese" run to 7-11, a surprise late-night family outing. I loved those trips. My dad taught me how to fish, and though I was never any good at it, and only caught small fish, he would treat those small fish as important as any fish he ever caught. When he was in the hospital one year, despite his pain, he made sure to save me a crossword puzzle he found in the newspaper one day--a Lord of the Rings crossword puzzle, the size of two full-size broadsheet newspaper pages, a huge, huge puzzle, because he knew I'd like it. That Christmas break, after he came home from the hospital, that crossword puzzle sat open and unfolded on our kitchen counter for the entire break, everyone contributing to solve it over the next week. Every clue was filled in, communally, by family and friends and visitors alike. It was our Christmas challenge, and we all contributed.
My dad loved collecting small elephant figures. He had so many. SO many. All over his office they stood--small, medium, large elephant figures. My mom would buy them for him, he would buy them for himself, we got them for him. When he passed away, mom let us take whatever one of these figures that we wanted, to remember him by. Mine stands on the top of my DVD shelf, a constant reminder of my dad. Last Christmas, she took a box of them to the Swier family Christmas celebration and let each of the cousins choose one for themselves. Several of them broke down into tears as they chose. My dad was loved by everyone who knew him.
He had a toque, a particularly ugly brown and tan toque that he loved, and wore non-stop all winter long. He accumulated icicles on his beard when he worked outside. When the calves were in danger of freezing to death during cold snaps, he would take them into the porch and patiently warm them up with the hair dryer to keep them alive. When his dog Fern died after being run over accidentally by my Oma, he took her out to a secluded spot in the nearby woods with me and my brother, and that was one of the only other times I ever saw my dad cry.
Sometimes, on a Saturday morning, or a morning before school while I ate my cereal at the counter, or before church, he would come into the kitchen where my mom was getting things ready, and without warning he would grab her around the waist, spin her around, grab her hands, and dance her around the kitchen, the two of them laughing and giggling and so in love, and they would end off with the two of them kissing deeply, holding on to each other. At the time, me and my brother and sister would make, "Ew!! Kissing!! Gross!!" noises... but deep down it was good to know that my parents loved each other so deeply and openly. It made our home feel stable. We went camping one year, and my mom and dad made us kids go to bed early, but we weren't quite ready at that point. So we lay in bed, and opened up the curtains, and looked out to the fire, only to see Mom and Dad kissing quietly by the fireside. Giggling, we took a picture with the camera, a picture which has since become legendary because of its candidness and openness. My dad loved motorbikes, and when he got older he bought one, and always loved to take it out. My mom loved to ride behind him, out on the road--they both bought helmets and bike jackets and the two of them would go on bike trips with my aunt and uncle, speeding down the road on their hogs. His favorite song in the world was "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple. He would play it on the CD player all the time, he would do air-guitar to it, every time he heard it he would smile and laugh, and every single family member associated it with him. "Smoke on the Water" was my dad. He could even play it on the banjo.
When I was seven, my dad was diagnosed with diabetes. I didn't know what diabetes was at seven. All I knew was that it was a scary-sounding disease, one of those diseases that never went away. In my mind, it might as well have been cancer. And my grandma had died of cancer earlier that year. At school that day, I broke down halfway through. I couldn't concentrate on my work--all I could think of was that my dad was sick and I didn't know what to do. The school called my mom, and she came and picked me up to go visit my dad. There, my dad and my mom and doctor explained that diabetes, though bad news, wasn't as awful as I imagined. With careful eating and insulin injections, diabetes could be managed and my dad would live a perfectly normal, long life. That eased my worries enough for me to go back to school.
My dad was never one to really worry much about what he ate, though. He resented being limited to the foods he didn't really like. He loved ice cream, and pie, and all kinds of sweet things. He didn't like that he was supposed to watch his portions. He cheated on his diabetes all the time, which made my mom mad but secretly amused all of us kids, because he'd do it around us, and it was like when we'd sneak to McDonalds after church, or skip church to go to Edmonton while she was at work. There didn't seem to be any ill effects.
Those ill effects caught up with him years later, when it seemed his entire gastrointestinal tract began to shut down. For three years my dad lived in pain, in and out of the hospital. He both lost and gained weight as his body lost its ability to regulate itself. He had to take stacks and stacks of pills. He couldn't work, all he could do was lay on the couch or in bed, occasionally moaning in pain. There were periods when he would get better... but then he would get worse again. He hated doctors and hospitals--he always had--but he saw more of them in those three years than ever, and he quietly resented it. He was sick for my sister's wedding and bolstered himself enough to walk her down the aisle... but he had to go to the hospital for the reception. My sister was upset--when she was growing up, she had always said she wanted to dance with my dad to the song "Butterfly Kisses" on her wedding day. So just before she left at the end of the night, I went up to the DJ and requested that he play that song, and when it started I went up to my sister and asked if I could have that dance, in place of dad, and her eyes teared up and she nodded and we danced for a verse in front of everyone. Then the second verse started up, and my brother cut in... and they danced to that. And then my Mom grabbed my hand, and the two of us went up there and joined in, the four of us, dancing together in a circle to the song that had always been Amy and Dad's, all of us crying and holding on to each other. And then for the end of the song, we all backed off, and let her finish dancing to the song with her new husband Bobby, the way Dad had always intended. When the song ended, there was not a dry eye in the house... everyone there who had watched us was crying, because it was no secret what that song meant to my sister and dad and our family. When I told my Dad what I'd done, he thanked me with tears in his eyes and told me he was proud that I'd stepped in for him, and he wished he could have done it himself.
He lasted through my brother's wedding, and was better off for that one, though still not entirely well. He hadn't been well for years at that point. He couldn't sleep well, either, not in his pain, so he moved to an upstairs bedroom to allow mom to sleep without his writhing and restlessness keeping her awake. It was there in that bedroom on the morning of Sunday, October 1st, that he passed away when his heart failed him. My mom went up to say goodbye to him before she left for church, but he wasn't breathing. She tried to do CPR, but he was already cold. She had to do it for 20 minutes until the ambulance showed up, even though she knew he was gone.
That day I was laying on my bed, reading, when my phone rang and it was my brother. "Hey!" I said, cuz my brother never called and it was a nice surprise. "...Hey Cameron," he said, and I could tell from his voice that something wasn't quite right. "What's up?" I asked him. There was a long pause, and when he spoke again his voice was tight and he could barely speak. "...Dad's dead," he said, and with those words I felt a vice tighten over my heart. "What?" I said, in barely a whisper. "He passed away this morning. Mom found him. It... it was his heart." I didn't know what to say. "Oh," was I think was the only thing I said. To be honest, I can't remember much more of that conversation. I wasn't really present for it. I couldn't believe the news. I do remember that when I hung up the phone, I just laid there, on my bed, for a good solid minute, holding the phone, staring blankly forward. And then slowly, without me even being fully aware of it, a wail started to build up in my chest and before I even really knew it, I was sobbing, deeply, profoundly, more than I ever had in my life. And I still found it hard to believe. How do you process that someone who has been around for every second of your life, someone who has always been there for you, who was a foundation of your existence, is suddenly gone? How do you process that? Everything else in your life feels the same, but in one little moment, everything is different. It was surreal, and I was in shock, and I didn't know what I was going to do.
I flew home the next day. Seeing my mom made me break down again. Seeing the video that my mom's best friend had composed in memory of my dad for the funeral--privately with the rest of the family the night before the ceremony--caused me to collapse again, even harder than I had the first time, except this time, my mom was there to wrap her arms around me and hold me and say, "I know, I know..." to me. And I clung to her tight because she was my mom, and I felt three again, and I just needed my mommy.
The funeral was packed. Dad was loved by so many people, all over Central Alberta, that the church was jammed full, all the way up in the balconies, even. My brother and sister and I all gave some of our most profound memories of dad, and my brother started to break down at the microphone so I moved up and hugged him, as did my sister. Most of the church cried at this point. It was a whirlwind. I don't have many memories of that time. My brother said that all he could think of was my dad up in heaven, no longer in pain, preparing the dream houses for me and my sister and him, the ones Dad had always promised us he'd build for us. That he just pictured Dad up in heaven, "just hammerin' away." That visual is one I hold onto to this day.
And then, it was over, and I was flying home, and my dad was just gone, and life went on.
Every year on the anniversary of his death, I phone home to my mom and we talk about him. This past year, I had a dream that my dad and I were camping in the woods, and on our way we stopped for food, and he let me choose--either a burger, or a pizza. And I chose the burger. And then that night we slept in our sleeping bags on the ground, but overnight I horrible cold fell, like -40 degrees, and I was shivering, and I woke up to find Dad horribly sick and dying in his sleeping bag beside me. It was food poisoning, from the burger. And we were all alone in the woods and I couldn't get to a hospital and he died telling me how much he loved me and I watched it all, and I blamed myself because I chose the burgers, and it was the burger that killed him. The last part of the dream was me just sobbing over his dead body in the dream, and I woke up sobbing for real. And then I realized that the date was two years after he passed away, exactly. So I called my mom, because I needed to hear my mom's voice after that dream, I needed to talk about dad.
Father's Day is also a hard day for me, because I used to take it so lightly. All those years with my dad, and I never let him know on Father's Day how much he meant to me. I took his presence for granted. And now, he's gone. And I miss him so very, very much, so much that I cried several times while writing this post again.
I miss you, Dad, and I look forward to that house you're working on for me.
Happy Father's Day.
Christmas was important and fun, because it seemed it was built up for months, with Christmas festivals and present-shopping and toy commercials and tree decorating and Christmas songs. Not to mention you got presents on it, and it was Jesus's birthday.
Easter was important, because that was when Jesus rose from the dead to save all our sins. And I got lots of chocolate.
Halloween was important, because though it didn't really celebrate anything religious and was even vaguely devil-worshippy to me, what kid is going to turn down the opportunity to dress up in a fun costume and get so much candy it would take a week to eat it all??
Valentine's Day was kind of lame, but still important because you hoped you got enough Valentine's from classmates to look cool, and there were always cinnamon hearts to eat, and it was fun choosing the best Valentine for any specific person.
Thanksgiving was important, because you got together with family and had a huge meal like at Christmas, but it wasn't as important because it had nothing to do with Jesus, and there was no presents, just lots of stuff involving turkeys and cranberries.
My birthday was important, because though not strictly an official holiday, it was an entire day dedicated to me, filled with presents and friends and cake and family members. Might as well be a holiday!
But other holidays were not nearly as cool.
Remembrance Day was important in theory, but it was hard to care in any real sense about wars long past, and mostly it just involved being made to make posters for the Remembrance Day poster contest held by the Legion, and seeing how much better everyone else's posters were, and having to buy poppies. It wasn't a total bust, though--we got the day off school.
Canada Day was lame, because we didn't get it off since we were already off school for the summer, and what? Canada was turning 127? Whatever. Sometimes Mom and Dad got it off, sometimes they didn't, and only one year did we ever do anything fun on it by going to the Canada Day festival in Edmonton.
Labour Day was another bad holiday, because rather than being a holiday, it usually just amounted to being the last day we had off of summer holidays before going back to school the next day. Who wants to sit around all Monday with your stack of school supplies in your room, your new school clothes folded up on your dresser, knowing that starting the next day it was back to the multiplication table grind?
New Year's Day sucked, because New Year's Eve was lame as a kid. Though we were occasionally allowed to stay up late to wish everyone a happy new year, the next day seemed a bit of a let down when you realized that the new year felt and looked and was a lot like the old one, and there was never anything interesting to do.
Mother's Day, too, seemed pretty lame, though, I mean, you couldn't fault the fact that mother's deserved recognition. Mom was the one that raised us mostly, and punished us, and was pretty much the primary parent. She put up with a lot, so having a day when we would perform Mother's Day songs or whatever in Sunday School, and then go to Oma's and celebrate Mom with the whole family, well, it was kind of justified, I suppose.
But the lamest holiday of all, I felt as a kid, was Father's Day.
No one made nearly as much big of a deal of Father's Day as they did of Mother's Day. Moms got flowers and chocolates and breakfast in bed; Dad's got... I dunno. There were ads for golf clubs in fliers. And Dad was never the primary parent. We loved him, sure... but he worked till 5:00, would appear for dinner and then after dinner would usually stretch out on the couch, or go work in his workshop outside, or maybe do chores around the farm. He was there.... but really, Father's Day just felt like it was invented because a bunch of father's eventually got mad that there was so much hoopla made for Mother's Day and they didn't have anything, so someone made up a holiday to satisfy them.
That said, it has thus become surprising to me that Father's Day is the holiday I find one of the saddest of the entire year.
After my dad passed away, I realized just how much I loved and needed that man who had always been there my entire life. The passing of my father left a gigantic gaping hole in my heart that just can never be filled, only grown used to. Now, whenever Father's Day rolls around, I am left wishing I could take out my dad for lunch, or help him in his workshop, or crack a joke with him and see him smile or laugh the way he used to. It reminds me that he is gone, and I will never be able to see him again.
My dad was one of the best men to ever live--at least in my books. He was gentle, he was kind, and he very rarely got angry. I can only remember a few times when my dad was really, genuinely mad. Most of the time when us kids acted up, he just got disappointed. He wasn't a superman--he wasn't the tallest guy around, he was skinny and lean. But he worked in construction, so his muscles were taught and lean and he was very much stronger than he looked. His hands were always sore and cracked and bandaged from handling wet pine wood when he was working, and there was always a huge tub of orange-scented industrial hand cleaner in the bathroom for him to clean his hands when he got home.
My dad had a big green van full of rust holes that he carried all his tools in. It had no muffler, so you could hear it rumbling from miles away whenever he drove it. When he got home from work, you could tell it was him about a minute before he turned into the driveway. In that van, he had a mobile phone--the old kind, that were installed into the van itself and were huge and very unreliable. His business was named Spectrum Enterprises, and he struggled to keep it afloat, and he managed despite lean years.
My dad was the fun parent, the one that would break the rules a bit if Mom wasn't around. When she worked Sunday mornings, we would always go to McDonald's for lunch after church. Sometimes, after church, we would go to Red Deer and check out the malls there--usually the bookstores, because Dad loved cool books just as much as I did. I credit my love of World War II history with him, because he loved to get and read books all about the subject. One of my most prized books on that subject is one my mom got him for Christmas one year from Reader's Digest. When he passed away, I took that book as my own. I love it, and it sits on my shelf and I will occasionally pull it down and look at it, remembering my dad.
My dad was always a bit disappointed that I was never interested in construction or working on the farm like he was. My mom says she remembers one time when I was maybe 12, when my dad was working around the house, and he was going to replace a doorknob. "Come on, Cameron! Come help me and you can learn how to replace a doorknob!" Mom says I said, really unenthused, "Why??" "Because what if one day you need to replace a doorknob around the house?" he said. My answer was to the point: "Then I'll just hire someone to do it for me." Mom says it was all she could do to hold back her laughter, because my dad looked so disappointed she didn't want to laugh and make it worse. He always said that he would build each of us kids a house for free, as long as we supplied the materials, and he was serious. If we told him what we wanted in our dream house, he would build it and design it for free for us. That was something each of us kids always remembered. When he passed away, my sister brought it up, and me and my brother both immediately nodded--Mom had forgotten entirely that he'd ever said it, but as soon as she was reminded, she recalled in wonder that he had said it, and was amazed that each of us kids remembered. My house was going to have a full library, and a widow's tower to write in.
Despite that, I know my dad was proud of me. He was always so proud of how well I was able to do in school, constantly saying how he had no idea how I could get so smart, because I was way smarter than him. He supported every academic endeavor I embarked upon. He encouraged me to write and become a writer. When I came out to him, he was confused and didn't understand, but he was more supportive than my mom was at the time--he told me, "It just breaks my heart, because I know that gay people have to put up with so much extra hard stuff in the world, and I don't want you to have to put up with that kind of shit from people. I want your life to be as easy and happy as it can be. But I know that for that to happen, you have to be able to love who you want to love. So though I don't understand it, you are my son and I will always, always love you and be proud of you and support you." And hearing that from my dad--who very rarely talked about how he felt, or his emotions, preferring to keep them locked tight inside as he felt a man should--hearing that from him felt unbelievably special and supported, even though it was never mentioned again. Just knowing it was there, was enough.
When I had my first seizure in sixteen years, the first one I had since the spat of them I went through as a three-year old, the one where I broke my back, I was taken to the hospital, where I was in the hospital bed, tired and sore and feeling betrayed by my body. My mom was in there, just talking to me, upset as well. She must have called my dad, because he appeared in the door, still dressed in his work clothes, and saw me on the bed, made sure I was all right, and then he turned to my mom and collapsed into her arms, his entire body wracked with sobs he wasn't letting himself let out. My mom just hugged him as he cried through the frustration. He had to take his glasses off and rub his eyes, and he just kept saying, "I thought this was over. I thought he was free from this. I thought this was over." And my mom just held onto him and the two of them rocked back and forth and clung to each other in support, my mom saying, "I know, I know," to each of his statements of frustration. Seeing my dad like that almost broke my heart.
My dad did so much stuff for me. When I was in Cadets (the Christian kind, not the Air Force kind), he helped me earn my badges. He built my Cub Car for me for the Cadet Rally each year. One time, he built me an awesome replica of an original Star Trek Type II phaser out of wood, complete with a nail as the nozzle. I loved that gun. He went on a camping trip with me, my brother, and my best friend when I was nineteen, just because he knew I wanted desperately to go to the Rockies that year. It was only a night, but it was an awesome night. My dad taught me how to play chess, though he almost always beat me. He loved to take me and my brother and sister out in the truck at night and dodge around the field, where the deer would appear in the headlights, and we'd bomb around, bouncing up and down insanely, chasing the deer throughout the field, all of us laughing our asses off. One time when we were camping, it was pitch dark, everyone was lying there, trying to drift off, when he decided that no--we weren't going to sleep yet, and he turned on the lights, and got up and made toast over the motorhome's stove by holding bread above the small flame. He made it for every one of us, in the middle of the night, in his briefs, while all of us laughed and talked and watched and enjoyed middle-of-the-night toast. When I was a kid and teenager, it wasn't uncommon for him to wake the entire family up at midnight to go on a surprise "nachos and cheese" run to 7-11, a surprise late-night family outing. I loved those trips. My dad taught me how to fish, and though I was never any good at it, and only caught small fish, he would treat those small fish as important as any fish he ever caught. When he was in the hospital one year, despite his pain, he made sure to save me a crossword puzzle he found in the newspaper one day--a Lord of the Rings crossword puzzle, the size of two full-size broadsheet newspaper pages, a huge, huge puzzle, because he knew I'd like it. That Christmas break, after he came home from the hospital, that crossword puzzle sat open and unfolded on our kitchen counter for the entire break, everyone contributing to solve it over the next week. Every clue was filled in, communally, by family and friends and visitors alike. It was our Christmas challenge, and we all contributed.
My dad loved collecting small elephant figures. He had so many. SO many. All over his office they stood--small, medium, large elephant figures. My mom would buy them for him, he would buy them for himself, we got them for him. When he passed away, mom let us take whatever one of these figures that we wanted, to remember him by. Mine stands on the top of my DVD shelf, a constant reminder of my dad. Last Christmas, she took a box of them to the Swier family Christmas celebration and let each of the cousins choose one for themselves. Several of them broke down into tears as they chose. My dad was loved by everyone who knew him.
He had a toque, a particularly ugly brown and tan toque that he loved, and wore non-stop all winter long. He accumulated icicles on his beard when he worked outside. When the calves were in danger of freezing to death during cold snaps, he would take them into the porch and patiently warm them up with the hair dryer to keep them alive. When his dog Fern died after being run over accidentally by my Oma, he took her out to a secluded spot in the nearby woods with me and my brother, and that was one of the only other times I ever saw my dad cry.
Sometimes, on a Saturday morning, or a morning before school while I ate my cereal at the counter, or before church, he would come into the kitchen where my mom was getting things ready, and without warning he would grab her around the waist, spin her around, grab her hands, and dance her around the kitchen, the two of them laughing and giggling and so in love, and they would end off with the two of them kissing deeply, holding on to each other. At the time, me and my brother and sister would make, "Ew!! Kissing!! Gross!!" noises... but deep down it was good to know that my parents loved each other so deeply and openly. It made our home feel stable. We went camping one year, and my mom and dad made us kids go to bed early, but we weren't quite ready at that point. So we lay in bed, and opened up the curtains, and looked out to the fire, only to see Mom and Dad kissing quietly by the fireside. Giggling, we took a picture with the camera, a picture which has since become legendary because of its candidness and openness. My dad loved motorbikes, and when he got older he bought one, and always loved to take it out. My mom loved to ride behind him, out on the road--they both bought helmets and bike jackets and the two of them would go on bike trips with my aunt and uncle, speeding down the road on their hogs. His favorite song in the world was "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple. He would play it on the CD player all the time, he would do air-guitar to it, every time he heard it he would smile and laugh, and every single family member associated it with him. "Smoke on the Water" was my dad. He could even play it on the banjo.
When I was seven, my dad was diagnosed with diabetes. I didn't know what diabetes was at seven. All I knew was that it was a scary-sounding disease, one of those diseases that never went away. In my mind, it might as well have been cancer. And my grandma had died of cancer earlier that year. At school that day, I broke down halfway through. I couldn't concentrate on my work--all I could think of was that my dad was sick and I didn't know what to do. The school called my mom, and she came and picked me up to go visit my dad. There, my dad and my mom and doctor explained that diabetes, though bad news, wasn't as awful as I imagined. With careful eating and insulin injections, diabetes could be managed and my dad would live a perfectly normal, long life. That eased my worries enough for me to go back to school.
My dad was never one to really worry much about what he ate, though. He resented being limited to the foods he didn't really like. He loved ice cream, and pie, and all kinds of sweet things. He didn't like that he was supposed to watch his portions. He cheated on his diabetes all the time, which made my mom mad but secretly amused all of us kids, because he'd do it around us, and it was like when we'd sneak to McDonalds after church, or skip church to go to Edmonton while she was at work. There didn't seem to be any ill effects.
Those ill effects caught up with him years later, when it seemed his entire gastrointestinal tract began to shut down. For three years my dad lived in pain, in and out of the hospital. He both lost and gained weight as his body lost its ability to regulate itself. He had to take stacks and stacks of pills. He couldn't work, all he could do was lay on the couch or in bed, occasionally moaning in pain. There were periods when he would get better... but then he would get worse again. He hated doctors and hospitals--he always had--but he saw more of them in those three years than ever, and he quietly resented it. He was sick for my sister's wedding and bolstered himself enough to walk her down the aisle... but he had to go to the hospital for the reception. My sister was upset--when she was growing up, she had always said she wanted to dance with my dad to the song "Butterfly Kisses" on her wedding day. So just before she left at the end of the night, I went up to the DJ and requested that he play that song, and when it started I went up to my sister and asked if I could have that dance, in place of dad, and her eyes teared up and she nodded and we danced for a verse in front of everyone. Then the second verse started up, and my brother cut in... and they danced to that. And then my Mom grabbed my hand, and the two of us went up there and joined in, the four of us, dancing together in a circle to the song that had always been Amy and Dad's, all of us crying and holding on to each other. And then for the end of the song, we all backed off, and let her finish dancing to the song with her new husband Bobby, the way Dad had always intended. When the song ended, there was not a dry eye in the house... everyone there who had watched us was crying, because it was no secret what that song meant to my sister and dad and our family. When I told my Dad what I'd done, he thanked me with tears in his eyes and told me he was proud that I'd stepped in for him, and he wished he could have done it himself.
He lasted through my brother's wedding, and was better off for that one, though still not entirely well. He hadn't been well for years at that point. He couldn't sleep well, either, not in his pain, so he moved to an upstairs bedroom to allow mom to sleep without his writhing and restlessness keeping her awake. It was there in that bedroom on the morning of Sunday, October 1st, that he passed away when his heart failed him. My mom went up to say goodbye to him before she left for church, but he wasn't breathing. She tried to do CPR, but he was already cold. She had to do it for 20 minutes until the ambulance showed up, even though she knew he was gone.
That day I was laying on my bed, reading, when my phone rang and it was my brother. "Hey!" I said, cuz my brother never called and it was a nice surprise. "...Hey Cameron," he said, and I could tell from his voice that something wasn't quite right. "What's up?" I asked him. There was a long pause, and when he spoke again his voice was tight and he could barely speak. "...Dad's dead," he said, and with those words I felt a vice tighten over my heart. "What?" I said, in barely a whisper. "He passed away this morning. Mom found him. It... it was his heart." I didn't know what to say. "Oh," was I think was the only thing I said. To be honest, I can't remember much more of that conversation. I wasn't really present for it. I couldn't believe the news. I do remember that when I hung up the phone, I just laid there, on my bed, for a good solid minute, holding the phone, staring blankly forward. And then slowly, without me even being fully aware of it, a wail started to build up in my chest and before I even really knew it, I was sobbing, deeply, profoundly, more than I ever had in my life. And I still found it hard to believe. How do you process that someone who has been around for every second of your life, someone who has always been there for you, who was a foundation of your existence, is suddenly gone? How do you process that? Everything else in your life feels the same, but in one little moment, everything is different. It was surreal, and I was in shock, and I didn't know what I was going to do.
I flew home the next day. Seeing my mom made me break down again. Seeing the video that my mom's best friend had composed in memory of my dad for the funeral--privately with the rest of the family the night before the ceremony--caused me to collapse again, even harder than I had the first time, except this time, my mom was there to wrap her arms around me and hold me and say, "I know, I know..." to me. And I clung to her tight because she was my mom, and I felt three again, and I just needed my mommy.
The funeral was packed. Dad was loved by so many people, all over Central Alberta, that the church was jammed full, all the way up in the balconies, even. My brother and sister and I all gave some of our most profound memories of dad, and my brother started to break down at the microphone so I moved up and hugged him, as did my sister. Most of the church cried at this point. It was a whirlwind. I don't have many memories of that time. My brother said that all he could think of was my dad up in heaven, no longer in pain, preparing the dream houses for me and my sister and him, the ones Dad had always promised us he'd build for us. That he just pictured Dad up in heaven, "just hammerin' away." That visual is one I hold onto to this day.
And then, it was over, and I was flying home, and my dad was just gone, and life went on.
Every year on the anniversary of his death, I phone home to my mom and we talk about him. This past year, I had a dream that my dad and I were camping in the woods, and on our way we stopped for food, and he let me choose--either a burger, or a pizza. And I chose the burger. And then that night we slept in our sleeping bags on the ground, but overnight I horrible cold fell, like -40 degrees, and I was shivering, and I woke up to find Dad horribly sick and dying in his sleeping bag beside me. It was food poisoning, from the burger. And we were all alone in the woods and I couldn't get to a hospital and he died telling me how much he loved me and I watched it all, and I blamed myself because I chose the burgers, and it was the burger that killed him. The last part of the dream was me just sobbing over his dead body in the dream, and I woke up sobbing for real. And then I realized that the date was two years after he passed away, exactly. So I called my mom, because I needed to hear my mom's voice after that dream, I needed to talk about dad.
Father's Day is also a hard day for me, because I used to take it so lightly. All those years with my dad, and I never let him know on Father's Day how much he meant to me. I took his presence for granted. And now, he's gone. And I miss him so very, very much, so much that I cried several times while writing this post again.
I miss you, Dad, and I look forward to that house you're working on for me.
Happy Father's Day.
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