June 3, 2011 -- In Memoriam

Dear Friends,

It's with that combination of sadness, relief and joy that I tell you that my dad passed away around 2:30 this morning.

Dad with Amelia, Christmas 2007

As you know, he had been in hospital pretty much ever since suffering a massive heart attack in late August. There was a 10-day period when we thought he was out of the woods and he did go home, but he wound up living out his last months at Glengarry Hospital, an extended-care facility. After a lifetime as a tremendously physical, athletic man, fiercely independent -- to a fault, as those of us who worried about him living alone can attest -- to have the rug pulled out from under him by a body that let him down was a shock to his system. Being on oxygen 24/7, unable to get up without becoming breathless, depressed at not being in his house with his bees ... it all added up. It is a relief that the Lord decided "enough's enough" and called him home.

Of course, there's the sadness. I'll miss him. So will Amelia, who was one of the great joys of dad's life -- a feeling that was mutual. We both had our premonitions that the end was near: she went to see him a week ago Thursday and when she left, she says he hugged her like he never wanted to let her go. I phoned him on Wednesday just before the hockey game and he drifted in and out of coherence. I got a nudge in the spirit that this was it, although my thought was how to encourage him more to take his eyes off the current situation and reach out towards a new chapter in his life, maybe encouraging the other people in the hospital and thereby make it to age 90 and beyond. ("After all," Amelia told him, "you've got a sister to catch up to," referring to my aunt Robbie, who's 92.) Even so, I believe God has a specific date and time set down for each of us, and 2:30 am PDT, June 3, 2011, was the one written against dad's name. Knowing that His plan always plays out, takes a lot of the edge off the sadness. 

But there's also the joy. Joy for a dad who -- quite frankly -- set a pretty high standard for integrity and willingness to lay down his life for the ones he loves. Joy that we were able to talk about faith issues, even though our "walks" were decidedly different. I believe that, even now, he's learning a Truth that none of us could even imagine in this world. Joy for what he did "in the dash" -- that time period represented by the " - " between the dates on a tombstone. I occasionally run into his former colleagues from CBC, and they speak of him with utmost respect; he also made fast friends in the small but treasured social life -- like the young ladies Amelia called "his chicks" -- waitresses at the White Spot and staff at the Oak Bay Rec Centre, not to mention the nurses. These young people were a joy to him and their caring tone as they've asked after him in the past is genuine. That's some pretty significant "dash content," right there.

Professionally, dad spent so much time living in mom's shadow that it was easy to forget how brilliantly talented he was. He was a musician who, along with his pal, Howie Denike, founded the Chilliwack Boys Band in the 30s. He still played the clarinet until a tendon problem shelved that idea a few years ago. He wrote with an effortless humor, as he did when he started toying with some memoirs about 10 years ago -- and could also tear your heart out, as he did mine when he described his father leaving home during the Depression. When I was in university in Montreal, he described firing the host of the gardening show he was producing and mused about different styles for doing it -- including a variation on John Cleese's "dead parrot" sketch that ended with, "your lettuces have wilted and your radishes have gone to seed! You are an ex-host!"

And then there was KLAHANIE. I'll refer you to a blog entry I posted in January: a source of joy is the knowledge that, with the creativity and the free rein he was given at the CBC, he managed to conceive and produce a show unlike any other to that time and which sent the "outdoors" genre off in a different direction.

Yeah, I was proud of him.

Dad asked to be cremated and his ashes mixed in with mom's, which are in the soil around a lovely cherry tree in the back yard at 638 Victoria Avenue. So we shall do that and hold memorials in Victoria and Vancouver some time in July. I'll make sure notices are duly posted.