Remembering My Dad

Today is the sixth anniversary of my dad’s death. I was about to write that it was the fifth anniversary, but I was missing a year in there. It seems like so long ago, but also as though it happened a year ago. This year it’s hitting me particularly hard, I’m not sure why. Maybe because we’ve already had a death in the family this year (our dog Silah), and I am more aware of my own mortality.

My dad was a talker. He could make conversation with anyone anywhere – even waiting in line at the outhouse when we were camping. He always seemed to meet people he knew everywhere he went—he couldn’t go through an airport without running into someone. At one point he was flying between Edmonton and Calgary so regularly for his work that the desk agents knew him by name. They joked that they probably saw my dad more than my mom did.

When my parents moved to Ottawa and my mom started volunteering at the local performing arts centre, my dad would phone me in the evenings when she was out to talk about philosophical stuff. You know, politics, life, purpose, and meaning. He got so pensive during our talks, saying he was glad he wouldn’t have to experience life too far into future, which to him looked pretty bleak. Then he would say “oh I have to go pick up your mom!” and the call would be over. I’d be left with granules of ideas and tidbits of truth, like he’d just blown in on a rain squall and blown out again until next time.

The summer when my dad died was in the midst of the pandemic. I was terrified of catching COVID and bringing it back home to Dave, who has a compromised immune system. I was also in an extremely low phase that made travel extra difficult, regardless of the pandemic. All this to say that I wasn’t there when my dad died. I didn’t get to sit with him in the hospice room and hold his hand while he “slept.” I didn’t get to commit his face to memory so that I would remember it always. My mom said he looked so peaceful, and that his feet were actually warm—he’d always said he had cold feet.

All that said, I think he went the best way he could—no long decline, hanging on by his fingernails in a post-stroke fog. The first stroke had already changed his personality a bit, but he wouldn’t rest when he came home from the hospital, even though he said he was so tired. The second stroke, not long after he came home, felled him. My mom had already been talking about having a party for his 80^th birthday, but he was gone before it could happen. He missed his party—and all the others that would have come after.

Now that we’ve settled on staying here for good, and have made a dog memorial garden, we decided to plant a tree in honour of my dad.

We went to the garden centre on Monday. I was initially looking for a gingko, as he associated with Asian culture. But he was more into Japanese culture, not Chinese, which made the link a bit tenuous. As we walked into the garden centre I saw a display of native plants, in front of which was a Garry oak tree. Garry oaks are the only native oak in BC, and are seen mainly on the southeast side of Vancouver Island. They have a smaller green lobate leaf than some of the other oaks, like the pin oak we have in the backyard. I don’t know why this one spoke to me when thinking of my dad. Maybe because it grows into such a grand, gnarly tree, like my dad was. Tall and gnarly, with big hands and knuckles, knobbly elbows and knees. So, we got the Garry oak, and will keep it in a pot until the fall, when we can safely plant it and it will get enough water over the winter to acclimatize to its new home.

This week I’ll commemorate the anniversary of my dad’s death by camping in the yard, like I did the first summer after he passed. Don’t worry, I’m not parking in the driveway—we have 2.5 acres on which I can set myself up. He and I were alike in our love of camping in our VW van. We enjoyed being in the outdoors, cooking on the camp stove and, when I was younger, riding bikes around the campsite. One year we went to Denman Island and camped at Fillongley Park. It was more like a parking lot than a campsite, but the ocean was right there and we spent a lot of time beach combing. I collected pieces of crab legs and unique shells, most of which I had to get rid of before we got home because of the overpowering stench of rotting crab.

I feel a bit closer to my dad when I’m in my sleeping bag in our fibreglass trailer, or lighting a match to make dinner on a propane stove. I’ll write him a letter in the leather-bound journal I keep just for these anniversaries. Dave and I will have steak and wine for dinner—two things he loved in summer. Well, wine he loved year-round, usually an Argentinian wine as he spent so much time there in the last ten years of his life.

It will be a quiet anniversary, but spent doing what we loved best: camping. And remembering. Six years on, all in the blink of an eye.