I don’t have a picture for this.
I have a memory, of my Dad and I, we were driving home from dropping off my older brother at a college just out of town. The whole way back the car was silent.
I’m a talker.
Shut Up.
I was about 15 maybe, so maybe around 1977.
I remember the longing I had inside of me to know my Dad’s insides, to hear his heart. There is a highway that circles the City of Winnipeg, and its called The Perimeter Highway.
Put yourself there with me, is what I’m tryin to say here. Young man, perfect father son moment, really, except maybe it wasn’t. But it was our moment, anyways, Dad and mine. Its either good or bad, but its ME -> to look for the good, and be thankful for it. I’ll get to that…
…but there we were. When we were on the on the off ramp, to get onto Portage Avenue eastbound, the journey would soon be over. We lived just a few blocks away from there, and a Hope I didn’t know the half of, broke inside of me, but there would always be next time, right? It was that long gentle curve of the road, moment of us being carried along through time and space. A silent scene in a movie… the kind of movie, if I were to make it, I’d have to be careful how we filmed it, cuz the audience would be saying, “this better get more interesting…”
Shut Up.
Fast forward to 2012, I’d borrowed a car from a friend of a friend, to get back into town. I’d just seen my father take his last breath, in a hospital not far from the college my Dad and I had dropped my brother off at all those years ago. He’d been taken there to their palliative care ward. I’d flown into to town at the last possible minute, called there by that same brother, John. “Dad’s passing away.” I’m sure somewhere in these pages that story has been told… I’ll add a link later… I sat by his side in his final moments, not knowing how close his time was, until suddenly he was gone. I’d planned on sleeping the night there beside him in vigil. He was out of consciousness, so wasn’t talking… quietly familiar, I see that now. I played music for him. He was being blessed by some hymnal music before I got there… but that’s not what Daddy listened to when we cleaned the house on Saturday Morning’s for Mum. So, I played the tunes he’d taught me to love…. and he passed away during the Song, Lonely Bull.
<I just searched for a link for you to have a listen… and found out something I didn’t know… the song is from 1962… the year I was born. I was born in December… I loved my Dad, and he loved me. Maybe God’s telling me, he wasn’t so lonely after I came along.
Forgive the tangent here… and if you have someplace to go right now, then please fuck off… I’ll wait here. If you have trouble navigating away from this page, then just wait for a power failure… I really hate it when I’m in a moment, and there’s this sigh from somebody there, and a not so subtle looking at their watch… it makes me feel lonely… so that’s why I say fuck off… sorry about that. I suppose there’s another mess of you shuffled off, cuz I said fuck…
My Mum noticed that I’d noticed my Dad’s being aloof. All us kids… the four who were still at home at the time (my Dad had thrown our oldest brother Glenn out of the house when he was 16 and I was 10) John, Andrew, Laurence and Diana (my sister had 4 brothers, but I only had 3) All of us kids were gathered around my Mum, like little chicks, and my Dad was like the lone wolf on the cliff overlooking the brood. But I pulled away… I was holding out to be the one who would know Dad. My Mum wasn’t offended or hurt. She brought me a blanket, pillow and a snack, as I lay there between the brood of chicks and the silent man. I’d told her about this, like it would be a revelation, probably after he’d passed away, and she told me she’d known. Bless you Mum.
That Bless you Mum, will take those of you still reading this to a link which will lead you to the letter I wrote her the day she died, while she was passing away, and I was awaiting news of her health.
Are you ok, my friend, my reader? I just want you to know a really special thing that happened for this lonely man, Laurence, back in 2012.
I’d borrowed a car from a friend of a friend, to get back into town, Winnipeg that is. And the whole time I’d been numb, unemotional. I wasn’t feeling my own father’s passing. I’d long ago given up on trying to act like I feel anything… even when came to, or especially when it came to being emotional about God, my heavenly Father. Emotions cannot be conjured, but they can be fake… and I’d rather be unemotional than pretend to have em. I’m a person who belongs to a type of Christian that is allowed to be really emotional. Born half Scottish, and half British… the Brit being my Mum, the Scot being my Dad. My Mum’s Mom, hated the emo part of my Mum… Gramma was the stiff upper lip variety. I suppose my Dad was that way also. The deep river that ran in his veins didn’t make it much to the surface… and that’s what I’m talking about. It was all flesh and blood when it came to my Dad. His love was felt in what he did, not what he said. Maybe one of the only ways I felt the emotion of my Dad was times like when I was around 17, and I was yelling at him, calling him a wimp, and he knocked me to the ground, then helped me back up onto a chair. Or the time I’d been laying in bed, after being sent to my room without my supper, and he’d come to me with a plate, a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk for me, a peace offering, and without turning to look at what was being presented to my back, since I was facing the wall, laying on my bed, I flung my hand out behind me, to swat away his gesture… and knocked the plate and glass out of his hand… he flew into a rage, and threw everything in the room at me. There was this red bobble headed ornament, fortunately made of plastic, for it survived the tirade…
I wasn’t waiting… sorry bout that… we’re back in that borrowed car again here, in 2012… I wasn’t waiting for the emotion to come. There were things to do… I may have been going to the airport to pick up my sister. But it was when I hit that turn off, the off ramp I spoke of… that I suddenly remembered that prayer, that deep desire to know my own Dad, and I knew, that little by little God had answered my prayer. I’d been there with my Dad, speaking his language, (I mean by playing him his music in those final moments)
When he was alive, in those final days, we’d all left town. I only know now as I am a father myself, what that feels like, to be left behind. We’d all moved away to the four corners of the earth. John was just a couple hours south, but for all that he visited, he could have been on the other side of the globe… Andrew was living in Korea, Glenn and I in BC here (I’d left Winnipeg in 1986 to go find my estranged brother Glenn, and to run away from my parents, and her parents (my first wife’s) – Diana was in Nipawin, Saskatchewan. He’d called me every now and then, and I’d listen to him talk to me. Odd or what? But he did, and I’d let him talk about what he wanted to talk about.
Let me confess, to those of you still reading this, who made it past the FUCK OFF up there, to here, you might be gathering so more evidence to have me convicted of being full of shit, but you might also be riding along on this train toward finding out what I’m feeling today… let me confess that I always accepted my Dad and Mum for who they are, and let go of expectations of what I needed them to be. But as much as I’d like to fool you, and myself that I saw no fault in them, I felt the fault… and have spoke of it.
Some sons will tell you of the misery of a father who had high goals for them, and they felt pushed and prodded to take over the family business, or to make something of themselves. I wasn’t like that. I was 4th of 5, and was barely noticed. I remember when I was between childhood and adult life, writing at letter to our Pastor, who was head of a congregation of about 3000, the Head master of Central Pentecostal Bible College, and Gary Beasley, my former youth pastor who had since moved to Ontario somewhere… asking them how to fulfill the calling on my life. I was alone in the world, alone in a family of 5 kids, a Mum and a Dad. It seemed to never have occurred to me ask my Dad what to do. I had no respect for the fool that he was, and my Mum was mentally retarded. In fact, for their final years that’s how I coped with my parents, by granting them the special needs status of being mentally retarded.
So, now I’m definitely losing another large group of readers, but then again, they probably left when I told them to FUCK OFF… cuz I’m confessing my sins here, you know? I know its not even proper to use the term mentally retarded, never mind to say that about one’s parents, dead or alive, but I’m talking about the fool that I was… and the fool that I am… I distanced myself from my Mum and Dad, making fun of them both behind their back and in front of them… I’m not a safe place to be…
Those phone calls, and my Dad reaching out to me, haunt me now. But I didn’t hang up on him, I listened, I even kept the voice mails for as long as the telephone company allowed.
Can we just get back to that car… I can’t remember what it smelled like in there, the weather, or the time of day… I can only remember one thing, and that’s the tears streaming down my face, the rumbling, fumbling joy and sorrow of knowing that God had answered that prayer in my soul, I’d known my Dad and was known by him. I embraced my Mum, and shortly after I began my letter writing… I wrote her a letter a day for 100 days… then kept writing her everyday, until my last letter.
And, you know what? Romans 1:21…
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
I am thankful for the Mum and Dad I had. For through all their imperfections, they are part of how God formed me into the man I am.
Part of what happened as a result of a cold fish father, and an emo mother, is that I pursued that other strong silent, hard to read type father that’s up there in heaven, and you know what? That’s just what HE was waiting for. Look at>
6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
Do you wanna know what the reward is?
Knowing God, our Father, which art in heaven…
As I pondered his life… another story came to mind.
Running Down Vimy 