“Dad, why don’t you use a clean mug, you have plenty of them in the cupboard,” I said.

“No, I like this one. It’s mine.”

I should have just kept quiet about the whole mug thing. Arthur was not one to flaunt his opulence, if you want to call a cupboard full of mugs opulent. He would think more than one mug was one too many.

“Dad, how come you and Mom never go on a vacation?” I asked him several years ago when they were both young enough to travel and in good health. “Where the hell would we go?” he replied. “And besides,” he said, “I have my own paradise right in my back yard with miles of garden to look after.”

He left the kitchen and headed toward the back door. This was his smoking time; right after a meal or, as he often said, when his nerves were rattled. “I’m just going out to calm my nerves,” he would say to whoever was listening. He made his way back into the kitchen and put his dirty mug back in the dishwasher, then went to sit in the living room where, as he would say, you could really live it up! A joke or a cynical remark would always be made about the current topic of discussion. Arthur was a man who enjoyed a good joke, a prank or a fascinating story.

He picked up his book. He always had a book on the go. Being a self-educated man, reading was his favorite pastime. Perhaps this is where my love of reading began. One summer afternoon, when I was twelve or thirteen, I was so bored I didn’t know what to do with myself. Dad came into my room and handed me a book. “Here, read this,” he said. “When you’re finished reading it, I want you tell me about it – if you liked it and if you thought it was a good story.”

Wow, I thought to myself at the time, Dad wants me to tell him about this book and not the other way around? This was a momentous time for me; my dad was actually asking for my opinion. The book was Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. That summer was the summer my reading habits went wild. I read and read until suddenly I wasn’t bored anymore. When I finished reading The Caine Mutiny, he gave me a book by Ernest Hemingway called For Whom the Bell Tolls. I loved both of those books and still have them in my library today. They’re precious to me, as they not only represent the beginning of a beautiful relationship with books, but also the beginning of what I considered to be a somewhat grown up dialogue with my father.

He sat down in his favorite chair, the one with the tall back and the arm rests. He picked up the latest Larry McMurtry book off the side table, pulled out his glasses from his shirt pocket and started to read. He could read through anything – wars, famine or feasts. That was my dad. Several years ago, he told me about a dream he’d had. In it, there was an earthquake. The house shook, he told me, and it seemed like the end of the world. He shot out of bed and ran out the door, until he realized he had a family back in the house that he was supposed to protect. So he ended up going back into the house as it started to crumble away, and then he woke up. I said to him, “You mean you didn’t save us?” “No,” he told me. “I guess it’s every man for himself around here.”

“Dad,” I said to him as he sat in his favorite chair.

“Hmmm,” he replied.

“Dad, I think I’ll be going soon. Is there anything I can do for you while I’m here?”

“Well, you could be quiet while I’m trying to read.”

“Ok, point taken. Love you too,” I said to him. ‘Hmmm’ was his reply.

The word ‘love’, ‘I love you’ or any of those things were never mentioned to Arthur. They made him nervous, I think. He only once told me he loved me. It was after a very painful event in my life, and even then it was from the confines of his room, not up close and personal and not with a hug or even a handshake.

Before my father died, I did get a chance to sit with him and talk about life and our life together as a family. We made quite the pair: he, the ever-stoic father and I, the blubbering daughter. He told me he had no regrets. He was a firm believer in heaven and expected to get there; one free pass through the pearly gates. He also made it clear that he didn’t want any crying or carrying on over his death. Arthur made it known that he would be in charge even on his deathbed.

I called out goodbye as I left the house through the garage.

“Bye,” he said.

He would spend some quiet moments alone in the living room, living it up with his favorite book before getting up to make dinner. When it was time to have his tea after supper my father would no doubt go back to the dirty mug and use it one more time.

Photo Credits

Photos courtesy of Martha Farley – all rights reserved

You have to understand the influence that Star Wars has had on my life. I was four years old, that summer of 1977, and Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw on the big screen. I realize that the entire world was stunned by this movie, but try and imagine the effect it had on a four-year-old boy. My mother says that neither I nor my brother blinked for two hours. And from the moment the rebel ceremony swept into the credits and the music reached its triumphant crescendo I was hooked. I played with all the action figures, I read the comics, I collected the trading cards, I stayed up late to watch any TV special even remotely related to Star Wars. It launched in me a lifelong fascination with space (the real stuff – astronomy, the shuttle program, the Voyager probes) and steered my reading (and writing) preferences heavily toward science fiction. But Star Wars affected me in much more subtle ways, too. My entire world-view was framed in the concept of rebels and empire, of voyage and adventure, of multi-cultural acceptance and laser cannons that recoil when they fire (it’s true – read Virtues of War).

And now, 36 years later, I had the chance to see this awakening in my own son. We sat down on the couch and got the DVD going. We watched the 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm credits flash by, then saw those immortal words:

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

And then it began, with a blast of trumpets and screen-filling words. I stole a glance down at the boy to see if he was as riveted as I’d been. He was. The opening words started to scroll and I suddenly remembered that the boy can’t read yet, so I took on the role of commentator, my voice booming out a narrative just as my mother’s proper, English-accented tones had narrated for me. And then the shift down, the planet, the rebel blockade runner… and the vast, never-ending star destroyer.

“That’s a big ship,” said a quiet voice beside me.

The drama unfolded, and I occasionally glanced down to see how the boy was doing. The movie has obviously held up well and it only once was in danger of losing him, when the drama took our heroes to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s house for yet more talk and history. But then the light sabre appeared, and my son was back on board for the duration. We saw the cantina, the destruction of Alderaan, the rescue of the princess, the garbage compactor, the TIE fighter attack, and the epic (digitally-remastered and greatly improved since 1977) final battle.

Once the medals were handed out, the rebels cheered and the credits rolled, I looked down at my son, eager for his reaction. He was still staring at the screen, and he made a comment that I’ve never, ever heard him say after watching something: “That was a really good movie.”

I was very proud. He wasn’t being silly, he wasn’t over-excited: he was in awe. Like father like son.

Not long after we were in the playroom, re-enacting the battle for the Death Star with his Transformer standing in for an X-wing and me holding a MiG-29 Fulcrum in place of a TIE fighter. I have to say it’s been a very long time since I’ve made the “piew, piew” of lasers or the “rrraaawwwww” of an attacking TIE fighter, and man it was fun! Naturally his Transformer X-wing beat my MiG-29 TIE fighter every time, and I was totally okay with that.

It was a small but profound father-son moment, as I handed off the torch of my first pop culture love. I know there are a lot of other things these days to compete for his attention, but I sincerely hope that my boy can carry on as Star Wars: The Next Generation.

Photo Credits

Imperial March photo copyright ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Young Fans photo courtesy of TheBrickLife

“When I was a kid the Santa Fe freights used to wake me up,” the kid said. He seemed lost and kind of lowdown when he said it.

We were strangers, standing at the rail of an uptown joint in the snow bound northern city where I grew up. I had come home to visit my father. He was in the stroke ward at the nearby hospital. It wasn’t going well between us, Dad and me. It never did.

“I can still hear them ol’ freights, like rolling thunder,” he said.

After awhile he said he used to wait for the circus to come to town. “Yeah I get that.” I said. “We would go to the Garden, just down the street, and watch the clowns”. I told him how the clowns scared the hell out me, how I thought that my dad thought it was funny that clowns scared me. Later, much later, it turned out it wasn’t true he thought that.

The kid looked at me like I was a crazy old man or maybe just drunk. “I used to hear the circus coming from miles away” he said, “I could hear the calliope from way far off. Folks in town would stop what they were doing and listen. Get ready to party.” Then he stopped, as if caught up in a dust devil memory he shook his head and said very quietly, “they would get a funny look in their eyes, maybe thinkin’ it was something more than the end of summer, more than another year gone to harvest.” He was quiet after that.

Before I left I asked him where he was from. He told me he was from a little town just outside of Denton, Texas. I told him I knew where it was, that I had heard the Santa Fe freights rolling by, that I had stayed awhile and moved on. I wished him well and went out the door. I walked down the once familiar streets to the uncertainty that was waiting at the hospital.

I didn’t tell him that I had been in Denton because I was running for cover, drying out, getting clean. That the trains in the night sounded like all things lost, that lonesome was a way station on the road back from where I had been.

Photo Credit

Photo Is © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved

My husband is a good man. He has good values, a kind heart and he is very hard working. He is an exceptionally good father. From the moment he held our children — and even before that — I knew they would always be safe with him.

He was never the kind of dad who waited until they were big enough to join him in what he enjoyed. He joined them the moment they were born.

He changed diapers and wiped noses and held chubby, little dimpled hands in his big calloused ones. He read stories. The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry , Big Hungry Bear, and Gillian Gigs and Her Wonderful Pigs. He made Kraft dinner his own special way.

I always knew that he was capable of meeting our children’s needs. He never saw taking care of his children as babysitting. Sometimes he was frustrated, sometimes angry even. However, sometimes in the midst of threatening a defiant teenager within an inch of his life…he would ask if they wanted a sandwich. He also could be conned out his last 20 bucks for gas, or pizza.

I know my children hoped that if the school called because they were in trouble that he would be the parent who answered. He was of the notion that his kids were generally in the right, and he didn’t ask the same questions I did, like what exactly were you doing just before you were expelled?

My husband has relationships with his adult kids that many parents can only wish they had. It didn’t happen overnight. He went to school concerts and soccer games. He watched basketball and slept in crummy hotels on hockey trips. He hauled kids back and forth from the ski hill. He took care of the dog everyone wanted. He moved his kids in and out of college residences and apartments. He fixes cars and bikes and has a soft shoulder to cry on. He is mostly non-judgmental and always on their side.

He is a man of few words. Every single word and action told his children that no matter what he’d be right there, loving them. That’s the meaning of unconditional.

Happy Father’s Day to him and to the many other wonderful fathers like him out there.

In the book, Atticus Finch is charged with defending Tom Robinson, a black man in the rural South caught in a cultural trap. Tom takes pity on a white woman, lonely and downtrodden as she is, and desperate for affection. He is locked in an unwanted embrace, is caught by her father, and later, accused of rape.  In the South of the 1930s, the facts of the case are immaterial to the cultural biases that inform the opinions of the townsfolk, and the jury. Tom is guilty, because the society of which he is a part demands that he must be.

Atticus Finch takes the case to defend Tom Robinson, despite its futility. He takes it because of his belief in the law and in justice. He takes it because of his deep sense of humanity. And he takes it because of his children, that he knows must be shown that the right thing is not always the easy thing, and that the world is a place where one must, in the face of injustice and prejudice, take a stand regardless of how the outcome may be.

In reading the story for the first time, the figure of Atticus Finch leapt out at me as a living, breathing man. He was not heroic in the standard adventure story sense. But his integrity and inner strength shone out like a beacon.  When the story was over, his resolve, his indomitable leadership remained like an afterglow.

In the light of becoming a father myself, Atticus’ example remained.  I’d re-read the story many times by then, struck by his gentle manner, his stern but fair hand when it came to discipline, and by his courage in facing the insurmountable odds as a way of teaching his children that even when the world is unfair, cruel, it is still paramount to retain one’s dignity, and to ensure the dignity of others, too.

And what other lessons are we to teach our children than this? That the world can be cruel, and that the attitudes and ideas that people hold can be used as a means of causing others pain. But, that holding one’s principles to defend others, and to preserve the humanity of all, even those who would call themselves your enemies, is what it means to be vessels of justice, and agents of a better world.

Thanks, Atticus.

Photo Credit

“To Kill a Mockingbird (front) Ebsen Thomsen @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Until a few days ago. Of course, any normal human being could have cleaned out the garage in a few hours and gone on to bigger and better things — but not me.

I would find a box of old papers and instead of quickly tossing them aside for recycling, I would rummage through and find forgotten treasures: a handwritten letter entitled “Notes to my two-year old son,” (who is now 16), passenger lists from Heli-skiing (the wealthy celebs I flew around), notes and reports from geologists, receipts for worthless stock, early attempts at poetry and fiction. And photographs! “Artistic” 35mm slides from the 70s, an archive of my first adventures in the Arctic with a Bell 47, prints from Africa, pictures of friends long gone and awkward poses of teen heartthrobs.

I didn’t question why I had kept all these items over the years. I just knew I had to keep them still. Soon papers and photographs surrounded me, the garage now completely out of bounds, and hours passed as I returned to a life almost forgotten.

And then I found my first published piece of writing: my father’s obituary. It was emotionless and factual, revealing little as to what happened: no code words or phrases — suddenly; a long battle surrounded by family; a quiet passing into the arms of the Lord.

No, not my father. There was no quiet passing, no long battle surrounded by family. For some curious and perhaps morbid reason I still have the rifle he used to end his life. Talk about sudden, and unexpected.

It was the winter of 1981. I had just spent Christmas with the family in the Ottawa Valley, and had moved back to my cabin in northern Ontario, 15 miles from the nearest town of 2500 souls, doing my best to imitate Grizzly Adams. All seemed well at home, and I had been pleasantly surprised at how easily my father and I got along. It hadn’t always been that way.

When I was a youngster we got along famously. He taught me to fly when I was five, we cooked our own grub at his summer air base before my mother and sister arrived when school finished for the year, we shared common interests, albeit all his.

Then I became a teenager. And there was some brittle fibre in his character that would not allow him to accept that my interests had grown, that I wanted to wear my hair long, I liked rock and roll and the gravelly, provocative lyrics of Dylan. (It was the late 60s after all.) I’m not sure what he would have done had he lived to see mohawks, grunge and body piercing.

At 17, I was happy to leave home and had my 18th birthday on the Canary Islands. A few months later I received a wire transfer at a bank in Casablanca to buy a ticket home. I had sold every pair of jeans I owned to the Moroccans and invested everything else and had no other options. And then I felt obligated to him.

I shelved my dreams of becoming a director and instead became a pilot, albeit reluctantly, flying floatplanes in northern Ontario, and despised always being compared to my father, both in flying skill and in character.

He loved to entertain and tell aviation stories and jokes — ones I’d heard all my life. I was more inclined to quiet reflection. I learned to fly helicopters and worked in the Arctic, moved to the prairies, and I justified this deviation to my life by looking upon flying as an art. I experienced the thrill and power of controlling a machine, and understood the attraction my father had for aviation.

Then in 1980, just after I had moved into a depressingly dull basement apartment in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, my mother called and told me that my father had had a mild coronary.

His pilot license was immediately suspended — he could no longer fly. His whole raison d’etre suddenly ended. I moved back home, got a flying job with a company based in Carleton Place — his home town — and watched this witty, strong, confident and often acerbic man struggle with loss of identity and depression.

We walked together, an activity prescribed by his doctor. And we communicated, as long as we talked about flying. His doctor advised him to stop drinking and smoking — two pastimes he had indulged in heavily. But he refused. “Smoking helps me relax,” he said. “And a drink or two can’t hurt; it helps thin the blood, and that’s got to be a good thing, right?”

His logic was sound. He cut back from two packs a day to less than one. And a 40-pounder would last a week instead of one night. Progress was being made. The government provided him another job so he had sufficient income; but he was no longer a pilot. And that gnawed at him. He had a mortgage at 21%; he had just begun to think about retirement; my younger brother was still in high school. My father had never considered changing his career.

His identification with what he did instead of who he was eventually led to his downfall. And the signs were obvious — now. But back in 1980 no one seemed to notice; psychiatrists doled out pills, tried electroshock therapy, and convinced us that given time he would be right as rain.

Had he been given the gift of clairvoyance for only a few moments that early morning in January, and witnessed the traumatic affect his action would unleash upon his family and friends, I’m sure the outcome would have been different. But at the time the pain and confusion must have been overwhelming, and over the years I have run the gamut of emotions — compassion and understanding, frustration and anger, and back again. I have regarded the episode as a tragic love story between man and machine, and also as a ridiculous and cowardly inability to accept change.

Finding his obit in my garage, and photographs of happier times, made me realize that he has been with me every day since then — whether I hear his stinging words chastising my attraction to the arts, my choice of music or pastime, or when I remember camping out in the back of his floatplane, caught in a major thunderstorm and unable to get home. In his unorthodox way, as an odd, and absent role model, he taught me how to be a better father, a better man: embracing change, curious about the world and tolerant of new ideas.

Happy Father’s Day.

We would rather be ruined than changed;

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.

~W.H. Auden

For those who haven’t heard, NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a column last week exposing what’s coming to be called the “slampigs scandal.” A group of incoming freshman boys at the Landon School — a prestigious DC-area prep school — had formed a fantasy league, except instead of drafting athletes, they drafted girls. The boys would earn points by performing different sex acts with their draftees, with a cash prize being awarded to the top scorer.

That this kind of behavior is appalling goes without saying. That these boys could so casually and methodically dehumanize a bunch of unsuspecting girls is simply horrifying. The fact that they’re getting off with a slap on the wrist (three days of in-school suspension, according to Laura Stepp of the Huffington Post), while deplorable, hardly seems surprising. That the school may have tried to “keep the ‘league’ quiet” is more troubling.

As I mentioned, my first reaction upon hearing of this story was to remember the anxiety I’d felt about the possibility of having a daughter, which had nothing to do with worrying about protecting my potential daughter’s “purity” and everything to do with the fact that I had no idea how to raise a girl in this misogynistic world so that she could grow up to become a confident, empowered, and sexually healthy woman. There’s just so much that I don’t know and have never experienced about what girls and women go through, and the idea that there are people out there like these Landon boys makes the outlook seem bleak.

But the real question here — and one much more applicable to my life right now seeing as how I have have a son and not a daughter–is how did these boys come to be the way they are, and how can I raise my son so that he won’t be like them?

We can take it as a given that teenagers are going to be interested in sex. And, yes, most, if not all, teenage boys are going to have a high sex drive. Does this mean that they are incapable of controlling themselves, or that they shouldn’t be held accountable if they don’t? Of course not.

The problem is, how to teach it? Some parts seem easy enough — it’s not hard to explain things like inappropriate touching, for example. But even I have trouble pinpointing the exact line between healthy appreciation for beauty and sex appeal and unhealthy objectification and harassment.

My feeling, and my hope, is that the key to raising good sons is being good fathers and good men. That means treating the women in our lives — our wives, mothers, sisters, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances — with respect and kindness. It means rejecting the kind of movies, music, television, and especially pornography that don’t recognize the humanity and dignity of the women they portray. It means not seeing stereotypes and inequality and refusing to perpetuate them. And it means rejecting the kind of men (and women) who won’t do these things.

I don’t know if merely setting a good example is enough; in fact, I’m pretty sure that given the world we live in now, there will be times that more explicit instruction is necessary. But I like to think that this is something we can do, because if I ever do have a daughter, I want her to live in the kind of world where I don’t have to worry about her.

Photo Credit

“Woman” dtcchc @ Flickr.com Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Now, a story opening like that might give you the impression that I’m bitter or that, gee, maybe I don’t like men. But that wouldn’t be true. I genuinely like men.

It’s just that the meaning of the word father always kind of eluded me.

I grew up being friends with adored girls who talked about “Daddy this, Daddy that.” I also grew up with girls whose fathers belted them or sexually abused them. I got the impression fathers were either angels or demons. And some could be both.

So when I started dating, my head was really a bit screwed up about men. All I really knew was that men leave. So I left my very first boyfriend before he could leave me. And except for a few interludes where I let my guard down long enough to get hurt, I continued to leave. I would unconsciously find ways to test their intentions, to push hard enough to see if they would leave. Some did. Some liked the game.

And so it’s Father’s Day. A day that has only been meaningful for me only in the absence of real fathering.

I used to wish for my real father to come and find me. Not a peep. I thought about looking him up a few years ago, just to stop by and say hey. My mother didn’t try to stop me but she told me that I’d probably be disappointed. She knew what a dreamer I could be. She showed me a picture of him. I tried to see how I was like him but he was as strange to me as any stranger.

So I gave up on fathers. Never thought much about them.

Until I had a daughter.

And my daughter has a Dad. And he isn’t an angel and he isn’t a demon. He’s a good man and a good father. He loves his daughter but not selfishly. He protects his daughter but not obsessively. He would give her the world but he knows she needs to find her own destiny.

For years I half-waited for this good man to leave. I wasn’t obsessive or possessive but it was there like a shadow in the back of my mind. Old habits and all that.

But he stayed, and he still stays. He talks about getting old with me.

It’s could be hard to trust that — I’m almost afraid to grow complacent. But the proof isn’t in what you say — it’s in what you do, and he’s been with me for 25 years. For 17 of those years, he’s been a wonderful father, the kind of man whom a girl knows has her back, for better or for worse, the kind who doesn’t leave.

___

I want to say a special Happy Grandfather’s Day to Bob, my mom’s husband of many years, who became my second step-dad when I was 30. He has been a wonderful friend and an amazing Grandad to my daughter. He is deliberately not mentioned in the list of father figures above because, well, he’s one of the good guys.

Photo Credit

“Why does he leave reality?” h.koppdelaney @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

My father was a Christian man.

I spent many long, wet afternoons stretched like a cat on a warm rug staring straight up at an intimidating stone fireplace — like it was a holy place carved into a mountain to withstand time.

It was my sanctuary, a warm nest to listen to his stories. The wall of rocks, fitted tight like an artisan’s masterpiece, stood with reverence and a permanence that lent credence to the many wonders he told me about: birth, death, God, the cosmos, the war, endings and beginnings and how you know when you’re in one and not the other, resolve, devotion, passion, art, love… whatever he felt I was most in need of.

The pile of logs in the fire crackled and exploded in unexpected bursts whenever he spoke. His words were punctuated by star bursts of fiery sparks, framing his hulking silhouette and illuminating a great, gray beard. It was the beard of an academic, a struggling poet, a Norse god.

My father’s stone house, older than him (and yet like him), was built to withstand the trumpets of Gideon. It was his temple and it became my church.

On Sunday it always rained.

I would don my finery — because my father always insisted on smart attire — and present myself at his door, secure in the knowledge that he would teach me many great things. Sometimes they seemed like ordinary things — gratitude, influence, remembrance, forgiveness — but once grasped, they were made great by their implementation.

Dad sat on his “throne”, a chair of Brobdingnagian proportion, elevating his already towering figure far into the heavens. But he sat in a peculiar way, with one leg tucked under him as though it were lame and he was ashamed of it.

The power of the fire turned his silhouette into a ghost and he would speak, allowing the sweet melodies of brandy to play with his Scot’s brogue.

The informality of his “sermons” diminished my awe to an enlightened piety. Such a benign god would not choose to frighten his congregation.

As he spoke of Shakespeare (his favourite), Keats, and even the opium-addled Coleridge, he would let his fingers dance across the pages of what must have been his Bible, feeling the words he so longed to read.

His blindness was only in his eyes. He could “read” the verses long ago remembered with passion enough to make me weep.

The poetry held parables nestled in singing rhyme: stories of life and love to serve a man throughout the battles he must fight and the loves he must surely conquer or surrender to.

Lying on the rug, I saw in the soot-stained panes of the window the stained glass of some magnificent cathedral, catching the sound of the rain and holding it for a quiet moment.

Just below where an imaginary medieval tapestry hung, the dark wooden ledge of the fireplace was a shrine for the holy stuff, a mixture of relics, dust and wax. Sacred objects, no more than rags and bone, enslaved my curiosity.

I was fascinated by a small, gold chalice containing a few drops of a thick, red liquid, which my father said I must never put to my lips.

Though giddy with curiosity and prone to doing the opposite of what I was told, I never did.

His lessons were full of buoyant life. Whenever he spoke of captive time and the everlasting — as with Keats’ sacred urn or Shakespeare’s “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments/ Of princes…” — my father would stop and gaze into the fire. His eyes could suddenly see the way the flames made each log scream in imagined agony. Collapsing to his knees, the smile would vanish from his lips. I knew that he was afraid, very afraid, of the eternal fire that patiently waited for him.

“Any man’s death diminishes me,” he once intoned, quoting Donne, “because I am involved in mankind.”

It made me sad enough to cry, but I didn’t. Instead, I considered how the recent death of a friend had wounded me like a splinter, one that I could not remove. The more I fussed to pull at it, the deeper it settled in my skin and the more irritated the flesh around it grew.

At the best of times, we deal with death badly. Instead of celebrating a person’s life, we mourn its conclusion or — more often than not — stare at our shoes and mumble, never facing grief’s ugly stare head on. We are too afraid to say or do the wrong thing and thereby offend those around us who are also bathed in pain.

We need to learn to accept fate, deal with it, and acknowledge that it waits for us all, like a faithful dog at the front door. Death wags its tail, turns its head upwards with rheumy eyes and an expression of complete understanding, and waits, patient as Job. There’s no rush to jump the queue to eternity.

And with that measure of composure exercised in countless waiting rooms, a better grasp of the impact death wields on life and living is achieved.

Death has meaning.

It can be viewed in a contextual way that makes some sense of all we strive for in life. Without it, life is shallow, superficial, and performed with a script written by some hack.

The turn-of-the-century feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman asked why there was such a fuss about death.

“Use your imagination,” she wrote, “try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.”

My father liked to refer to death as “the great equalizer,” an accounting, a reckoning, and a beginning as much as an end. He told me not to fear death itself, for it was bound to come calling. Instead, he suggested, fear what you may not have done in life.

I hope I have felt that fear and that my life is fuller for it. I know his was.

Photo Credit

“Little heat” Giulio Menna @ Flickr.com. Creative commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Mural from Holy Grail Church in Britany  based on stories of the Holy Grail.” Artist Unknown.

A well-known corollary to this law relates especially to those in the health professions. Specifically, nurses, doctors, spouses and their families invariably will develop rare and/or unexpected complications with even seemingly straightforward ailments and medical procedures.

For example, when my stepson Gavin developed right lower abdominal pain and tenderness with loss of appetite and vomiting a number of years ago the diagnosis was, of course … appendicitis? Nah. It was the twisting of two tangerine-sized cysts in his gut causing bowel obstruction. The surgeon had only seen one other case like it in 30 years, and he works at a university pediatric hospital. Fortunately Gavin has mostly been getting along well since these unusual “tangerines” were harvested.

Tempting Mr. Murphy further, my wife Krista and I decided to add a new member to the family. After an initial miscarriage she became pregnant once again, and was now due in late June (i.e. around Fathers’ Day). Her previous two deliveries had been easy, especially the last one in which labour lasted two hours with no pain relief needed. I figured my biggest concern was going to be getting to the hospital on time.

Everything went well prenatally and on the morning of June 20 (ominously, the day my mother-in-law was going for a “dye test” on her heart) contractions began. By 6:00 am Krista was starting to have regular contractions so I hustled her into the van (emergency obstetrics kit tucked under the seat “just in case”) and headed off to The Grace Maternity Hospital.

The contractions were now about five minutes apart and picking up quickly. At 8:00 am Krista was progressing very nicely, five centimeters with bulging membranes. Our obstetrician, Ralph Loebenberg, ruptured the membranes, releasing a large gush of clear fluid. We awaited the usual outcome of this procedure (i.e. the quick progression to fully dilated and arrival of our offspring).

“She’ll likely be here before coffee break — lunch at the very least,” I said to Shauna, our case room nurse.

The gods are unforgiving of statements such as these, especially when made by medical personnel about their own family members. It is sort of like violating an unwritten tenet of the Emergency Room when things are not busy by saying, “It sure is a quiet night.” This has been known to cause immediate seven car pile-ups on nearby freeways.

Shortly after uttering these words, progress, as measured by dilatation of the cervix, ground to a screeching halt. Krista’s contractions, however, became stronger and more painful. We wondered if the baby was improperly positioned, or did she take after her dad, who weighed 10lbs. 6oz. at birth with a BIG head?

Ralph ordered an epidural, which provided much-needed pain relief, but progress remained snail-like. The fetal monitor showed some ominous looking dips in heart rate, so a sample of blood was taken from the baby’s scalp to check pH levels. These were good, over 7.3, indicating adequate oxygen for the baby, so we continued on, eventually reaching full dilatation. Now began the pushing, something Krista barely had to do with her last labour. It was not so easy this time.

Progress was slow and the heart rate was dipping ominously. Out came the Kiwi Vacuum Extractor (yes, it sounds like something K-Tel would market). Ralph attached the suction cup to the crown of the head and in short order our baby was whisked out. She was pale and floppy, much to my wife’s dismay. I’d seen enough babies resuscitated to know that this was usually quickly and easily remedied, but Krista hadn’t and promptly started sobbing.

Pediatrics came roaring in like a SWAT team, distressing my poor spouse even further, but in short order she had a pink, screaming 7lb. 12oz. baby girl in her arms. Our daughter’s name? Ariana Faye. I noticed the Kiwi had left a mark on her scalp that looked like a “yarmulke” or skullcap. Since Ralph had previously trained to be a rabbi, and we’d often had religious discussions in the past, I idly proposed that he was trying to make a new convert.

Well, it seemed like it was all just about over. Our devoted obstetrician was even going to be able to make it to the Black Tie dinner to which he’d been invited at the Governor’s that evening. A few stitches closed a superficial but rather sensitively located laceration and we waited for the placenta…and waited…and waited…and waited.

Well over an hour later, the stubborn organ had still failed to make an appearance, despite various forms of encouragement. In the meantime, my mother-in-law, Bonnie, by now finished her angiogram, was seated in a wheel chair waiting to come in and see the baby. Instead she was treated to the sight of Krista being wheeled over to the operating room for an anesthetic and manual removal of placenta. Talk about a stress test for the old gal! (Not that she hadn’t been stressed enough already, since Krista’s son, Gavin, had obstructed again, and was hospitalized. Did I forget to mention this?)

Once into the OR our anesthetist topped up the epidural and Ralph finally managed to free the stubborn placenta. We discovered that it had partially separated at some point earlier in the pregnancy and then had re-attached to the uterus with scar tissue. The tissue held one corner of the placenta to the wall of the uterus as if it were stuck with Crazy Glue. Fortunately this was the last act of our drama. Ralph breathed a sigh of relief and headed off to Government House, just in time for dinner. We waited to be transferred from the case room to a regular hospital floor.

Taking stock of the day’s events, I felt like an actor in a tragicomic farce. Despite our misadventures, Ariana Faye was happy, healthy and breast feeding like a trooper. Krista was a little sore but felt surprisingly well considering her ordeal. Gavin’s bowel obstruction settled without surgery and Grandma Bonnie’s angiogram apparently failed to show any evidence of serious blockage.

Oh, and my migraine finally seems to be settling down…

Photo Credit

“Ariana Faye Burden, my Fathers’ Day gift” © George Burden

Note: This article first appeared in The Medical Post