R.I.P. Brian Klem

Posted by on May 28, 2010

At 10:30pm last night, I received a phone call that I have been expecting for a very long time. My dad’s fiance called me to tell me that he had passed away during the night. It was a surprise to hear but I was at least glad she called to tell me.

My dad is someone whom I have spoken about from time to time over the years on here and for anyone that’s been a follower for that amount of time, you know that I haven’t exactly had the best relationship with my dad. So his passing is a very confusing time for me right now and I thought that I would sit down, and write a good long post about what I’m feeling, my history with him, and why I was actually expecting to get this call. This post might seem long and boring to many but I’m doing it more for myself than anything.

I was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 73. My mom had moved from Moncton to there several years before that where she met my dad. They got married and had me and I lived in Edmonton until I was almost 11 years old. Somewhere in there, my mom and my dad got divorced and I lived with my mom. In 1985, we moved from Edmonton to Moncton and that’s pretty much where I’ve been since.

Over the course of the last 25 years, I haven’t exactly had a lot of contact with my dad. When we first moved, he would call or write me every few six months or so and I would try and call him from time to time. But my dad was a … peculiar man. He didn’t always have a phone and he wasn’t real keen on replying to letters very often. But for the longest time, regardless of what was going on, he always called me on my birthday in December. Even if we didn’t talk much all year, he always called then. But it was one of those things where I knew my dad was in Edmonton, and it seemed that no matter how many times I would try to call or write, I wouldn’t hear back from him until Christmas. He always gave excuses saying he meant to call and was thinking about me and was always very excited to hear from me so it never made much sense.

In 1994, I took my first trip out west on my own to visit my dad. I hadn’t seen him in 9 years and probably had only heard from him about once a year, if that. I was quite surprised how different his life was but I spent a couple of weeks visiting and came home.

He still called one a year but I never seemed to be able to get a hold of him on my own. His phone number changed countless times but he was always at the same address. I would send letters, and try to find out how he was, but after awhile, you sort of get tired of trying to connect with someone and not getting anything back.

In 2002, I didn’t get my birthday call. That was already a very bad year, and not hearing from him or being able to get a hold of him struck a little too hard that year. But the following year I took a trip out west and finally saw him again. I wouldn’t hear or see him again really until 2006 when me and Tamara went out to visit him and give him the news that Tamara was expecting. I had tried repeatedly to contact other people to find out if dad was ok because no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get a hold of him. Finally I did and we went to visit. That year we met his then girlfriend Christina whom we asked to call me if anything serious happened to dad.

See, you need to understand that I am very close to my family on my mom’s side. I see my uncles and aunts and cousins on a fairly frequent basis. But on my dad’s side, I have had almost no contact with any of my family out there. I spoke to my uncle last night for the first time in 16 years. During one of my trips out west, I went to visit an aunt whom I hadn’t seen in almost as long. I’ve never been that close to anyone on that side of the family, and dad was such a recluse that I was always scared that someday, he would pass away, and I wouldn’t find out until months or possibly years later. It’s a fear I had for a long time so when I couldn’t find him, I would start thinking the worst.

I’d wonder if one day I would get a call from someone in the family telling me that he had died. Last night, it finally happened.

I have to say, I’ve got a lot of mixed feelings this morning. Within the last few weeks I’ve actually been thinking about my dad. Wondering how he is doing and was thinking about sending him a letter with some new photos. He was quite excited the last time he got pictures of his grandkids. I’d also been thinking about him because of a conversation I had with Tamara the other day that kind of bothered me.

As a kid, I remember my dad. I remember him sitting in front of the TV set screaming at the Oilers for making bad plays and getting so excited when they’d score. But as me and Tamara talked, at the time, I could not recall a single good memory of me and my dad. I have a ton of memories with my mom, but I couldn’t remember any good memories of just me and my dad and that made me kind of sad. Here’s someone who helped bring me into this world but I couldn’t remember him ever doing anything for me or with me.

So last night, after I got off the phone with Christina, I called mom and gave her the news, and then sat and talked to Tamara for awhile. I then decided I needed to do what I do when I need to think: I went for a drive.

I took a long drive and while out driving around the outskirts of the city, my thoughts were all centered on my dad and then out of the blue I started smiling because I realized I did have at least a few good memories of my dad and my long drive was actually part of them. As a kid, every once in awhile on Sunday my dad would take me and my mom out for a drive. He’d literally just pick a road in the middle of the country and follow it to see where it would take us. We did this a lot. We saw some funny things and had a good time while just out for a drive. I smiled and realized that here I was driving to think about my dad and realizing that I probably got my need to “go for a drive” from my dad. A smile came to my face and then another memory of my dad came to mind and this time it was just of me and him.

We had gone for a drive one afternoon and he was taking me out into the country because he wanted to show me how to use a slingshot. He had carved one out by hand and put leather straps and a leather pouch on it and wanted to show me how to shoot birds off power lines with the slingshot. I remember him parking the car on the side of some country road, us getting out, and him showing me how to shoot with it. I didn’t do so well but I did manage to get one rock shot well enough that it bounced off the power line. I thought I had hit the bird but it was just the wire. I was still excited though. I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8, maybe 9 years old. But it was still a very fond memory of my dad. Realizing that I did have a few memories of me and my dad, somehow I felt a bit better.

But ultimately, right now, I’m feeling quite numb. Because of the sort of  “lack” of a relationship with my dad, I’m not sitting here in tears. It doesn’t feel at all like it did when Tiny passed away but I don’t quite know how to put it. I think that because of the fact that I have been expecting to get this call for a long time, it didn’t come as big a surprise as it would for someone else. Plus, to be brutally honest, every time I have gone to visit him, and then left, I always told myself that that would be the last time I would see my dad alive. That might sound a bit morbid, but his health wasn’t very good and especially a few years back he had some major heart troubles and had been struggling a great deal, but apparently according to my uncle, he’d been doing better this last year. He’d been fighting a lot of health issues over the years so in some sense, it was only a matter of time.

Now that he’s gone, I have a lot of other things that I’m wondering about. He had a daughter to his second wife whom I’ve never met or even spoke to. Do I try to connect with her? Dad was my only means to reach her and now that he’s gone, do I try and find a way to contact her, or do I just leave it? I’m feeling very odd right now but at the same time very calm. Is that normal?

I am feeling quite….blank…when it comes to this right now. I’m actually very confused and I hope that over the course of the next few days, I’ll start to understand what’s going on in my head. But until then, I’m going to remember my dad telling me about his weird spirit summonings in his apartment, his long talks about how he hated Alberta politicians, his stories about the crazy homeless people he took care of at Urban House, his year long hatred of Peter Pockington for trading Gretzky to LA, his playing guitar that somehow at a small age seemed to put me to sleep instead of keeping me awake, and the look on his face when I bought him his first DVD player. THOSE are good memories and despite whatever history we had, he was still my dad, and I still love him, and I’m going to miss him. But at least I know now that he’s in a more peaceful place, and I’m going to be able to carry out his final wish.

During my conversation with Christina last night, she told me that dad had requested there be no funeral or service for him. Not even an obituary. He just wanted to leave in peace. But she did tell me that he had one request about his ashes, which quite frankly, surprised me.

He had been saying for the last 4-5 years that he wanted to move to Moncton. He said that he had gotten sick of life in Edmonton and wanted to go somewhere he knew was more laid back and easier to live in. He wanted to move to Moncton. Plus, I lived here and he thought it might give him a chance to reconnect with me. This is something I was VERY excited about. If you’ve been reading this blog awhile, you know I have posted about this before. But, every time he would be ready to move, something would happen and prevent him from getting here. It was extremely disappointing each time he’d say he was coming and then have to bail on it, but both me and Tamara genuinely thought he really did want to come here.

When I asked Christina about if there would be a funeral service, and she said no, she did tell me that he wanted to be cremated, and that he had a request to have his ashes spread off the wharf in Shediac. He had heard me tell him many stories about the wharf in Pointe Du Chene and all the time we had at the cottage and he always wanted to know what it was like here. Christina said that she couldn’t afford a trip to Moncton so I offered to spread the ashes for her if she wanted to send them to me. I don’t know when this will happen but I get the feeling Christina would want to go along with dad’s wishes.

He may not have been there for me during thick and thin. He may not have been the best at staying in touch. But knowing that his final wish was to have his remains here means that there’s no doubt in my mind that he loved me, and that he really did want to be here with me, Tamara, and his grandchildren. That’s really what counts and I need to remember that.

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