On May 27th of last year, I learned that my dad, my birth dad and the dad I spent my early years with, passed away. It was a call I had been waiting for for a very long time. I did a long post about how it hit me at the time, but right now, it’s a bit different.
Yesterday afternoon, Tamara, my mom, and myself, took a drive out to the Pointe Du Chene wharf. Dad’s final request was to have his ashes spread out at the wharf there. It was a request he had made to his girlfriend and when she told me, I offered to do it for her.
Within the last 5 years, I had heard from my dad probably more than I had in the last 25 years, but the same issues always persisted. I’d hear from him, then not hear from him or not be able to get a hold of him for months on end. He talked to me very clearly about how he wanted to move to Moncton and had started packing and they had figured out how they were going to come here. Everytime we spoke, he said he was moving, but he never made it.
About a month ago, I received his ashes, and carried out his final wish yesterday. He made it to the east coast after all.
I sat on the edge of the wharf (which was frozen and covered in snow) with my legs dangled over the edge. No water in sight. Just ice and snow. I sat there with a bag of what looked like cigarette ashes and I looked out onto the water and ice and wondered.
Why didn’t you try harder to come to Moncton? Why is it that you waited and waited and never got to meet your grandchildren? Why is it that you chose to seclude yourself from everyone around you and not want to speak to me? Why is it that you thought it was better for me to not talk to you, then to talk to you?
I moved to Moncton in 1985, and went to visit you in five times. I spent five years of listening to you talk about wanting to move here and you never did. You missed my first wedding and you missed my second wedding. You missed finally being able to walk along the beach with your son. You missed finally being able to reconnect with me after being SO distant for so long.
Why is it that you had to leave things like this?
I sat on the ledge and started crying. I said something like “it looks like you finally made it” and I poured the bag into the ocean. I cried for a few minutes while I heard both my mom and Tamara cry with me. I looked out into the ocean and wondered where my dad was now and if he knows how despite the fact that I feel like I was treated like shit for 25 years, I still had enough good sense to carry out his very last wish. That despite all of the anger and letdowns I experienced over my lifetime, I still loved him enough to make sure he was taken care of the way he deserved to be. I also wondered if the people parked in the car 50′ from where I was sitting had any idea what was going on at that moment.
I hugged my mom and I hugged Tamara and I went back to the car. I opened up the trunk and I grabbed the very last thing my dad would ever give me: the metal tag with the name of the memorial which was attached to the bag of his ashes. I fiddled with it for the rest of the day as I thought about what happens now.
Me and Tamara took a long walk in Shediac along the Sentier trail along the highway. We did some geocaching to sort of take my mind off the day’s events and it helped. Tamara, you will never know what it means to me to have you with me.
I sort of thought that was it until later that night when I took the garbage out. We have a wood stove and the ashpan gets emptied out into this large garbage can on a regular basis. We usually empty it out once or twice a year. Last night I dug it out and emptied it again and all I could see was grey ash everywhere. It just reminded me of what had happened earlier that day and suddenly I needed to be alone. Poor Dylan. I think he thought he had done something wrong and that’s why daddy was crying, but I just kept telling him how much I love him, and I realized that I will NEVER EVER make him experience the sort of love-hate relationship I had with my father. It made me SO grateful to know how awesome my wife and my kids are and that there is nothing in this world that makes life more worth living than having them in your life.
Despite my distant feelings for my father, it was made clear to me last week that his death, and the spreading of his ashes, would have a much larger impact on me than I realized. I didn’t get it until yesterday and then again this morning. It’s very hard to articulate how you can feel sad and relieved all at the same time. Very weird.
Dad, I miss you. I wish we had had the opportunity to reconnect like I think you wanted. I wish you had the chance to see your grandkids grow up. But that time is gone and now I finally don’t have to worry about ever getting that call again because it’s over. I hope you are at peace wherever you are and I hope that you can see how great your son, and your grandson, and your grand-daughter all turned out. They won’t get to meet you but your guitar is here with me so they’ll know where their dad came from, and they’ll hear the stories of us shooting birds off a wire with a slingshot, or their grampie pounding on his chair as he curses the Oilers on TV. Those are the memories that I will hold dear.
But I’m going to be mad and angry for awhile. I didn’t realize it until just recently but I need to be in order to move past this. The death of a parent causes a lot of weird crap to go through your head so I need to absorb it and work through it. I think I just buried it or something and now it’s finally surfacing. You’re the second dad I’ve lost in 3 years and I have a lot of mixed emotion about it. I’m glad that there’s nothing more to be done, but I need to heal so I hope you are at peace wherever you are.
Now it’s my turn to try and find peace with all of this. I know I will. I just need to find the best way for me to heal.
