Just Once, No More, page 7
I used the interim to prepare a list of things I would say and swore on my shame to sit by his bed until I got through them. Not for a second did I delude myself that the list was for our mutual benefit. Confession and contrition are solitary, no matter if there is someone listening behind the screen.
Here was my list of things:
Your courage these years, especially these last months. As if someone, not a surgeon, keeps cutting away pieces of your body while you lie strapped to the bed. “You okay with this?” the cutter asks. “We’ll assume so.” Where are they injecting needles into you now? How long does it take to fill vials of blood for further follow-up tests to the tests already done for the procedures previously tried and failed? Days you barely move, the urine bag bloated. Nights you mostly lie awake, thinking the same old thoughts, hammer and nail into a surface that will not be breached. Each visit I make to the hospital should open with one song of praise and end with another, proclaiming your courage, stoicism, and general good cheer under the most inexplicable of human burdens: the one that expects we should suffer and wait, suffer and wait, to get snuffed out.
Your mother. My Grandma Ruthie. Can you please talk a little about her, beyond her problems? There must be more to share: her as a girl, a young bride, a single mother with two kids. Those photos tell other tales from your childhood.
Grandparents. I wish we’d had them. You and Mom were essential to Mary and me as parents, Anna and Claire as children. Grandparents really help.
Your old friend Jimmy Picard, best man at your wedding. I loved Jimmy, his warmth and self-deprecation, the kindness in his eyes. I loved him like an uncle, certainly like family, and was confused when you two stopped being close. Did Jimmy turn strange on you, or you on him? That’s been happening to me as well, and I could use advice. Good friends really help too.
Dreams of our fathers. The other night I dreamed about you as a boy in Ottawa, making that epic walk across town to visit your uncle and aunt. The relations who were supposed to look after you and Barb while your dad was away at war. The aunt who answered the door and maybe set your features, and some of your character, for good. In my dream, it’s your father, Colonel Foran, who opens the door. In his uniform, his pencil mustache and Brylcreem hair. “Wake up! Wake up!” Charlie Foran says to you—to us. “Don’t sleep so much!”
Parenting. One thing I know for certain: had we been hiking along bluffs in bad weather, and I tumbled down a gulley to a precipice, you’d have kept me—or my brother or sister—company. Eyes open. Full awareness of the consequences. You knew that much about love and protection, and you were brave.
My waking dream of you and Aunt Barb. A frail old man, mobile with a walker, shuffles into the room of someone he has known all his remembered life. She is a frail old woman, hair white and eyes gray, expression vacant and smile nervous. He says: “I’m Dave and you’re Barb. You don’t recognize me any longer, I realize, but we look alike and walk, talk, tilt our heads alike, and I’ve a hunch we’ve a lot more than that in common. I’m not busy, you’re not busy, and this life is so lovely and strange. Why don’t we chat and see where the simple connection of my being here, and you being here, leads us. No recounting of any miserable history. No replaying of any family reel. Anyhow, what history, what reel? All gone now, sure as the names and dates on graves rubbed clean by weather. What do you say, Barb? Ready to talk to Dave?”
My waking dream of you and Mom. An elderly couple sit before a high window, the curtains open. Light floods through the glass, forming a rectangle on the floor. Inside the room, the light is yellow-gold and soft; dawn or twilight, it’s hard to tell. Outside, something bigger is happening. Palpable through the glass is radiance, unrelated to day or night, dark or light, beyond what any human can gaze upon or absorb through the skin. It shimmers. It hums. Neither comfort nor menace, the light contains a draw, a pull upward. Even the rectangle on the floor has a lifting energy. The couple dwell within this unstable frame. Any second, they might also get lifted. Any second, they might burn up. Foreheads touching and fingers entwined, they keep silent and still, not wanting to trigger events. They close their eyes and listen to each other’s thoughts and non-thoughts—two animals, breathing together. They could be siblings, could be friends. Most likely they are happy wife and husband of sixty-two years, reunited at the close of day, and now sitting quietly, companionably, to see what comes next.
That was my list, and my apology.
But when I reached the hospital, my father was asleep. He lay on his side, face turned away from the visitor’s chair, encased in even more machines. I watched him, wandered the hallways, dozed a night in a waiting room alongside my sister, and then watched some more. When it became clear the sleeping could last for good—the nurses asked us not to wake him up—I sat back in the chair and whispered into his ear.
You were a good father and husband.
You were a good man.
You should be proud of all you accomplished.
You should let the shame slip away.
You should slip away if you’re ready. Slip into it.
The usual assurances and consolations. The things people say to each other—or ought to if they are half-decent.
Thirty-six hours later, I got the call. Though I jumped into the car and drove fast, I missed my father by twenty minutes. His wife and daughter were bedside when he died, a grandson and daughter-in-law down the hall. We took turns sitting with the corpse. Avoiding his face, which had indeed been caught in a pitiless rictus, not Dave Foran at all—not at age eighty-five or ten—I used our remaining moments together to make a final trip through the archipelago of his arms. Those freckles were still a map, one offering to be deciphered, if not followed. As a boy I had always started my journey at the elbow, steering south. Today I headed north from the wrist, saving the most difficult waters, the heaviest concentration of uncharted isles, for voyage’s end. Once or twice my fingertip ran ashore in a cove, a false creek, and I had to backtrack and chart another passage. But I kept going, northward bound, not slowed by signs of seasonal onset, piercing wind and gathering ice—the forever winter, the lasting quiet.
Exactly what my father would have expected from his eldest boy, born just tough enough for this cold country.
PART
TWO
14
For a month after my father’s death, I could hardly bear to think about him. I thought about my mother and my siblings, and I thought, naturally, about myself, especially how tired I felt, how bad I looked. But about him, almost nothing, as if he weren’t gone or, stranger still, had never existed.
Twice during that month, I deliberately cut myself to see if it would hurt, if I would experience pain. This wasn’t true self-harm—just a sliced fingertip, a scratch that bloodied my thigh. I was curious as to what I might feel, without being sure why, and then relieved that both cuts did hurt, and that I had no desire to wound myself further.
The problem was, I was meant to be writing my father’s obituary for a newspaper. I had promised my family I would do this, and I was anxious to keep the promise. Still, I kept making excuses about my health (so-so), my job (demanding), the darkest days of winter (blues). Uncharacteristically, I provided the specifics of my ailments to any who asked: a torn-up knee and rheumatism in the hips, strained chest muscles, including a dull ache, like the waning throbs of a wasp sting, in the deep center. Too much caffeine and sugar. Too little sleep. An off-kilter gait I discovered only when I examined my boots and noticed that the right corners of both heels were ground down.
An old friend said, apropos of my boot anecdote, “Well, you do behave like a passenger in your own body.”
“What?”
He elaborated. “Be careful about the other people in the car. You’re not driving solo, you know.” Again, I said, “What?” Then added: “I’ve had my license since I turned sixteen. I’m solid behind the wheel, thank you very much.”
What I wanted to say to my friend was this: “How I feel right now is like one of those floppy inflatable Santas people put on front lawns—empty and ridiculous.” But he would have asked why, and I would have had to reply: “No clue.” Or I might have added: “I feel vulnerable like never before.” But once more, he would have asked for details, alluded back to the passenger/driver metaphor. And my reply as to why I felt vulnerable—“No clue,” also once more—would have ratcheted up the interrogation, which wasn’t the desired outcome.
Finally, deadline looming, I forced myself to think about my father. A new question took form: How could I write about him without him being still in his body? True, the version of that body I’d observed most recently—decayed, diminished, under extreme duress—was hardly material for a celebration of life, unless conducted by Samuel Beckett. Imagining his face was no better: all I could summon in that first month was the after-death rictus, mouth gaping and teeth out, or else the old Janus he’d shown from his hospital bed, a wordless howl. At least his ravaged body and agonized facial expressions had been real, a high brick wall of corporeal being that I hadn’t been able to see above or beyond when he was in hospital, but which I’d still been able to walk right into, bruising a cheek and bloodying a nose, any time I wished. With that wall gone, my father had vanished, at least temporarily, and I could no longer conjure the man.
Or maybe I could, if I tried harder. But I did not yet care to admit to my head what my body already knew. I was adept at keeping mind and body separate—knowing, though not really; seeing, though only partially. My mind preferred to work alone. My body sulked at being left out of the conversation. My mind had no time for such nonsense. My body stewed over having its concerns rebuffed. One hated being expected to always factor in how head and neck, chest and stomach, muscles and joints “felt”; the other couldn’t understand why feelings weren’t thoughts, and vice versa, every moment simultaneously corporeal and cerebral in harmonious proportion.
Speaking for my mind—the favorite—I formulated an answer to my body’s complaints about neglect. As a child, I had liked to sit near the tabernacle during mass. From there I’d had a clear view of the action. I could see God’s mind slip down from heaven, via a shaft of light bathing the sanctuary, and slide into the tiny chamber where he temporarily dwelt alongside his son. On cue, the priest would open the tabernacle door and bring out God’s only child to serve to worshippers during communion. As the priest always said upon distributing the wafers: “The body of Christ.” (And we answered “Amen” and made the sign of the cross.) There was the son, a powdery wafer, and, on special occasions, there was his blood, a sip of wine. Every Sunday, the son got eaten; every Sunday, the father did not. Instead, his mind traveled up and down from the dome of dark blues and blacks, blinking stars and smears of constellations, that roofed the roof over the roof of the earth.
Mind or body: Which traveled further and lasted longer and even got to experience the enormity and mystery of that vaulting sky? That’s who should be in charge. Or so I told my body.
Eventually I was able to write the celebration of my father’s life. The allotted word count was five hundred, not much, and the format of the obituary involved selecting three descriptions of the deceased for the byline. Once I came up with active, positive words to describe my father—“woodworker, history buff, dancer,” instead of, say, “neglected child, bear killer, solitary adult”—his outline began to reappear, minus the death mask and ravaged corpse. After that, I concentrated on telling a few good stories about him, and attending to the simple and obvious forces driving any human life: what we like to eat and drink, what we enjoy doing with our minds and bodies; what and whom we love.
David Foran: Woodworker. History buff. Dancer. Husband. Born July 6, 1932, in Ottawa; died Dec. 2, 2017, in Bobcaygeon, Ont.; of serious health issues, including kidney failure; aged 85.
Dave Foran loved Hank Williams and Hank Snow, John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Red wine pleased him greatly, as did baked beans and extra-old cheddar cheese. He was passionate about history, especially Canadian and British, and would take his eldest son on drives around Ontario to point out the remaining Orange Lodges—the source, he believed, of much that was narrow-minded and grim about the province of his upbringing. He worked most contentedly with his hands and, for a while, built model chariots and crossbows that were put on display at the local library. Once retired, he crafted pine stools, mailboxes and bird houses.
He loved the beauty and sensuality of cats, even more for their cold, killer hearts.
For sure, Dave Foran loved his three children and, by the end, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild. The grandparent role suited him especially well: helping his grandsons build a tree fort; watching teen movies over and over with his granddaughters.
Above all else, though, Dave Foran loved Muriel Foran, his wife of 62 years. They met in small-town Northern Ontario in the early 1950s. She was second youngest of 12 children born to a mill worker. Dave had survived a disastrous Ottawa childhood and gone into the bush, where he staked claims and hunted his food. Stories of that time and place suggested a reckless young man, the kind that often did not see his own 25th birthday, or else ended up a rooming-house denizen, his best days long behind.
But he got lucky. While convalescing in Blind River, he met Muriel Fallu, a schoolteacher. Soon they were married and living in a tiny house in town. Soon after again, they were in the suburbs of Toronto. Children, friendships, a career managing shopping malls, all followed. Happy, positive things—the opposite of that childhood, or a protracted life in the bush.
His marriage helped him become a functioning husband, father and friend. He never lost that edge, however, and once, in his late 60s, floored a man half his age for insulting his daughter. He had come through a personal fire, and Muriel was his salvation.
Dave and Muriel Foran loved to dance. To jive especially, the hip-hop of their courtship days. They jived fast and fluid, at ease as partners, lovers and best friends. Well into their 70s they danced with such joy, astonishing their grown children, who looked away in deference, sensing that the act was, ultimately, private.
In his own final years, Dave was mostly bedridden, if still his mischievous, unfiltered self. Wife and husband could no longer dance. But they were together, pretty much every hour of every day, until the end, and Muriel Foran, née Fallu, was never less than the great, sustaining love of his life.
15
“Are you the boy who keeps using my name?”
This is how your grandfather greets you at the door to his house.
“You look like your mother,” he adds.
“My mom is French,” you say.
“And your old man is Ottawa Irish. Long line of Forans and McGradys and O’Neils. Your parents are Catholic with Catholic—a sensible match.”
Your older sister, Debbie, almost eleven, kisses her grandfather on the cheek. She seems to know him better.
“Your sister is a dead ringer for Barb,” Grandpa Charlie says to you.
“Who’s Barb?”
He drags on a cigarette. He has silver hair and a pencil-black mustache and smells the same as your father does: Old Spice and Brylcreem, top shelf in the bathroom cupboard.
“She’s my only daughter,” he finally says. “Your only aunt.”
About this, you are puzzled. You have ten aunts, called tantes in French, whose names you recite during the long drives to visit them: Marie, Helene, Lucille, Anna, Betty, Catherine, Delisca, Rita, Pauline. Plus, Cecile, a nun living in Rome with the Pope. Then you remember the orange-haired woman who looks like your dad in a wig. “Oh yeah,” you say. “Aunt Barb.”
“That’s her.”
Your family are visiting Charlie and Shirley Foran on their farm outside the city. Unlike trips to your tantes and oncles and cousins et cousines, which are frequent and last for weeks, you can’t remember the last time you saw the farm. It has a barn with horses and a pond with frogs and small fish. There is an in-ground pool for summer swims. The house is made of stone, with a curving staircase off the front hallway. On the walls are paintings of horses and photos of Colonel Foran in uniform, of him and Shirley in restaurants. On the tables in those photos are bottles and glasses and ashtrays laid out like cemeteries, some of the stones upright, others toppled.
In the family room you perch on the stool that your grandfather, seated in the armchair, uses for his feet. Your sister and mother are in the kitchen helping with lunch, and your dad has taken your five-year-old brother to see the barn. They went there right after Mike said, “Who’s Shirley?” in front of her.
“Did your nose really get blown off during the war?” you ask, gazing up at your namesake.
“The bridge I was on got blown up. A plank ripped the nose right from my face.”
“And broke your back too?”
“Your dad’s been telling you all this?” he asks, like a kid in the schoolyard asking his friends if a girl really said she liked him.
“Just one time,” you answer. Your father has probably told the story ten times, but you don’t want your grandfather knowing it. You aren’t sure why.
“That was a different accident. Blackout on the base, the air-raid sirens blaring. I’m crossing the tarmac in a Jeep. Can’t see my hand in front of me. Can’t hear myself think either. My batman, fellow by the name of George Smythe, a good guy, family man, he’s driving, of course, and cuts the headlights, as per regulations. I glimpse a wall of black, and tell him as much—‘Smythe,’ I shout, ‘what’s that straight ahead?’—but he can’t hear me over the sirens. We proceed to drive into the side of a supply truck. I’m thrown clear on impact and wind up in a brace for three months. Poor George, he loses his head, literally—severed at the neck. Guess I got the better bargain, eh?” He laughs his phlegmy laugh.
