Category Archives: relationships

A bad day

I’m a blue man he says to me,
speaking to the ceiling.
I pull my chair closer to his bed,
cupping his cold hand.
His swollen face lolls in my direction,
eyes like a slot machine.
I’m locked in the freezer. Get the keys!
I hang my head, squeezing his hand harder.
Why don’t you answer?
God damn (I think). God damn. Please.
Here. Are you cold? Let me get another blanket.
(I hear a noise from the hall. A cart clatters by. A door slams.)
Bang, bang, bang. Three distinct bangs.
Are you warmer now?
(The slots have stopped on Two Spades)
Ah haaaa. Ah haaaa.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Let him go soon.
When it’s my time, let it be a heart attack.

Shaving the dead

Sorry.  Not a story for bed time.

Have been in the bad place for a few days now with depression.  There’s the cue for you to abort this reading, if you like……the picture is not of me, but of my phantom friend.

If you’re a kindred spirit, you might identify with some of these:

Sleep (fitfully) for ten or eleven hours
Waken for a bit, realize you need one more, then drift back.
Shuffle to kitchen for coffee, which clears the fog somewhat.
Eat some little thing (for “energy”, not appetite)
It does not work as promised.
Back into bed, this time with the door open.  Two cats join you.
You think “Shit, I can’t do this”, and force yourself into the bathroom for a shower.
Brush your teeth, a must.  You never skip this.  Not yet.
God damn, I really need to shave.  I look like shit.  But not today.  Tomorrow, I’ll do it.

I think of getting dressed, when the back story about shaving hits me.

The first person that I shaved, other than myself, was my father.  In his 70th year, he was dying of pancreatic cancer.  Before I go further, I will say that all of the caregivers I have met are worthy of high praise.  Nurses especially, for what they do, their long hours, and their continual need for more help.

Dad was always a stickler for his appearance, but once he started to decline, of course he could not take care of himself.  I asked a nurse one day if I could give him a shave.  She was apologetic that they hadn’t done it in a few days, and was appreciative of the help.  Looking at his jaundiced eyes without crying was difficult.  That was the last shave he ever got.

My younger brother, about whom I have already written, died in his home, where we had set up a hospital bed at his request.  I had stayed there for several nights, when his partner asked me if I could give him a shave.  The same eyes studied me with regret and tears.  I wonder if he knew who I was.

At last, my old father-in-law.  He lived far away, and we used to visit once every month or two.  He always made sure that he was presentable when he knew we were coming, and that included a shave.  There eventually came a time when he had lost the will and the strength to do it, and I once more got out the hot cloths and warmed up the shaving cream.  This third set of hopeless eyes was almost too much.

Now, I have given myself a figurative slap, and said “God dammit, you’re not there yet.  Do the fucking shave!”

Nobody’s going to catch me looking like hell, and staring out of those 8-ball eyes.
Selfish, maybe.  Running scared, maybe….but I would not want to inflict those moments on anyone who still loves me.

Parental recollections

  • Having the privilege of being there at my son’s birth, after many hours of my wife’s painful labour.
  • Quitting smoking and deporting our cat to the in-laws while the baby was growing.
  • Being zombies for the first few months because of rocking chair duties to help calm him down from his colic.
  • Missing, by minutes, the birth of my daughter.  I had taken her mother to the hospital, with my son in the car, because it was a late night surprise, and then thought I had enough time to take him to my mother’s place and still make it back.  Arrived breathlessly at the hospital, only to have a nurse announce that I had a daughter (delivered by the nurse, because a doctor was not on hand at the time).
  • Walking through a park with my family and some friends, with my son toddling beside us and our daughter in a carriage.  She became fussy, and I picked her up and rocked her while singing “the bear went over the mountain”.  I think it was her favourite song at the time, and seemed to be the only thing that would calm her down.
  • Bedtime stories, starting off with the mythical Dr. Seuss, then books by Richard Scary, to name a few.  One of them involved complex cartoon pictures, in which you had to find a little critter called “Goldbug”.  That certainly developed a spirit of competition between the two kids, and a little jealousy when one got the better of the other.
  • I actually read the complete “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” books to them.  It took about a year.  Daughter lost interest, but the son couldn’t get enough.
  • Piggyback rides down the hallway to their bedrooms, as part of the nightly routine, with the wife in the background telling me to “get them the hell to bed”.
  • Singing them to sleep when the reading and games didn’t work.  Mostly Beatles and Wings.  If the singing didn’t work, we pulled out a small electric keyboard on which I taught them to play “Smoke on the Water”, I think.
  • Having my son come home from school, very upset, because he had lost a model dinosaur that he had brought there that morning.  This was in November, and we got pretty cold while retracing his steps back there until we found it.
  • Driving my son to a job interview quite far from home, then stopping on the side of the road.  When he asked what for, I said “you’re going to drive”.  It was a standard.  He eventually got the hang of it.
  • Taking my daughter on her first driving lesson (same car) around the oval up at the high school.  She found it difficult, and more than once stalled it, but that is to be expected.  She does claim, though, that I got impatient and said to her “the lesson is over.”  I do not remember that.
  • Physically barring the door so she could not get out to go to a friend’s place late one night.  It had been freezing rain, everything was slick, and I just said no.  She hated me for a while.
  • Being involved in a serious accident one winter night (not hurt), and arriving home at about 2 a.m.  Kids were crying in the hallway.
  • Coming home from work, with my daughter waiting.  I tried picking her up and slinging her over my shoulder (she was about 11 years old), and instead slipped, collapsed, and wrecked some stuff in the hall.
  • Having tickling sessions on the upstairs bed when I went up to get changed after work.  The two of them would run up there, and we would see who cried Uncle first.
  • Bedbugs.   Lice.  Fleas.  Numerous cats.
  • Driving my girl two hours through a snowstorm to attend a talent contest.  Spending 14 hours there, only to have her fail the audition.
  • Taking a load of teenagers to downtown Toronto so they could attend some concert or other, and spending several hours bumbling around waiting for them to get out.
  • Fond memories of going to plays and concerts with my daughter.
  • Going fishing with my son.  Not catching much, but just going fishing.
  • Golfing with both of them at one time or another
  • Many, many trips to North Bay, complete with serious sibling rivalry in the backseat.  Never ever again will I put the four of us in one vehicle.
  • Thinking about taking my son to a strip club, then changing my mind.
  • Having a bunch of kids knock on my door, screaming that my son had been hurt.  Running down the roadway to find that he had broken his wrist in two after a roller blading accident.  He then went on to a career of fairly regular calamities, including another broken arm, elbow, and various accidents with saws etc.
  • Taking him for a dental emergency to a guy that turned out to be something of a butcher.  I could hear the screams from the waiting room, got him the hell out of there, and took him to a place that did sleep dentistry, a thousand bucks later.

Looking back, I loved (almost) every minute of it, and surely would not change it at all.

 

 

Randy Randy

So many human foibles have we.  So many.
In the mid 1960’s, we lived in a fourplex, and had some new neighbors move in.  It was a mother and her teenaged son, and we got to know them and to be friends.  The son’s name was Randy.  He was a skinny, wiry little guy, something like a young Mick Jagger, with kind of a hard looking streetwise countenance.  He may have been a year or two older than I, but we chummed around anyway, being convenient to each other.

About fifteen years old at the time, I was easily impressed (and corrupted) by his cunning ways, and by the picture he presented of being a rebel against his mother’s authority.  Each escapade of his seemed to top the last one.  Looking at it now, I think he was acting out because of his broken home life and estrangement from his father.  He never talked about it.

We got involved in some small time misdemeanors, such as creeping out in the middle of the night and running down the street in our sock feet with a shopping bag to rob a coke machine at the local gas station, using his deft technique, learned from who knows where.  He came on vacation with us one time, to a cottage we rented each summer, then suggested we go for a long walk,  whereupon he magically produced some bags from his trousers, and we pilfered a local farmer’s garden.  We were chased before we got far, but managed to elude the pursuit in the bush.  Farmer Maggot never did catch us.

Things got more serious later on in this career of crime.  Randy got involved with drugs, and his behavior became more erratic and unpredictable.  He made it known that he had a gun, but of this I am not certain.  He was still allowed into our house, as my parents didn’t know.  One night, while we were playing poker, he took out a small bottle from his pants and began to sniff it.  Nail polish remover.  It had an instant effect upon him, and he did some crazy and destructive things.  We got him to his house and left him with his mother,  and we had to explain to our own folks what had happened.  That was effectively the end of our association, and it wasn’t long before he moved away.  A short time later, I heard that he had been picked up for grand theft, and was spending time at juvenile hall.

It may seem wrong to have “Sympathy for the Devil”, but there are a few things that I will always carry with me about Randy…..he needed a friend, and so did I, and it happened.  The little hints that one could divine from his conversation showed what kinds of wounds he had within his soul.

And, lastly, he may have saved my life one night when we were attacked by a group of hoodlums trying to show off to their girlfriends.  They got us from behind, pulled us down on the pavement,  and began the beating.  Six against two.  I didn’t know how to fight, but he did.  We both took a pretty good beating,  but my wiry little skinny friend managed to defend both of us until they took off.  The last memory I had was of Randy beating one guy’s head against the pavement, before someone came along and called an ambulance.

String theory

Ah, child of the dust,
how shall I tell you?
Come, please, and play my strings.
For I am mute.  Absolute.
I want to be heard,
but the weight is the word.

Please, sit.
Rest.
Bring your patience.
Inspect.
See.
Care.
Is there not some residual worth?

And now, you must tune.

Though you know me not,
in weary sighs I will tell you how…

The two highest are of a single strand.
They can speak beauty, poignant and piercing,
played with a bow.

The two that are next are of wire finely wound.
They speak of wisdom gained, lessons learned,
kindnesses felt and given.

The two that are last are more heavily coiled.
for they bear the most weight.
They speak of things sad, and of guilt and betrayal,
of regret, and of harrowing penance.
Pluck them slowly, with soft fingerpads.

If any should break at the peg,
stay and warm me.
Let the sting subside.
Rid me of the useless member.
Play me again, with your love,
and know that, now, it matters not.

 

 

A view from the galaxy

head upon the downy pillow
underneath the weeping willow
by the bubbling river’s greening bend

the filtered sunlight slanting down
you brought to me a daisy crown
I wished this merry moment not to end

the leaves a-flutter, summer snowing
sleepy syllables of knowing
our sundering and silences to end

and now, we’ll pick the periwinkles
and walk home in the starry twinkles
the nightingales and whippoorwills attend

I’ll cradle your endearing face
you’ll swear to me, upon this place
we’ll stay until our hearts will fully mend

 

Just a singer in a rock and roll band

We gathered that night, impromptu.
Music was rumoured,
by the bush, secluded.
There was a small fire, falling to embers.
Things brought were guitars, harps, a fiddle, a beatbox,
and a voice or three.
Over the hum of the generator,
we plugged in and played.
In my given spot, I stayed.
Faces filtered in.
Some i knew-
there was shy Sandy, who asked if she could play-
twelve bar blues on her harp,
and she was transfigured.
We were joyful, and egged her on.
A man who was eighty came into the glow with his fiddle,
etched into the night’s tableau.
A fellowship, more than fleeting.
We who played and sang
smiled brightly at one another, with a knowing.
What can one love, more than this?

The bad trip

Today, we are shopping.
I have been well for a long while now.
It was planned.
I am with you both, my dear ones.
But, since awakening, two cups of coffee ago,
I am thrown back to blocked feelings of desperation.
We are in a milieu of throngs.
I seek equilibrium.
There are smiles of kindness.
I meekly try for the same.
Some hold doors for us.
But some give snotty stares if we stop too long.
You sense disquiet in me.
As I grapple, and strive for the least embarrassment,
your own self assurance is melting down.
You require of me simple things.
Which color should I buy?
Where do you want to go for lunch?
My robotic answers and failure to smile
reflect poorly upon me.
I am selfish.
I cannot rise above it.
Please, just lead.
I will follow.