1957
As grade 4 ended in June 1957 I was starting on my journey to becoming the best kind of man; comfortable with masculinity, owning good adult relationships with men and women and able to teach his children the codes that lead to success.
But by the first day of grade 5 my tour guide Morris Shore, my father, the man whose job it was to guide me to manhood, died, aged 48.
I've been wondering since then about what kind of man he was and what I lost. Even though, I've been told, he was a mess of a husband and away from home way too much he had role model qualities. He had pulled himself up from one of the dark places in Europe to be a success in Canada. He was on third base because he actually had hit a triple.
He owned a business, one he had worked at for years and bought two years before his death. He had a big personality and he was high strung. I remember him coming home with a red Buick convertible when I was eight and having a road rage incident in front of our house. These are visions with incomplete context.
He died from a head injury when he collapsed into a radiator, at home, recuperating from heart disease. Hard work and high strung killed him.
At that moment I was lucky enough to be at Camp Northland in Haliburton. Acres of fun. Waterfront. Baseball fields. Cookout areas. Giant rec halls.
I was retrieved from some activity by my sister Sima. She was a counsellor at the attached girl’s camp, B’nai Brith. Andy Schaefer, a camp administrator and a cousin was with her. Without saying why, Andy drove us back to Toronto in an early 1950s sedan. A Rubenesque car from the time before fins.
When we got home my eldest sister, Dolores, took me aside in the crowded house. She sat in a chair that in my memory looked like a throne. She held my hands, one in each of hers and said “your father has died”. Many relatives gave me warm hugs and declared "oy vey". I remember the squeezing not the faces. I told my mother that I would quit school and go to work.
The funeral was big. (Here's a pro tip. Die young if you want a crowded funeral.) I wish I had a memory of the eulogy or a copy. I was driven back to camp the next day.
That was too soon. It would have been better if I had stayed in Toronto and had a chance to mourn for the traditional week. I would have grown by honouring my dad and from the consoling conversations about my father. One outcome is that I’m now not naturally sad when people die. I have to work to show sympathy.
While my dad was alive there wasn't much chance that I would learn life lessons from him. Because of his work and his health our time together was scarce. And then it ended without me knowing him. We never chatted at his favourite fishing hole. There was no meditative playing catch. He didn't live long enough to teach me how to drive, a car or a golf ball.
Thankfully he lived long enough to teach me resilience. By reframing our life together and channeling one trait of his I've done ok. As he was, I am tenacious. I cultivate life. I've harvested much. Nothing is paying rent on my bucket list.
I feel like I hit a double when I chose the parents I did and then learned enough to stretch it to a triple just like my dad.
June 29, 2016
October 22, 2019
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