Fathers' Day

Today is an anniversary of sorts: it's been 15 years since I've seen my father. My grandmother--my father's mother--died of a stroke in June 1987, and her funeral was the Friday before Fathers' Day. I flew east to Thunder Bay, Ontario, where she lived for what would be my last meeting with my father.

My parents separated when I was around three, and my mother and I moved to Alberta. I saw my dad a handful of times while growing up--occasionally when my family went east, and a few times when he came to visit us. Our visits were irregular, and through a combination of inertia and entropy (I might say disinterest and irresponsibility, but I'm not laying blame here) grew less frequent as I got older.

While she was alive, though, my grandmother was the force that connected me and my father. She wrote and called regularly, sent cards and gifts without fail, and gently encouraged me to write. As a kid I was a lousy correspondent--I might've written her ten letters in my life. I stayed with her when I went to Thunder Bay, camped with her and my grandfather in their trailer, drove with her to the Terry Fox memorial while we listened to Taco's "Puttin' on the Ritz" (endlessly, it seemed). My father was often, though not always, a peripheral figure in those vacations.

I, of course, loved my father ferociously. Or more accurately, I loved the idea of a father, and I left the role open for my real father. (I'm sure he loved the idea of a son, too. Although an actual son who listened to Iron Maiden and read comic books and preferred to leave his shoelaces untied and didn't really like stock car racing and was basically inept with a fishing rod might not have been what he was after.)

So, anyway, my grandmother passed away and I went to her funeral. I was 17, hadn't seen my father in four years at that point, and knew nothing about him or his life. I arrived a day or two before the funeral so I could attend all the family events.

It was open-casket, but I don't remember many other details. Shortly after I arrived the chance to bond with Dad, maybe to start fresh, overtook the funeral as the main reason for the trip. And amid the business of funeral and family, there were many opportunities for bonding.

One day we flew in his new plane, a twin-engine something-or-other bought with two of his flying buddies. We went cycling and he told me about the bike trips to Minnesota he took with friends. We drove around in his Camaro, but we eventually switched to my grandmother's Cutlass Ciera. The Z28 couldn't accommodate me and his girlfriend.

I hung out with cousins I'd never met, drank beer freely. My father even attempted some parenting by turning a party story about his three-day cocaine bender into a cautionary tale on drug use. Meanwhile I nursed my second Labatt's Blue of the evening. Ten four, Dad. Loud and clear.

I spent Fathers' Day 1987 schlepping around a mall in Thunder Bay looking for some fatherly thing to buy my Dad, and naively believing that giving this gift would cement our relationship. I picked a Flintstones t-shirt featuring Dino and a fart joke--surely a father-son classic. I thought he'd appreciate the humour, although I don't recall his reaction.

Later that day he drove me to the airport so I could catch my flight home. Not wanting to embarrass myself in the airport, I choked back tears as we said goodbye. Vague commitments were made. Promises to see each other, pay for university, maybe move out the following summer.

In hindsight, I think we parted that day not knowing how we fit into each others' lives, or how to make up the lost time or bridge the differences. In reality, all I remember from those moments is a dizzying confusion. But I think I knew even then that things would turn out as they have.

And really, what can you do? You can't let go of 20-odd years of wondering what happened, and there's nothing to be gained by being angry. You can only carry on. Carry on and avoid that Harry Chapin song.

At times I wonder if my father feels the same way I do. I imagine him driving aimlessly (in an IROC), trying to shake the nagging emptiness that comes every Fathers' Day, and thinking the same thoughts as last year only with a little more certainty: it's too late, too much time has passed, it's too late.

I have a photograph of my grandmother, Vera Smith, taken somewhere in Scotland. From what I know, researching the family tree had been the major endeavour of the last part of her life. The Smiths can be traced back several generations through Nova Scotia, where a distant grandfather of mine had been the first Presbyterian minister in Canada, back to Scotland. She's sitting on an old stone wall that cuts through a lush pasture. She had red hair.