Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye

During the early afternoon of March 20 I had lunch with a friend, hunted around for a pair of steel-toed shoes and picked up a handful of CDs at Lyle's Place; it was, in short, a very usual Saturday afternoon.  That evening Nicky & I had dinner with our friends Mike & Alicia and 10:18pm were part-way in to watching a film with them when my phone rang and a very usual day became one I wouldn't forget.  When I saw that it was my mother calling from her home in Campbell River, I went cold with apprehension.  We usually speak once a week but rarely in the evening and never past ten, and I instinctively expected bad news.  Bad news didn't quite cover it.  She had called to tell me that three hours before, my uncle Jim, a fixture of my life since birth and, in the absence of my own father, someone who had come to occupy that role in my heart, had died suddenly while on vacation.  Details were scarce at this point, the only certainties being that he was gone and that his wife Susan, my aunt, was now alone in Tehachapi, California, without her husband of thirty-five years.  We didn't speak long as other calls needed to be made, and shortly thereafter my phone rang again and didn't stop until long past midnight.  One call was from my aunt Susan, who sounded frighteningly adrift when she explained that Jim had simply gone down to the pool for a swim and never come back.  The doctors initially guessed he'd had a heart attack but the final word would have to wait until an autopsy had taken place; as of this writing we still do not have a definitive answer.  She was alone but the responding officer had gone out of his way to make her as comfortable as possible and two of Jim's brothers, Dennis & Bryon, and Bryon's wife Linda, would be arriving into Bakersfield first thing the next morning.  I hope to never again hear the voice of someone I love so dearly sound so empty, and so lost.  After we hung up Nicky & I both tried to process the idea that this vibrant, loving, outgoing man was, after only fifty-five years on the planet, gone forever.  We have both lost family members over the years but never one so young, or so quickly.

On Monday I went into work as usual, explained the situation and that I would be leaving for Revelstoke the following morning for an indefinite period of time.  The nature of my temporary position with LifeLabs was such that it couldn't be left vacant for a day, let alone a week, so they were understandably forced to find a replacement but they couldn't have been more gracious.  Specifically I'd like to thank Barb, Robert & Phil, whose workloads were all directly affected by my sudden departure and who were all still professional, supportive and helpful.  Thanks too, to Dye & Durham, for allowing Nicky a week's leave shortly after starting a temporary contract with them.  I met my mother, Cathy, in Nanaimo the following day and we drove together to Revelstoke; Nicky had  to round out the week at work but flew into Kelowna airport early Friday morning where we picked her up.  Over the course of the next two weeks I saw family from all over B.C., some of whom I hadn't seen in five, ten, or fifteen years.  It was wonderful to see all the faces and, yes, we all wished it had been under different circumstances but I suppose the naked truth is that under other circumstances it simply wouldn't have happened.  That's not meant to be a a reflection on my family or any other, it's simply human nature:  the clockwork of life is so perfect we don't think about the fragility of its mechanisms until one breaks.  When it does we come together so that the din of our voices may briefly drown out the now deafening movement of the hands.  

Jim's Celebration of Life service was on Monday, March 29th at the Revelstoke Community Center and was attended by nearly one thousand people. We cried, of course, but I remember most that we laughed.  His brother Dennis and his friends Mark & Steven told stories about his growing up, his business ventures and his many motorcycle trips across Canada and the U.S.A.  My favorite moment of the day was when Mark related the time he had asked Jim why he owned four motorcycles - Jim just looked at him and said, "Because I can."  A wiser man than me could turn that into a whole school of thought.  There's an Italian proverb that says, "The surest way to be praised is to die", and it's true enough; I've known a number of people whose lives have ended and, worthy or no, they have all been praised.  In what is probably a youthful refusal to romanticize the dead I've promised myself to remember them as they were, rather than as we wished they could have been, but with Jim that idealization is unnecessary.  I have no illusions that he was perfect, he was a man, flawed like any other but better than most; to me there exists no higher praise than being able to say "he was a good guy".  And he was.  And already I miss him like hell. 

Death is the inevitable result of life, but it need not be its definition.  For fifty-five years Jim lived a good life, and a memorable one, and that's something to which we can all aspire.  His sudden departure from life has left a hole in our family that only time will repair.  We know that the pain will ebb, in many ways the cruelest thing about grief is that it passes, but there will always be the nagging feeling that we're missing something, and whenever I go home to visit I think I'll always half-expect him to come out the garage door bringing two cans of that awful American beer he loved so much.  Goodbye, unc.  The world was better with you in it.