Can’t wait to get started. But first to the Netherlands to see my wife’s family and friends. Marijke passed last December 8th.
I miss her very much.
Part of this walk is to honour Marijke and a few other people I know dealing with Cancer right now. My hats off to Marijke, Kevin, Gary, Gerry, BC Cancer Clinic and Ruth. Best of luck to all of you. My thoughts and prayers are with you…always.
If you want to help out and be part of the fight against this deadly disease you can make a contribution to the BC Cancer Clinic, or your own local one:
http://www.bccancer.bc.ca/donate
You can donate anything you want in the name of Marijke Morrison or for whomever you know who is fighting this dreadful disease.
I’ll be checking out of here today until my first post 31 July from Vezelay. Hopefully my IPad will work. I may do the odd test post from the Netherlands.
Thanks for supporting this blog especially to my American friend who always seems to be up on this site very early in the morning – at least my time – Pacific. Thanks.
Song of the day:
Such as great band. Here is another tune by Badfinger that makes me think of Marijke:
It was dusk, 09 November 1965, when the biggest power failure in U.S. history occurred as all of New York State, portions of seven neighbouring states, and parts of eastern Canada, including Ontario and Quebec are plunged into darkness. The Great Northeast Blackout as it was called began at the height of rush hour delaying millions of commuters, trapping 800,000 people in New York’s subways, and stranding thousands more in office buildings, elevators, and trains. Ten thousand National Guardsmen and 5,000 off-duty policemen were called into service to prevent looting. And it was also on this day that my Grandfather was laid out in a funeral chapel as the first of his three days visitation began.
My grandfather died of a stroke, in his sleep. I recall the Saturday morning that my Dad was called by his mother to come up to the assisted living complex and check out his father. Granny seemed non-plussed about the whole thing. Perhaps that stoicism of hers was a by product of her Irish blood or Irish Catholic background or perhaps it was from the years and years of infighting that occurred between her and her Scottish husband, my Grandfather, as they fought and cussed about who suffered the most from those dastardly Brits. The Irish or the Scots? Bonny Prince Charlie and Culloden or William of Orange, King James II and Derry? Perhaps they were both a tad cranky about the outcome of the Battle of Killiekrankie between the Jacobites and the British Crown. Whatever, my Grandparents on my Dad’s side had the Irish blood and Scot’s whisky in their DNA, and long memories? They could really hold a grudge. Always at war with one another, always another drink and always the peace offering with the accompanying bagpipes to the tune of Scotland the Brave. Whenever they had a party, at our house of course, and the cops were called by the neighbours due to the cat scratching bag-piped noise bellowing out into the street, my Grandfather would greet them at the door, regale them with the secret Highland handshake and invite them in with a shot of crappy Scotch. It always worked. If anything my grandfather was a happy man albeit a tad drunk and continually hung over in his retirement years.
When my Dad arrived at the home he checked on his father, realized he was indeed dead, and then called the police and the funeral home – Catholic funeral home. They did not have any pre-arrangements in those days other than a small life insurance policy that they hoped would cover the costs. It didn’t and the siblings had to come up with the rest. Not to worry as my Grandfather would always say. I’ll be dead!
They laid him out. The whole family had to prepare for and attend the wake. An open casket in a big open living room: 2-4, 7-9 daily for three days. On that first evening, my sister and I became very bored, very quickly. Squirming with restlessness and boredom, we decided to explore our surroundings, that being the funeral home. What we would find in a funeral home one could only guess but one could only imagine especially one with an active imagination like ours. So off we went, dumb as we were, exploring in a funeral home for heaven’s sake.
There were a few other living rooms in that home: some small, some large and some very private. There was also a canteen in the basement that was open for coffee and small snacks. There were other rooms that were locked or out of bounds to all but funeral home staff. There were the offices of the director, the assistant director, and the assistant assistant director: fitting rooms, plush seats, sofas and the like. Then there was a second floor. Our attention was suddenly piqued toward the stairs. Up we went, stair by stair, egged on by mutual self gratifying courage with our strength in numbers. Neither one of us would dare bolt. We could see some light at the top or the stairs, which indicated some open spaces. We had to see what was up here. When we reached the top landing we came to a door that was slightly ajar. We pushed it open and walked right in, but slowly, inspecting our surroundings. We were in a small hallway that opened up into what seemed to be a fairly large room but we could not make out what the room held. At that precise moment in time the lights went out and we were suddenly thrown into total darkness. We couldn’t see the hands in front of our faces. My sister gasped, didn’t scream, just gasped. We held on to each other for moral support. What to do. We better get back.
We found the wall and being totally disoriented used our hands for touch and feel and bearing and began to move, ever so slowly. All of a sudden the walls gave way to nothing, an abyss perhaps, although it did seem to us on reflection that we were in what appeared to be a large cavernous room. We kept moving but in extremely small exploratory steps hoping with all hope that we would find the landing and the stairs. Unbeknownst to us at the time we were going in the opposite direction. We stopped for what seemed to be an eternity and stood there in frightful anticipation of what to do, where we were and what would come next. The only sound that we heard was that that came from our diaphragms, from our deep breathing and from our heartbeats. It was as if our hearts were about to burst forth from our chests. We were bewildered, disoriented, lost. As our eyes adjusted to the darkness we could sense that we were not alone in this room.
“Helloooo?” We cried out in the darkness. Only silence. That there was some form of artefact here with us was without question. We just didn’t know what. Suddenly these weird shapes came into a blurred but darkened outline and focus. Long, and short and stubby cocoon like objects took shape in a spectral like fashion. As our eyes became adjusted and we acquired limited night vision, ghastly apparitions suddenly filled the room and our senses. Recognition of what we were seeing instantly came over us. We gasped in horror. A casket showroom befell upon us. Open caskets, half opened caskets, closed caskets: on the floor, on shelves, on their sides, on their ends, in organized disarray. White pillowed laced interiors. It was ghoulish and very, very frightening to us.
We screamed, turned and ran. Without missing a beat we ran down the short hallway, found the stairs and in what seemed to be two leaps found the bottom. Turning again we found the lobby then stopped dead in our tracks again as we couldn’t quite make out or accept our current reality. In the darkness there was suddenly light. Not the steady, comforting, yellowish, incandescent evening light but the flickering dancing light from a thousand candles that moved along the walls and ceiling as if shadows of large, floating apparitions. Menacingly grotesque shadows that seemed to shrink to smallness then gradually billowing out in bizarre, monstrous forms. These deformed and twisted images were somehow exaggerated when someone moved along the hallways or within the rooms of the funeral home. The dim light, the shadows, the living and the honoured dead plus what seemed to be a thousand candles all added up to one very macabre scene for a 14 year old kid. I was shitting my pants and I ran for the exits.
This was one memory that wish I could forget and one that still send chills down my spine.
By the next day, all was back to normal. Someone had turned Niagara Falls back on!
Besides Darren and my Grandfather, there were many other deaths that occurred when I was young. Some were people that were very close, like my own father who died at the tender age of 54, or others at school who had the misfortune of leaving us at a very young age. Or O’Grunt’s mother who died 6 months after my father. She was only 50. Or the two teenagers I knew as acquaintances that lost their lives by driving over a cliff in a Volkswagen beetle. They’d only had the driver’s licences for about a couple of months. Sixteen for heaven’s sake! I was always reminded of that horrific incident as I passed one of their graves on the way to work each day. His name carved on the granite headstone that was in my field of vision as I passed by the cemetery on the bus.
Or the “Greaser” I knew who died in a street brawl. Motorcycles seem to claim the lives of an inordinate amount of young men that I knew in those days. When I think back to those times I can only shake my head in disbelief that I made it through those years unscathed. For in their particular cases there was really little difference in our circumstances except that: “there but for the Grace of God go I.” Lucky me!
Darren was about 11 years old when I first met him, a couple of years younger than me. But in that stage of life a couple of years meant a great deal. He lived just a few doors down from O’Grunts in one of those post war, red brick, long and narrow bungalows, or ranchers. He was a very fragile lad, sickly in fact, suffering from numerous ailments, the most egregious of which was asthma. In spite of his frailties he always tried to be a part of our crowd although he could barely keep up with us with his constant wheezing, hacking and bronchial cough. He tried to play hockey on our outdoor rink and baseball in the summer, football in the fall, and any other activity that we thought about. We always welcomed him but could not really accommodate his physical weaknesses in our game play other than with encouragement and inclusiveness. Often Darren would just watch, then run, or skate, slowly toward us then stop, cough, wheeze catching his breath as if lost somehow then try again. He was always part of our football huddles, omnipresent it seemed with that deep, raspy breathing of his, as if in a reverb state, somewhat like an echo chamber, powerful but for its resonance to reflect Darren’s difficulty in every breath he took.
Thinking back now I am truly amazed at his courage and determination to participate in these types of activities. He would have been infinitely more comfortable in the more sedentary, intellectual pursuit but at such a young age the adventure, sense of belonging and sense of being alive, part of the gang, were probably more of an attraction for him than the limitations brought on by his physical liabilities. We should have been more enlightened at that age to welcome him but at the same time steer him away from our everyday activities to ones that would have been more suitable for his condition. Ignorant that we were at such a young age we sort of took him for granted, as he was always there. Sadly, regrettably, we were ignorant of the warning signs that were staring us all in the face.
Darren died suddenly. This was a huge shock to all of us. We were very young as well and incidents such as a death tend to hit youngsters like us suddenly and without warning, like a jackhammer to the gut.
He died from an asthma attack, I do believe, though I cannot be entirely sure of this given that Darren died some 50 plus years ago. O’Grunts told me of this tragic event, when I came to call on him one summer’s day
“Darren died” he said, as if questioning me somehow.
“No way. How? What happened?”
“Yesterday.” Don continued “He had something of an asthma attack and couldn’t breathe properly. His dad got him to the hospital but it was too late and they couldn’t wake him.”
“Holy crap” I couldn’t believe it and just stood there, in shock, shaking my head as if somehow I could exorcise this news and make things real again. “Holy crap.”
Death wasn’t something that was really real to us. We weren’t oblivious to it but it was something that happened to old people: Grandparents, Grand Uncles or Grand Aunts. Old people. People over 40. Not to an 11 year old boy! And not to somebody we knew who was only 11! No way. We were immortal at that age.
Playing didn’t seem so important now, or appropriate, or relevant somehow. I turned to leave O’Grunt’s house and began my walk home, in thought, in shock, my head down in sorrowful disbelief, walking by rote as if in some automaton trance passing Darren’s house on the way. There it was, on my left. Nondescript. Just a structure of brick and mortar. Inanimate from the outside. How many times have I passed that house without giving it a second thought or a glance, only knowing that it was Darren’s house. How could I even look at that house knowing full well the grey pall that was descending upon it like a cold blanket of grief: all encompassing, unrelenting, suffocating grief! I couldn’t imagine the awfulness that was permeating through it like a deadly virus, throughout every room: in the walls, the floors, every nook and cranny of that house. Crushing memories of a child, of a son, of an innocent youngster who had his whole life ahead of him yet was saddled with the misfortune of not being able to capture the breath of life. Even today, as I walk past that house it looks exactly as I remembered it, as I walked past it hundreds of times in my youth. It remains to this day a very modest, post war abode: long and narrow, a red brick structure that was a home and very common for this street before the tear downs and monster home craziness began to destroy the neighborhood.
We all went to the showing. I must admit how scared I was. The foreboding atmosphere of the funeral home: the smell of the carpets, the incense filled heaviness and tension, sadness in the air. Was this how death smelled?
We were all escorted into the viewing parlour. I could sense that Darren was laid out somewhere for all to see but couldn’t see exactly where he was due to the large number of people there. I think that the funeral home’s concierge sensed this as he made a path for us to come and have a look or pay our respects. We all followed him somewhat gingerly, with some trepidation, for none of us knew what to expect. I think I grabbed onto Jimmy mum’s arm at that moment in time for reassurance that all would be okay. He looked at me and I could see a slight tint of foreboding in his face. O’Grunts was non plussed about the whole thing but solemn looking nonetheless. Big Maxx was there as were many of the girls in Darren’s immediate neighborhood. All were in shock and in an emotional state. The concierge sensed our fear and told us not to worry as Darren would appear to be asleep. Okay! That helps
Finally we were all there around his open casket. I think I had my eyes closed and then, very carefully, bravely, opened one eye for a short glance. Darren did indeed appear to be asleep. His eyes were closed and his face seemed to be coloured with blush, just a hint of rose, smooth but pastel-like, with colour on his cheeks and lips. Laying there straight up with his hands folded, in peaceful remorse, dressed in his pajamas as if he was in an eternal asleep. Above his coffin they had a landscape form of the heavens, in a kaleidoscope of colours, with the moon and the stars sparkling as if in some magical, ecclesiastical collage. To a young boy like me it was both beautiful and creepy and I can still remember that scene as if I saw it yesterday and not 50 years ago.
We kind of paid our respects as best we could to Darren’s mom and dad and then got the hell out of there.
Pain, or shock, tends to heal and lessen with time. So they say. While at first it seemed somewhat surreal for us to be out playing in the park as if nothing really happened, before too long we were back to our normal ways. Yet there were times when the whole frightening affair came crashing back to me. It was during those times when walking home from O’Grunts place, that I would pass Darren’s house and see his dad sitting there out on the stoop alone. Lost in thought he appeared to be, or, perhaps he was oblivious to his surroundings, as if in a trance like state of mind. I would shyly acknowledge him as I passed by the house with a nod of my head, as if I was somehow sharing in his grief knowing full well that nothing I could do could ever come close to easing his sorrow. Sometimes he would see me and nod his head in recognition but most times nothing but his blank stare, a stare that was straight ahead and somewhere out there into space and time.
What was going through his mind one can only imagine? Staring straight ahead into nothingness, seeing nothingness with nothingness of a future. Hopelessly wondering about all of the “what ifs.” The guilt must have been overbearing, unceasing, interminable. To lose one’s son at such a young age. Life is not supposed to be this way. Parents are not supposed to outlive their children. Being a father myself I know of the hopes and dreams that come with parenthood. What will he or she be like at 10, at 18, at 21? What will they become: a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a plumber, a proctologist, a what? What about the grandchildren? What will they be like? Life is so full of promise, of wonderment, of hope, of joyous potential and contentedness. Then, to have it all come crashing down in a flash like some cruel joke.
Seeing Darren’s dad was just that to me. Seeing Darren’s dad! I knew he was sad but knowing that he was hurting emotionally, physically and spiritually was difficult for someone like me to grasp at such as young age. I would never be able to understand or be able to measure the pain that he was going through. I could only say…hello!
A short article I read about corporal discipline in Chinese elementary school got me to thinking about my own childhood school years:
Smiling faces? Not for long! See how that nun is smiling? She knows!
September 1957. It was now time for school. Grade one. I was a smart young lad back then for I skipped Kindergarten. What kind of name is that anyway, Kindergarten? Jimmy-mum and I would go together: walk to school, and keep each other company all the way and on the way. It was about a mile and a half to walk, normally taking a shortcut through a huge hydro-field. I can still remember that walk. Stay on the left side of the road, face traffic, look both ways, cut across the street, quickly, then walk through the tall long grass of the hydro field. That field’s tall soft early autumn grass seemed to undulate in the light breeze, like an ocean of late summer’s tall grass. Each long and tenuous swell appearing to a young fellow like me as an enormous mountain barrier or a sea swell that had to be climbed or sailed across. Down hill and dale we would go, through valley and trough, then up to the next crest, then to the next and to the next, finally portaging across some wild and raging river until alas, back to the reality of the school yard where I would be confined to for the next seven years.
Catholic grade school: grades 1 through 8. No middle school, no junior high or whatever they feel inclined to call these things these days. To us kids it made no difference. And to an imaginative lad school was school. And it sucked. And the Catholic Schools really, really sucked because in addition to all of the scholarly stuff we also had to contend with the wrath of God disguised in long flowing black robes and habits. Sister this and sister that. Father this and father that. Adapt quickly and quietly and quickly and quietly we did for it soon became apparent that it was us against them. For that reason alone our time in the Catholic School system was the very best of times as well as the very worst of times. At its worse? A residential school for white Anglo – Saxon boys and girls. At its best? It was a great deal of fun and a whole lot of laughs for it was us against them for the next seven years. Seven years, as I skipped a grade for being the smart ass that I was back in those days. Then again the Catholic Separate School System had a mandate and a mission to spit out as many good catholic boys and girls on society as fast as was heavenly possible.
They had lay teachers there as well. Some were great, others not so much. Ms McFayden, grade seven, a closet chain smoker. Mr Bowner: a superb, artistically inclined grade six teacher. There was Ms Tupper, grade three; Ms Kellerer, grades four and five; Ms Raddigan, grade eight, Radiator in our vernacular. Sister Theresa, grade one. Grade two – I can’t remember.
Sweet innocent Sister Theresa. We all loved her. Beatific: possessing an angelic soft hewn face with saintly features. She was young and she was beautiful. And a nun at that! Thinking back, what a waste. But at that time she made a lasting religious impression on our impressionable minds. In today’s world she would have been our elementary school “Ying.” And with all things “Ying” there had to be a “Yang” and in this case our elementary school “Yang” turned out to be Sister Mary Bernice…”Yang.” Burly, tough as nails, she wore polished black ankle height sea boots with that black habit of hers. Her gait was that of a sailor who was not yet accustomed to the stability of dry land. She possessed a jaunt, more like a saunter, not unlike Charlie Chaplin, all the while twirling a baton or strap that we would become very familiar with soon enough. She was so intimidating that even the parish priests took notice. Her face was non descriptive really as it was framed by that white veil of nunnery. I think her hair was black, slightly graying at the temples. I know this because her temples seemed to bulge out whenever she was laying out the wrath of our heavenly father across the palms of our earthly hands.
Like her gait she yelled like a sailor: a real Chief Boatswains Mate or Buffer in the naval vernacular. Her wrath came down unexpectantly and unrepentantly with the sure fired will of an archangel, but no St Michaela here! She had two main weapons in her arsenal to keep us all in line. Her hands, left or right, it didn’t matter, came across one’s face totally and entirely out of the heavenly blue like some religious and corporal stealth attack. Just like that: whack, whack, and more whack, followed by the incessant burning of the cheeks and ringing in the ears. Not tinnitus mind you for that would come later but a toned deaf ringing with each whack of those unflappable calloused palms or the gnarly backs of her hands. With years of experience under her black habit she learned to cup her hands ever so slightly and in such a way that with each open palmed whacked imprint her fingers would somehow claw their way across one’s face in such a manner that they seemed to draw one’s cheek and face upward toward heaven, as if in a corporal raptured state of mind waiting for and begging for heavenly intervention. To be fair to her she was an equal opportunity inquisitor. The girls got it too. And their faces? Wow. Pink and as pink as pure virginity could be but stained with the tracks of their tears. Such tears they were: welling up and falling down and across those pearly, pretty and innocent faces.
Us lads, we chuckled.
Song of the day:
Don’t become indoctrinated. Maintain your ability to think critically. Stay away from University.
From an earlier post: Getting ready for the Voie de Vezelay
Barrel Jumping:
“Barrel Jumping” used to be an accredited winter sport, both amateur and professional. It was never a winter Olympic event but it should have been. I remember watching it on the Wide World of Sport TV program: that late Saturday afternoon stalwart of sports, “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” which I believe is no longer a fan favourite being replaced by the mundane and hyped Monday Night Football. Barrel Jumping was a real man’s sport, sort of like winter’s version of the “High Jump and Long Jump” combined and all rolled into one event except that on completing the leap the competitor either landed squarely on his blades on the ice in triumphant jubilation or crash mercilessly, convulsively, into the barrels themselves. With hope upon hope, he tripped himself up after his leap into space falling on to his backside then sliding into the boards of the rink or snow bank. Unlike the “High Jump” there were no padded landing zones to break the skaters fall just the hard cold ice zone to break ones legs, one’s knees, ankles or pride. Concussions seemed to top the list as well. Probably a good thing as the more one became concussed the braver one became in this sport. It was like their badge of honour. It was not the Sport of Kings but rather the sport of Dentists, Orthodontists, Chiropractors and Idiots.
The premise being that, in spite of idiocy and insanity, it was all about jumping over plastic barrels on skates, but on ice. The more barrels that were cleared the more adventurous and dangerous it became. It was very popular in the Northern States, particularly New York State around the Lake Placid area; Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine plus the backwoods of Quebec and parts of northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan Canada. It was a hugely popular and well followed event. We all had our own barrel jumping heroes.
The competitor, or idiot on skates, would circle the barrels like some sort of displaced matador insanely focused on the barrels themselves that were racked side by side on the ice. Starting with one barrel the excitement and suspense of the fans grew exponentially as the number of barrels increased: two, three, five, eight, ten and on and on it went until there was only one man left standing, or sliding into the boards. The crowds would cheer as each participant cleared the barrels in flight and cheered even louder if one came crashing down into one of the barrels. The cacophony of oooos, aaaahs and groans were the real metric of approval. Scoring was dependant upon the competitor’s misstep and choreographed mishap, which was the real essence that made this event so compelling from a spectator’s perspective. With each subsequent jump the competitors would try and outdo one another for the admiration and adulation of the crowds. Some would twirl, some would spin and some would jump like a drunken figure skater before building up the speed over distance that was necessary to clear the barrels. 10, 20, sometimes 30 miles per hour they could muster, their leg muscles bulging with every stride, their arms flinging in a sideways motion as if giving flight like an airplane or like the birdbrains that they were. The jumper must leap about 6 or seven feet in the air with a forward projection if he has any hope of clearing the barrels.
The competitor must have agility, speed and guts and be intellectually challenged if he is to be successful in this sport. Some would just leap and fall without the grace or agility of a showman. Others would appear to be running in thin air. Their legs, arms and skates pumping like the madmen that they were while others had the audacity and fool’s courage to project themselves horizontally over the barrels once in the air, like a human cannonball or like superman in flight with their arms outstretched dead ahead only to come crashing down to earth headlong into the barrelled mass. These guys were a crowd favourite. In essence the sport of barrel jumping was never really about clearing the barrels but about the chaotic showmanship of the competitors and their relationship with the barrels themselves as they went flying in all directions.
Unfortunately Barrel Jumping never became an Olympic sport. Instead we have Rhythmic Gymnastics!
“It was too brutal of a sport” a commentator was heard to say. “No one ever made it as all the competitors seemed to fall on their backsides.
Can’t wait to get started. But first to the Netherlands to see my wife’s family and friends. Marijke passed last December 8th.
