Bad Jobs and the Women who Love Them

Bad Jobs and the Women who Love Them
My first paying job was working at my father’s stamp and coin shop in the Minolta Tower in Niagara Falls, Ontario. This was a summer gig that involved selling stamp and coin sets to busloads of tourists. It’s never a good idea to work for a family member, as the lines get pretty fuzzy.

I, for one, couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have a day off on ten minutes notice to go to the beach with friends. My father had a passion for stamps and coins--you’ve heard of these people but rarely do you see it in action. This man could spot a worthless stamp from across the room and his talents were largely wasted on the tourists that wandered by the display case looking for something with a beaver, the falls or rock candy. I was absolutely useless. I just didn’t have that gene that gets fired up over a mint condition stamp from Bulgaria. When the manager of the aquarium approached me to take over the job of Master of Ceremonies of the water ballet show, I leapt at the chance. As a recent graduate of the National Ballet School, this seemed like a natural career choice. I was an artist after all.
My dad swallowed his pride and reluctantly wished me well as I walked across the hall to the aquarium.

I was thrown right into a rigorous schedule reminiscent of the old MGM soundstages. For eight shows a day the swimming ballet girls would perform as I stood at a podium in a leotard and flowing skirt, microphone in hand drawing attention to awe-inspiring, imaginatively-named feats such as the dolphin chain. We followed a tight script. The girls swam and mimed (try that sometime) as I waxed on about the tragic fate of a soldier during the Mexican Revolution, set to the music of ABBA’s “Fernando”. The crowd sat mesmerized, or perhaps baffled. It was usually made up of Japanese tourists who didn’t speak a lick of English. It was a magical summer. I had my first real relationship, lasting a little over three weeks.
I learned the art of drinking vodka and orange juice while walking over the slippery rocks by the Maid of the Mist in the pitch dark. I swam at Dufferin Islands at 3:00am. All to the soundtrack of Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town”(talk about dramatic foreshadowing!). But it was still the heady days of early tourist season; I was eighteen, had a good perm, great tan, friends by the truckload and felt like a million bucks.

In between shows I’d sneak off for a tropical cocktail with my new boyfriend. He was a budding alcoholic whose family worked in upper management.
I was aiming high but something about his acne scarred face and surly personality was irresistible to me. At the age of twenty-two, Tom was an older recently divorced man/child. He had a fine tuned, "I don’t give a shit" outlook on life that can only come from experiencing life’s hard knocks. After years surrounded by men in tights, this was exactly what the doctor ordered. He drove one of those monster trucks that you had to literally take a flying run to jump into. We drove too fast, stayed out too late and basically did everything I’d never done at the National Ballet School. We were mad for each other and the fact that he stuck around even after I puked my guts out during my first foray into cross border late night drinking, told me that this was the real deal.

My father could barely speak he was so mortified. My mother would off-handedly say, “Should I leave the door unlocked tonight or do you have other plans?” This was accompanied by a meaningful smirk that quite frankly made me reconsider my estimation of Mary Fagan. Perhaps she had simply thrown in the towel on me but I sensed a touch of envy in her delivery. Niagara was intoxicating, the mist from the falls was intoxicating, the Waltzing Waters were at their prime and they hadn’t yet bull-dozed the Burning Springs Wax Museum.But as I soon learned… all good things eventually turn to shit. As the summer wore on the girls got cranky and waterlogged. Their hair having been dunked in heavily chlorinated water eight times a day had the texture of a bleached brillo pad.

Sensing the tension, I tried to lighten the atmosphere one day by actually presenting a surprise guest artist to the show. After several tequila sunrises, I convinced a pathologically shy maintenance guy named Marty to make an appearance as the long lost Fernando complete with ketchup soaked improvised uniform.
Marty didn’t know how to swim so I plunked him in an inner-tube told him to play dead and pushed him out to the middle of the pool while the girls were half-heartedly dolphin chaining underwater. There was slight pandemonium as they surfaced, crashing into the tube floating Fernando while frantically trying to stay in character.

Though it was a huge crowd pleaser with the tourists I was told by the management to cut out the re-choreographing of the show immediately. The swimmers started developing rashes and pink eye. They would dip their toes in the water and refuse to perform if they felt the temperature wasn’t spot on. As summer drew to an end, the water ballerina’s that began the season so luminous were now more like bitter, exhausted drowning rats. Tempers flared between artists and management as they so often do and by the end of the summer the management decided real dolphins were far less trouble.

As the late August nights turned crisp, Tom dumped me for a neighbour of his that he felt behaved more maturely. Apparently, I was still operating on the “I know you are but what am I?” level of relationships.As I stood watching my 80th Waltzing Waters show, I noticed the paint was chipping on the back wall. Things were definitely starting to go south. It was time to cut my losses and head back to the city to swim in the Big Pool where dance didn’t follow a literal script and definitely didn’t rely on Abba to supply the narration.

After a particularly contentious day with the swimmers, the show was abruptly cancelled and we all went back to our lives bruised, waterlogged but a little wiser. The lessons of a first job, we carry throughout our lives and I generously share the credo that this particular post offered.

1. Animals will always be more reasonable than humans and tend to stick to a
contract

2. Alcohol, chlorine and hot sun are a dangerous combination

3. The stamp and coin business may not seem sexy but offers a job security that show business can’t and won’t

4. Never underestimate the power of a good hair conditioner.

How I Lost My Cool

How I Lost My Cool

I lived in Toronto for years, working for a television station called Citytv and never going beyond the borders of St.Clair to King and Beaches to Bathurst. Mine was the world of restaurants, taxicabs, fancy coffee and lots of after work cocktails.

I never saved a cent and didn’t care, had my own one bedroom apartment and spent 98 percent of my time analyzing me, me and more me. I had previously spent years as an independent modern dancer, a license to print money if I ever saw one and after deciding it was time to put my twenty seven year old bones out to pasture I took a job at the uber cool Citytv in the heart of Queen St. West. The fact I had no experience didn’t concern them a bit. My interview for the position of film editor went something like this,

Man- Do you have any experience in editing or television?

Me- Well, …no.

Man- what have you been working at?

Me- Modern dancing and bartending.

Man- where did you go to school?

Me- National Ballet School.

Man- what degree does that give you?

Me- A PHD in mind-fuck.

Man- can you start training on Monday?

Me- Yes

So began my illustrious career. I learned my craft quickly and started to set little challenges for myself like seeing how much Alan Alda I could cut out of Mash and still have some semblance of storyline intact.

You try it, not as easy as it sounds. Drinking at lunch was not only accepted but expected and dating anyone outside of work was unthinkable. Fishing from the company dock? No problemo. Work was a playground filled with fun cool people, not so fun cool people, not so cool fun people and tumultuous on air personalities. It was the era of big hair and screwing the pooch. I was in heaven. I was making up for lost time after years of psycho discipline and self-denial; I was there for the taking. I made good friends and instant co-conspirators. I found my posse of like- minded girlfriends and there was no stopping us.

We cemented our kinship by developing a series of games to get us through the work week like taking current affair stories and casting them as a “Movie of the Week” with our co- workers in lead roles. Or reversely taking B-list celebrities and casting them as co-workers. Try it, it’s amazing how much time it shaves off a work day.

Friday nights might find us drinking wine, watching the real estate channel while playing drinking and dialing. This of course could only be played before the days of call display. We commiserated over the series of lousy bastards we dated, smoked, quipped and mused. Option 2 , hours in the local pub directly across from work where co-workers converged to drink, beef, smoke, seduce, regret, speculate and talk a truck load of trash.

Years passed in this maze of gluttony until I approached the age where you either settle down, have a child or you don’t. There comes a time when you have to either leave Citytv or become a fifty-year old wandering the halls of Much Music looking like the parent of new employees or in some cases actually being the parent of a new employee. I decided to settle and made the appropriate changes to do so though now in retrospect, wandering the halls of MM doesn’t look so bad.

This involved finding a steady relationship, buying a house, getting a dog (a valuable precursor to parenthood) having a baby and a year later getting married. Some people choose a different order but I found this worked best for me. As I was strolling through my neighborhood on Queen St. East with my newborn, a life-changing event occurred. It was a typical day, dodging the neighborhood mascots, Pit Bulls and Rottweiler’s. As I strolled along, minding my own business, a man swerved past me and said “Hey baby, hey baby, hey baby” Normally I would welcome this sort of attention especially after being housebound with a baby locked to my breast for the past eight weeks. But this particular day, I wasn’t in the mood for a drooling drunk come on and told him politely to piss off.

He then followed me for three blocks calling me a bitch and asking me who I thought I was. How quickly the tables turn. It was then I realized enough was enough and went home to call my future husband and announce we were moving out of town as soon as possible. I shared my decision with my family who chuckled knowingly in a “yeah right” kind of way. My friends assumed it was some kind of attention getting ploy or new mother hormonal thing that would pass as soon as I could fit into my jeans again. I was dead serious. No more line-ups, mean dogs, packed streetcars, minimalist restaurants, eight-dollar sandwiches for me. We moved an hour north of Toronto to a little known mecca called Barrie. Surrounded by Lake Simcoe it had a quaint downtown, picturesque waterfront and cheapo real estate. We now had a huge backyard, detached 3-bedroom Century home and a driveway all for way less than we paid for a hovel in the city. It also had Costco, Home Depot, and every other franchise that has become the death of small town Ontario. To make matters worse, five minutes after we arrived, Barrie was coined the “fastest growing city in Canada.” It took me years to make the leap to small town living that I’d always craved and I land in the fastest growing city in Canada. I justified this move by the fact that Chum had another station in Barrie so it would be a breeze to transfer to a smaller version of Citytv. Not so. I did cover a six month maternity position at the local station and to my surprise discovered an eighties time warp where not only the staff hadn’t changed in twenty years, but ideas hadn’t changed in twenty years and they were suspicious to say the least of anyone coming in from the city.

People that actually spoke to me seemed to have a look in their eye that said ,“We’re on to you” Or perhaps they were just on to me. I may as well have been working at the Bank of Montreal for the creative energy that flowed through the building. Not that I blame them, forced to work in a bunker shaped building on top of a hill surrounded by new subdivisions. Besides, people hung on to their jobs like dogs to bones and there was virtually no turn over so the chance of employment there was non-existent. Note to self… a little research into the new city you plan to move to never hurts.

Still my friends in the city were only an hour away and it was a novelty for them to come up on weekends, sit in my huge backyard and drink in a different location. This wore off fairly soon and I started to resort to threats and bribery to entice weekend visitors.

Four years later, I made a couple friends… lost a couple friends. I started lining up at Tim Horton’s drive thru like the rest of the residents, bought a Costco membership and didn’t even blink when a second Walmart opened in the fastest growing city in Canada. Sweatpants became acceptable shopping wear and I no longer wore make-up unless I was going to work or a social event. In other words, rarely. Occasional outings to a Keg or Jack Astors started feeling like special occasions; I no longer occurred to me to make smarty-pants comments when the waiter wrote his name in crayon on the tablecloth. I started taking yoga classes at the community center taught by a local musical theater actress. She not only taught using a head microphone but talked incessantly, announcing her upcoming appearances in Jesus Christ Superstar while the class tried to find their inner being. The old me would have had a festival with that one but the new me mentally took note of the ticket prices.

On my rare trips to the city I’d marvel at how dressed up people were and how late they ate dinner. Barrie restaurants are packed at 5:30 pm, I no longer could hold out for the trendy 8:30 sitting. Without even realizing it, I was losing my cool. It all hit full force while visiting a friend in the Bloor West Village. She had a few friends and neighbors over and we drank wine as they talked of Revue cinemas and subtly name dropped while referencing the fascinating career tracks they had taken. We spoke of the decline of civilization largely due to the influx of reality television. I nodded in agreement, not daring to confess that I’ve watched every incarnation of Big Brother and the incomparable Temptation Island. I slowly started to pick up on the fact that no one had the slightest interest in what I did. It was that obvious.

A guest began talking about how useful a coffee holder made specifically for bike handles would be and how he should approach Tim Horton’s about this idea. Another guest immediately piped in with “ I hardly think Tim Horton’s is the crowd you’d see riding bicycles through the city, you’d have to talk to Starbucks for that idea”. We all laughed and she looked me straight in the eye and said,“Sorry if I stepped on any toes” Just like that. Sorry if I stepped on any toes. There was no one sitting even remotely close to me so the implication was unmistakable. Even though I had carefully chosen my outfit to appear careless yet put together, I had Tim Horton’s written all over me.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a fog as I couldn’t recover from that simple sentence “ Sorry if I stepped on any toes” I got into my car to head back to the fastest growing city in Canada, the floor of my car littered with Timmy Ho empties and took a good hard look at what I had become. I had lost my cool in a big way and once it’s gone you can’t just summon it back. And how long can you really remain cool unless your name is Leonard Cohen? I’m not sure I could turn back if I wanted to. A whole new world had opened up involving newspaper inserts, parkas, large unattractive footwear that cuts through mountains of snow and an HBC card. I have bought furniture at a grocery store and my toilet paper comes in Club Packs of twenty-four. I drove everywhere, including my son’s school, which is one block away.

I developed a rarely discussed condition called Denialarexia. This is when you are actually fat but look in the mirror and see a thin person. Symptoms include confusion when sales clerks lead you to the plus sizes, waistbands on all pants and a delusion that after four glasses of wine, nothing has calories. I had a ten-minute conversation the other day comparing outlet malls in different cities. Yes, I’m afraid I’m a goner.

Some years have passed since my sojourn in Barrie and I have upgraded to the Niagara Region. Outwardly, cooler for sure. The Region, a tourist mecca with world class theatre, casinos, spectacular landscape and the “you can’t walk fifty paces without kicking a wine bottle” bonus. Cross border shopping, tender fruits, bike paths and golf courses a plenty. I haven’t even mentioned the “Falls” don’t even have to because I am filling the list with so many other sophistications that it seems redundant. I can barely stand my good fortune and friends now drip with envy when I reveal my new locale.

But, it’s a bit like Dorothy when she discovers the wizard behind the curtain. Sure it looks good from the outside but wander a bit infield and things begin to blur. My kid is considered odd because he hates sports; I’m apparently the only single woman of my age in the entire Region. I attended a modern dance show last weekend (by myself of course) and I and the other 8 people in attendance enjoyed it immensely. I took myself out for a glass of wine afterwards to discuss the performance in more detail. When you sit in a bar/restaurant by yourself in a city, you are suave, when you sit in a bar/restaurant in a small town you are a cougar. My doctor thinks I’m insane and kids call each other faggots. You see, I love small towns they just don’t love me back. So I’m thinking it may be time to return to the dirty, stinkin, “Queen St. thinks it’s tough” city. At least when you’re being an asshole in Toronto, chances are pretty good there is an even bigger asshole standing 3 ft. away from you so it is deflected.

I’ve started sneaking back in once a week or so to test the waters. Don’t stay too long, just take a few meetings, wander the streets until I start feeling obvious and then get the hell out. My old Citytv cohorts and I have reconnected on facebook and are now quipping online like the good old days. We met for a reunion recently and the good news is I’m not the only one who has aged and there are actually single people of my era out there in the world. I took myself out to dinner and it didn’t raise an eyebrow, in fact there were 4 or 5 other like- minded diners. We could have all joined tables and had a dinner party but the point is we didn’t have to. I have recently made it until 10pm before someone gave me a questioning glance but the fact that I didn’t give a shit makes me think I’m almost ready. But make no mistake, when I return it will be with my old friends Tim Horton and the Real Housewives of NY, NJ, Atlanta and Orange County.

The Part about Death

The Part about Death

I sat anxiously waiting for the Chrysler New Yorker to turn down my street. Though my father still had his license, the re-test at 84 years of age was only a written test which didn’t help much when he peeled out of driveways without looking behind him or fell asleep at the wheel. But here it was, hurling down my tiny dead-end street, my mother holding the dashboard for dear life. Though they now lived only 26 minutes away, it was still a great relief to see them arrive in one or two pieces.

They were coming to inspect my new rented cottage; my place of landing after my marriage went south. I had originally arrived at their house with my seven year old son and two complicated poodles but after 3 weeks of him asking where I was going and when would I be back I felt like I had reverted to being a 14 yr. old and started acting accordingly. My mother finally said, “Vickie, if you don’t find your own place you are going to lose your mind” Which translated meant, Vickie, if you don’t find your own place, we are going to lose our minds. Still, I would miss our long standing morning ritual of Dad poking me in the arm and asking me if I wanted a fat lip as I grumpily tried to pour a coffee.

After inspecting the windows and doors, he sat down and said “I think this is okay, I think you and my boy will be okay here” He then gave my son Jack his customary sucker and pack of gum. When Jack was two months old, I caught Dad just in time as he was feeding him a piece of melba toast lathered in whip cream. My father rarely left the house without his pockets filled with gum and candy just in case a child happened to cross his path. I used to love walking down our street with him as he tossed packs of gum to kids playing in their yards. Al Fagan, the King of Maranda Street.

It was a couple weeks later when they returned for Thanksgiving dinner that I noticed things weren’t right. After boasting about how he had dropped 30 pounds simply by eating whole wheat Italian bread instead of his favourite white Italian bread, I noticed he wasn’t really eating much of anything and was having difficulty breathing. In fact his lips were blue in colour and he had to leave the table to go sit in an armchair and fall asleep. I asked if he had seen his doctor lately and he responded that he had an MRI scheduled in a few months, not to worry.

24 hours later after “ratting him out to his doctor” we sat in the emergency department of the Greater Niagara General Hospital or as I refer to it the “Where’s the fire?” department waiting an interminable eight hours for him to be admitted for tests.

While feeling like shit, Dad still embarked on setting the tone by charming the nurses with compliments, pranks and his famous don’t mind me demeanour that had people running in circles to help him. While visiting my house a few years back he actually got up, got dressed and waited politely for me to wake up so I could take him to the hospital as he was having a heart attack. Now two years later, I left him that night with that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you know this will be the one that you aren’t going to get away with.

The next morning, I sat with my mother listening to their family physician explain that between the heart failure, aneurism and stage four lung cancer, he indeed wasn’t going to get away with it this time. She gave him 3 months with the aim to keep him as comfortable as possible. I had been dreading this moment pretty much since I was ten years old and hearing it was honestly even worse than I had ever imagined it would be. My mother, who would rather be hit by a bus than admit she was hard of hearing, politely nodded and waited until we were outside to say, “I know it was bad by the look on your face but I didn’t hear a thing she said” After she digested the information, she took a minute and said, “Well, I still want to go to Zellers for the yarn sale.” Mom was an Olympian at denial. If she didn’t acknowledge it, somehow it wasn’t really happening or maybe it was the old school etiquette that no emotion should ever be displayed in public or even to immediate family. That was secured for the wee hours of the night when you were on your own to grieve, rage and wallow. As that rule never really took hold with me, I wandered the aisles of Zellers with tears streaming down my face as nervous shoppers swerved out of my way. As I called each of my brothers, I realized we had no emotional training for this. This was one of the benchmark discussions we would experience in our lives and we had never even said I love you to each other. Too late to change all that now, we discussed the business at hand with a matter of fact distance to the details that were too horrible for words.

My mother’s denial was extended to hospital visits. She hated them and would do anything to avoid it. I think the reality of seeing my father in a weakened state was more than she could bear. Years before when I had called her to tell her dad was having a heart attack and to get a ride down to the hospital, she paused before asking, “ Do I really have to? “ It wasn’t that she was completely heartless; she just didn’t have the capability to look it in the eye.

Dad wasn’t much better, though the doctor assured us she had been in to give him the news, when we went in afterwards the whole messy business was not referred to at all. In fact over the weeks, I would hear him telling friends that they just had to get to the bottom of it and figure out what was wrong. “What really buffalos me” I’d hear him begin as if this was merely a math problem that had to be mastered.

I finally had to pull the doctor aside and ask if he had understood what she was telling him. Of course he had, but again, if he pretended that he thought there was some hope it might alleviate the discomfort of people getting sloppy about it.

So we tiptoed around the big fat elephant in the hospital room and focussed on breezy conversations that wouldn’t bring anybody down. My father was busy on the phone making sure Louis the Greek could pick up his cheese order for the Kiwanis that was left in his trunk before it went bad and I busied myself organizing oxygen and at home nursing visits so we could get him the hell out of there for as long as possible.

Louis or “The Greek” as dad called him was a restaurateur that Dad had befriended 40 odd years ago when he immigrated to Canada. Dad loved helping immigrants. As a Customs Officer, he knew his way around landing in Canada and when Louis was establishing his restaurant “The Golden Steer” not to be confused with “The Flaming Steer” (owned by his cousin) Dad spent many hours volunteering as maître d. Their friendship flourished to include regular fishing trips and boisterous arguments conducted in half English, half Greek. Growing up, I remember feasts at the Steer after fruitful hunting trips where Louis would try to get me to eat duck tongue. And after my 4 times weekly ballet classes, my dad and I would go to the Steer for a heaping plate of French fries covered in ketchup, vinegar and gravy. Louis would grab my chin and say, “ Beekie, you wanna be da ballabina?” This french fry ritual along with other shared delicacies like creamed onions and white bread with gravy were later de-programmed out of me when I became a student at the National Ballet school. Dad just never cottoned on to the dancer/starvation thing.

When we got Dad settled at home, he busied himself with sorting out his stamp and coin collection of 50 years, holding meetings for the Kiwanis, Boys and Girls Club, the Conservative Party and various other charities that he helped out. He was one of those guys that were constantly running around doing stuff, after his retirement from Canada Customs and shopkeeper of 2 stamp and coin stores, he threw all his energy into volunteer work with a fervour that exhausted me and to this day leaves me feeling guilty that I haven’t carried the torch. So why would he now let a little stage four cancer and his ever present oxygen machine get in the way? My mother was much subtler in her philanthropic endeavours. She would sit at home and knit baby clothes for pre-mature babies or sweaters that my sister in law would take to Guatemala. She also had a passion for crocheted villages which she donated to church bazars. We kept one which became our yearly Christmas montage. A small village with a mirror ice rink in the middle surrounded by white cotton baton. Unfortunately the citizens of the village only came in summer attire so we had a winter wonderland scene with a family gamely waving to their neighbours dressed in shorts and t-shirts. I personally think she hit her peak when she crocheted a Winnebago complete with a microwave.

Being unemployed, I had the luxury of coming by daily to check on him, do grocery shopping and take my mother to her appointments as she had never learned to drive. I would sometimes bring my poodles to visit so he could play shake a paw with my dog Ray. Dad and my dogs had a love affair that frankly was cemented when he started making them their own custom hamburgers. Over the years when I would be getting into the car after a visit, I had to factor an extra 20 minutes for my Dad to repeatedly say “Nice to see you Ray” as Ray would present his paw for a hearty nice to see you too shake. It never got old. My mother would finally break it up with an exasperated, “Oh Al, knock it off, the dog doesn’t know what you’re talking about” If Ray tried to win her over with the same trick, she would deadpan, “I don’t do that” At five foot one, with a sweet bird like voice, my mother caught you off guard. You really had to listen to get the full impact of her barbs. She walked a fine line between new-born kitten and barracuda. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the phrase, you can’t judge a book by its cover was created to describe Mary Fagan.

As the painkillers increased, Dad began to sleep more though his sleep took on a life of its own. I would watch as he frantically sorted stamps with the blanket or had a long discussion with his long dead father about going to the store. It didn’t look like such a bad place to be. Awake, life became more frustrating as his food intake was down to cans of Ensure with vanilla ice cream added in. He became anxious with a need to wrap up the details of his world and make sure we would all be able to carry on as if nothing had happened when he was gone. As I sat with him one afternoon, he said, “Your mom, how’s it going to work?” “You know, groceries and appointments and all that, how’s it going to work?” He calmed when I assured him I wasn’t going to leave her stranded.

One evening when I came over to watch him while my mother went out for a well needed break to play bridge; he became agitated, saying I shouldn’t have to be over there looking after him. It wasn’t right! I got teary and said, “Dad, I can’t make you better. This is the only thing I can do for you and you have to let me do it, I need to do it” He seemed to understand that angle and I can’t tell you how awkward yet oddly exhilarating it was to basically say- it’s not all about you. The irony is that this is the kind of situation where you really need your parents the most. This is when you want to lie in a rolled up ball on the floor and ask them to make it go away.

As his 85th birthday approached, I agonized over what to do. What do you get a man who has 10 weeks or so to live? When I decided on a sensible pair of slippers, my mother, always the pragmatic one advised, “Get the cheap ones, he’s not going to be wearing them for long.”

Shortly after his birthday which he basically slept through, he was admitted back to the hospital after he started falling. I think we all knew he wouldn’t be coming home again but pretended otherwise. He had a pretty steady stream of visitors which ran the gamut from local politicians to his mechanic, the 12 year old boy down the street, Greek waiters, and old cronies from various walks of life. You get a really clear picture of the breadth of a person’s life when you see who comes through the hospital door at visiting hour. One afternoon as he slept, one of his former colleagues, a man in his eighties talked to me about the integrity of Al Fagan. He told me about a time years before when my father couldn’t actively campaign for anyone due to his job on Customs, he would sit quietly at the back and staple campaign signs together. A former mayor coined him the King maker, always working relentlessly behind the scenes. I remembered when I worked for a television station in Toronto; he would enlist me to make copies of movies so he could take them down to the children’s ward at the local hospital, the same one he lay in now. As this former colleague talked of my father’s reliability, he started to get misty and in a moment of frustration and embarrassment exclaimed, “Oh damn, I’m on Paxil, I’m not supposed to get emotional.”

One day I walked into his room to find him in a traumatized state, gasping for air. I ran for help and an hour later it was confirmed that he had had a heart attack. My mother was at home with my son and my brothers all lived out of town. I stayed late into the night until my father started to get upset that I wasn’t at home with my son. Then I hid in an adjacent room that the nurses provided so I could pretend that I had gone home. The nurse on duty asked me for instructions for his wishes on resuscitation as it was quite possible he wouldn’t make it through the night. The next day he awoke to find his entire family surrounding his bed. He took it in for a moment and said, “What the hell is everyone doing here?” These kinds of false alarms became hard to cover up. Our murmurings about how we all just happened to be in the neighbourhood, brothers, sisters in laws and grandchildren included were fairly transparent but again, how do you delicately say we were pretty sure you were going to pop your clogs.

As the weeks progressed, I started to become anxious about packing it all in. Where was that movie moment when you tell your loved one all that they have meant to you, those words that will sum it up? How the hell were you supposed to say goodbye? A couple of times I would start to tell him what a great father he was and what a good man he was but he would immediately brush it off with a “ Let’s not talk about that!” Let’s not talk about that? What are we waiting for?? My mother who had surrendered and was now making daily visits summed it up nicely one day. She looked at my father and said, “Well Al, I might as well ask you now as later, do you want to be buried or cremated?” “Jesus, Mary, I don’t know!” he responded. I felt it was time to borrow a line from Bob Hope and asked “Do you want us to surprise you?” Yes, he said, surprise me. Dad made fast friends with a rotation of roommates. Within hours, he would be on first name basis exchanging political views and family anecdotes. I’d come in with a newspaper or some mail for him and he would say things like, “She’s a good girl” or “if you ever see my daughter bending over, kick her in the ass. She’s a Liberal”

The Christmas season was upon us, a particularly poignant time of year at the best of times. My dad rivalled any six year old in his enthusiasm for Christmas. By Christmas Eve, he would be worked into such a frenzy of excitement we often ended up opening our presents that night. I flashed back to many years of holiday tradition where we would start the evening with bacon and eggs and then get ready for our next door neighbours “The Sopers” to arrive for festivities which included cocktails and platters of cheese cubes, salami, crackers, pickles and homemade Christmas pastries. Actually, they were homemade pastry that my mother commissioned Mrs. Soper to make but they were still made in someone’s home. We would sit with the Soper family for a couple hours until it was time to put our coats and boots on and move the party over to the Soper’s house next door where Mrs. Soper would serve up the exact same snack tray and pastries that we had just consumed. I loved this tradition, it made absolutely no sense and I loved it.

I thought of the year I brought home my 3 week old son on Christmas Eve. Dad stared at him sleeping and said “I wonder what you will grow up to be like?” When I was having difficulty breast feeding and started crying in frustration, Dad advised, “ Honey, you just have to toughen up those nipples!” There was a moment of shock as we both processed that this was hands down the most awkward conversation we had ever had. But he was right. I thought of a story my mother had told me years before. My parents had lost their first child when she was 4 months old. The doctor prescribed medication for my mother to dry up her breast milk and for my father, a sedative to help him make it through the initial days of grief. Of course, they got their medication mixed up so my father had extremely dry nipples and my mother sat leaking milk completely stoned. We used to call them the “Mary and Al Show” and I would vow that after they passed on, I would open the family home as a museum and give guided tours highlighting the stack of Harlequin Romance novels stacked by my mother’s lazy boy recliner or the collection of cases of Tomato soup my father kept in the basement in case we found ourselves under siege and unable to leave the house for months, finishing off with the 52 margarine containers that sat in the fridge, a savings tip so not to waste money on Tupperware. “You’re full of malarky!” Dad would say.

Now three weeks before Christmas, he was refusing even a poinsettia though his hospital window sill was filled with seasonal cards. A nurse came in taking pre-orders for Christmas dinner and Dad perked up and asked if it was real turkey. “Yes it is, with all the trimmings” replied the nurse. “Well in that case, sign me up!” Dad said. I didn’t dare point out that he hadn’t had any solid food for about 2 months at this point and the idea of him digging into a full holiday meal was pretty optimistic.

The doctor called me soon after that to tell me he was declining at a rapid pace and there wasn’t any chance we would be taking him home. She had spoken to him about it that morning. When we went in to see him that day, he told my mother and me that he wanted us to use his tickets to a holiday fundraiser lunch at the Casino. “I don’t think I’m up to it this year” is how he put it.

I took a deep breath waiting for my mother to state the obvious but thankfully, she let this one go with a knowing smirk.

He then told us that he had decided to stay in the hospital as he didn’t want to burden Mom at home. I could feel her relief from across the room as she was terrified of him dying when she was home alone with him. Frankly, so was I so we went along with the pretence that this was his idea. Then in a moment that was as close to acceptance as I’d heard yet he said, “It’s time for the good Lord to take me home”

It was then that I realized it was time to let him go and as my sister in-law wisely advised me; let him know that it was okay to go. I left him and my mother alone to share the moment. From the hall, I could see them holding hands and talking closely. Later that evening, I came back and found him sleeping. I sat on the floor beside his bed and put my head down and wept. A few minutes later, I felt a tapping on the top of my head and when I looked up, Dad said, “I love you too.”

This was it. This was our big moment and honestly there really wasn’t any more to say.

I brought my son in to the hospital, something we had avoided because Dad didn’t want Jack to remember him that way. But I felt he needed to say goodbye too. Dad woke up to see Jack standing beside his bed and gently put his hand on Jack’s cheek and simply said, “ My boy, my boy”

A week later, I was awoken at 3am by a call from the hospital telling me to come down with my mother as my father’s condition had changed. When we arrived, they told us he had gone peacefully somewhere between midnight and 3am, just how he would have wanted it, without fanfare.

They led us to a room where his body was and I was struck that he looked like he had frozen in mid thought. His eyes were half open, mouth was open and his hand looked like it was about to point at something. This was what he was looking at the exact moment his body stopped. I remember not recognizing the sounds of grief that were coming out of me. When I calmed, my mother and I sat holding hands and in the silence she leaned over and said, “Would you like a mint?”

Dawn was approaching as I gathered his belongings from the now empty room. I heard the sound of Christmas Carols playing on a radio from a room across the hall. The rest of the family made their way down to Niagara and we got down to business. We didn’t talk about what actually happened much, just busied ourselves with the task at hand. My brother the chef decided we all needed a good breakfast and concentrated on that. Mom told him we didn’t have any bacon but suggested he call Tony Zappatelli the owner of the Sheraton Fallsview. Tony was a long-time friend of my father’s and had told us as many people had to call him if there was anything at all we needed. I tried to imagine what that conversation would sound like- “Good morning Tony, Dad died this morning. Can you get some bacon over here?”

We buried Dad in a blizzard three days before Christmas. It was a beautiful Naval ceremony, Dad in uniform and an attendance of people from all walks of life. I was moved by the brigade of former Navy officers now in their eighties saluting him and putting poppies on his coffin. I sat under a tarp by the graveside as the Greeks placed coins on my father’s coffin and I watched as his surviving brothers said their goodbyes. I remember hating leaving him there on such a cold day. At the luncheon held at the local Legion, I felt the full impact of all the people he had touched in life. I heard Louis’s broken English regaling a group with tales of fishing trips gone wrong while a local MP spoke of his relentless energy and commitment to years of campaigns and later a former Customs colleague complaining about the horrible smell of Al frying green peppers and onions on midnight shifts. When a friend of mine approached my mother to express her condolences, Mom replied, “Well, what are you going to do?”

As the dust settled, one of my brothers started to sign off our phone conversations by saying, I love you. I would say it back. We were trying it on, it was sitting pretty well.

Within weeks, my mother erased all images of Dad from the house. She removed every stick of cheese which she despised and he loved from the fridge, got rid of his clothes and gave me the framed pictures of him that were in the house. She started planning for a move to a comfy retirement home, in fact had started reviewing the menus while she was killing time during our hospital visits.

I hated seeing her in our family home by herself, she had always been a bit of a loner but this was too much. The idea of seeing her in new surroundings didn’t sit much better with me but she was keen to get a new thing going and at least she wouldn’t have to worry about cooking for herself. Her weekly grocery lists were dwindling to things like, 3 bananas, a pack of jube jubes and a couple M&M frozen dinners. After Dad had been gone a month or so, I asked her if she was missing him and without missing a beat she replied, “No not really, he got very bossy at the end.” She told me she had found an old love letter from him that he wrote her while they were in the Navy and then added she planned to shred it with the other papers from the week.

I was thunderstruck as Mrs. Soper used to say. Is this what sixty years of marriage comes down to? Was she just putting in time for the last 20 or so? I wondered if it was like when you know someone is going to break up with you so you start looking for things to hate about them so you can break up with them first. After a complete life together, surely the waters ran deeper than that.

Six months after Dad’s death, Mom moved into her new digs. She was listless and quiet on moving day and when I left her there I wondered if this move was more than she had bargained for. Seven days later, my brother, sister-in law and I sat in a room at the Niagara General Hospital waiting for the doctor to give us the diagnosis from Mom’s admittance to the hospital, the same floor Dad had been on. It was a warm June morning and as we waited with a mounting sense of dread, I realized that someone across the hall was playing Christmas Carols.

After the doctor broke the news to Mom about her non-treatable cancer and 3 month deadline, she sat quietly for some time holding my hand. She looked up at me and said, “You’re having a really bad year.”

When we brought her mail to her later that day, she opened a package from the War Veterans. It was a medal honouring Dad for his time as an officer. As my sister in law Janet read her the letter we all fought back tears, astounded by the timing of its arrival. She proudly showed it to her roommate and put it on her bedside table where she could see it. Maybe it was just me but between the Christmas Carols and the timing of this medal I was starting to suspect he was here with us to help soften the blow.

Nine days later, I sat by her bedside on what would be the last night of her life. She was in and out of consciousness, restless and agitated urgently murmuring, “I have to go, I have to go”. As someone once advised me, cancer doesn’t play by the rules; we don’t all go quietly into the night. I looked in her purse to find an emery board. She was meticulous about her nails and they were now chipped and broken which she would have hated. Suddenly it seemed really important that I fix them before she died. In her purse, I found the letter from my father and as I started to read it to her, she calmed down. It began,

Mary,

I am feeling so blue without you…

Her breathing steadied and she very quietly said, “Al”

Karma Police

Who changed the rules for the Karma Police? After an emotional and financial pummeling of epic proportions, I have recently been forced to take a good long look at the inner workings of the Karma police. Gone are the days where O'Shaunessy and Reagan sat in a cruiser filled with Country Style Donut empties, waiting for their next shot of Bushmills.

Oh no,today's KP are a finely tuned swat team that spends their off hours bench pressing and catching up on cold cases just for shits and giggles.

Case in point. When I was in my twenties and indulged in damaging gossip, evil intentions or even mild bribery, my punishment fell into the area of a well placed zit on the eve of a date after a 4 month drought. At the time, yes this was beyond cruel but in retrospect not out of line. Today's KP have thrown down the gauntlet, even I dare to suggest are reading our minds.

So what are the boundaries? If you think an evil thought but don't say it out loud, shouldn't that be off limits? I've even tried prefacing my nagging thoughts with " Wouldn't it be awful if... ( fill in the blank something like Andrea got shingles)

And then there is the retroactive thing that has come into play. After an uncommonly peaceful run in the late 90's and early 2000's where I gave birth to my child, lived in a nice house and had a job I didn't hate, I was suddenly slammed in 2005 by the end of my marriage, relocation, unemployment and the death of both of my parents. Whah happen???

Well it seems a huge back log of my infractions had fallen behind a filing desk and when the KP was upgrading offices, they were discovered. Instead of saying bygones, they furiously scheduled overtime officers and went at it. So word of warning, if you are harbouring some bad behaviour and think the statute of limitations is up, think again. It's a whole new world out there baby and they have a quota!

Now it has been suggested to me that I should knuckle down and read as many positive thinking books as I can fit into my living room. Positive thinking, there's another dilemma. I try, I really try. I even read, Eckhart Tolle's " A New Earth" cover to cover with a minimum of impatient snorts. Don't even get me started on "The Secret" because try as I may the phrase BULLSHIT ALERT!! jumps in to block me if I dare approach it.

Anyway, I thought it was time to put a little effort into my thinking patterns so as I was driving one day recently, I plastered a big grin on my face and gamely thought to myself, " Isn't it a coincidence that my car is sputtering on the same day my cheque for the school trip bounced?" " That's kinda cute"

Unfortunately, try as I did, an even more persistent voice was rearing it's ugly head firmly saying, " You are so fucked"

So what is one to do? I am dialing it back for sure, it’s a start. Now when I pass a house in a suburban neighborhood with an Inukshuk in the yard, I resist the temptation to march up to the front door and tell the owners they didn't earn that energy.

I've started to look the other way when I get emails from people from distant locales such as Whitby or Mount Forest that sign off with a jaunty Ciao!

I’m not charging through yellow lights with as much gusto as I once did and I bite my tongue when the elderly lady in front of me at the Shoppers Drug Mart counter pays her bill by counting out pennies.

Guy decides to pay 3 months worth of bills at the banks cash machine? No biggy, I say.

So toss me a fricken break O'Shaunessy, I'm doing the best I can here or shall I say , can I top up your Bushmill?