On Death and Life

In memory of my dad.

Nothing is more certain than death.

My father died unexpectedly this week. He’s had health problems for a very long time, but I really thought he’d keep going for years.

I suppose we always believe the people we love will be there, even though we understand intellectually that they can’t stay forever.

A life.

My dad lived on this planet for 85 years.

He was born in Buenos Aires to British parents in 1938. He spent his early childhood on an estate in the Argentinian countryside.

At age seven, he was sent to boarding school, first in Argentina, then England. At 18 he went into the British army in Sierra Leone and other African countries. Then he headed to London, where he got a job in advertising and eventually met my mother.

They moved to Canada, bought a house, had me and then my sister. He worked at advertising agencies and newspapers, selling ideas to people, until he was forced into early retirement at 59.

The next 26 years of his life were quieter; he and my mum stayed in the house where I grew up in small town Ontario before moving to Toronto almost a decade ago, into an apartment overlooking High Park and Lake Ontario, close to me and my sister.

A death.

On Tuesday, his life ended. The story of his time on Earth came to a close.

He got sick, an ambulance took him to the hospital, and he was gone.

Nothing is more certain than death.

This is how this one was. Neither excessively tragic nor excessively beautiful. Simple fact.

What continues.

I love my father. I struggled with him — with the way he was, and the way he wasn’t. I struggled with what he implanted in me, through no intention or fault of his.

But if I’ve learned anything in the hours since I lost him, it’s that what he gave me above all else is a joyful life. My gratitude to him is endless and immense. We don’t get to choose our parents, but knowing what I know now, he would have been an excellent choice.

He had a beautiful heart which went through a lot of pain and curtailment early on, but it always shone through, and that’s what we’ve heard about over the last two days from everyone who knew him — that he is remembered for making people laugh and bringing them pleasure and joy (and consistently refilling their drinks without them noticing).

I will take him forward with me, from here, as I move on through the world, winding the path that leads, circuitously, to the day of my own death, when my own children (god willing) will enact their version of this mourning, which is still taking shape in us as we discover that he’s gone.

Going on.

The point of all this isn’t only commemorating and mourning my father.

It’s also a reminder to myself to continue spreading his kindest and best parts to those around me (and to myself).

Dad was never much of a poetry fan, but I think he appreciated Philip Larkin (my favourite poet), whose blend of English stoicism and excellent jokes is the closest I’ve seen to a representation of my dad’s personality in literary form.

Nothing is more certain than death. But knowing it’s always there, just a moment away, might help us to live a little better.

So I will close with one of Larkin’s poems — this one joke-free, I’m afraid — whose final lines feel like words to live by:

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence   
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   
While there is still time.