Category Archives: Family

A day out with Jacob

The PolyBlog
March 16 2016

It’s March Break! Time for all those extra wonderful experiences, memories, etc. as you try to jam every ounce of fun you can into a short week-long break from school! Except, well, we didn’t really have anything planned for Jacob’s week. Andrea used up all her vacation leave finishing her M.Ed., I had some leave left but not as much fun just the two of us for going anywhere, and we didn’t set him up for any camps. So five days at the daycare. Now, don’t get me wrong, he loves the daycare and the woman who runs it, Ana. But, nevertheless, it wasn’t anything particularly “special” or “unique” for the week. Jacob doesn’t really know any better but he is beginning to notice when kids come back from trips to Disney, China, Vietnam, etc. and tell the class what they did over the holidays and he doesn’t have grand stories to share. We weren’t taking a trip, but I did plan to take today off for a special day with Jacob, and to cram as much as I could into one day! 🙂

The morning started a bit slower than I wanted it to, and first up on the list was me putting in Jacob’s lenses. There are lots of reasons why Andrea puts them in, partly as a downstream result of her having inserted them when she was off with Jacob multiple times over the last six years, she tends to handle most of the morning routine, and I’m out of practice. Some of it is I’m sure just laziness on my part, but there is also a practical element. Andrea can put them in his eyes in 30 seconds, it can take me up to 10 minutes to get them in. Separate from the frustration level for me, I’m more concerned with the temporary torture of Jacob. This morning, he wanted to try putting them in. Andrea learned when she was about 7, and Jacob already takes them out himself. So we tried briefly, and then we tried with me doing it. In the past, I’ve never had any luck with Jacob being in any position except lying down, but Andrea does them with him standing up, so I went for it. Jacob wanted to help, so for the first time, we had him hold his eye open, and I just focused on inserting the lens. In like Flynn, 10 seconds. Second eye was a bit trickier as his hand was in the way, but about 20 seconds in total. First time, each side. Today was obviously going to be an awesome day! Yay Jacob, yay Daddy!

We did have to have a serious chat first. Lately, Jacob has been complaining about stuff and to be honest, sounding a lot like Dudley from Harry Potter. Not quite that bad, but he was definitely of the “glass is not full” mentality. Hard to give an accurate example, so I’ll make one up…imagine him going on the bumper cars at the fair for an hour, repeatedly going, having a blast, but then we have to go. And he’d say with a heavy sigh, like he was so hard done by, “I wish I could have gone one more time.” Never “I’m glad I got to go” etc., never expressions of appreciation for what he did get to do, it was starting to be every time we did something, a lament that it wasn’t perfect. Time to nip that one a little more squarely in the bud. So we chatted a bit about it this morning, and stressed that it would be better if he thought more about what he DID enjoy than the one little thing he didn’t get to do perfectly. I confess too that part of my desire to have the conversation calmly is so that I don’t have it later in an aggrieved ticked off fashion that my little snowflake is basically crapping on some gift/experience that I expect him to enjoy and be grateful for, not greedy and selfish about some small aspect. He understood, and I made sure he knew he wasn’t in trouble, just something I’d like him to work on a bit more.

Then the FUN began. We went to Funhaven today, for the first time. It’s an indoor play centre for kids of multiple ages. Not like Cosmic Adventure that is more physical, this is a combination of indoor gym and games, games, games. Got him an all-access bracelet, loaded up the swipe card, and we were off. Played a racing game and he could actually PLAY it. Most of the stuff is normally beyond his abilities, but he’s been playing the PS1 of late with multiple racing games, and he “got it” right away. Even the foot pedals, which were hard for him to reach. A good start.

After that, we were on to the bumper cars. Yep, they have indoor electric bumper cars. More like bumper tubes, it’s a seat in a round tube with two levers — one on the left, one on the right, and they go backward and forward. Put them both forward and you go forward, both back and you go backward, one forward and one back and you spin in a circle. Takes a bit of work to get a good rhythm of forward all the way on the right and forward most of the way on the right to go left as you move forward, but doesn’t take long. Jacob had unlimited use for the day but we were there early so there was only one other kid at the time, so straight on to the game. I joined, and unlike the fair, Jacob got to drive all by himself (actually there’s no other choice). So both of us did it, mostly so that he would feel comfortable. But I was surprised — I liked it too! Sort of. The guy ran us for about 5 minutes, and then it shut off. Then he told us to stay put, go again, and about 4 other kids came on. Me, and six kids. The attendant was probably supposed to charge me, but he didn’t, I just went on. During the second round, the 8 or 9 year old kid from the first round must have decided he now “knew” me and so I swear, the little brat did nothing but bump me the whole time. Nobody else, just me. Little brat. 🙂 Jacob kept coming to my rescue to knock him off my butt, otherwise the kid just sat there with the gears meshing pushing against my tube. Weird little kid, or a jerk, not sure which. Finished that round, and with some kids now starting to wait, they had us all exit; while Jacob and I moved on, a couple of the other kids ran to the back of the line and still got on the very next ride. Not too busy yet.

Jacob wanted to play Connect Four, we tried a motorcycle game but Jacob wasn’t in to it (too much leaning, he couldn’t touch with his toes), a few other games. Then he wanted to go to the Jungle Gym area. Again, all access pass, off he went, although I don’t think anyone was manning the entrance to the zone anyway. By this time it was starting to get busy. A group of 30 arrived with the City of Ottawa day campers, a couple of other groups arrived, and then the place exploded. If you buy your pass before 10:30, it’s cheaper by about 15% so there was a huge uptick just before 10:30. Jacob didn’t care, he was lost in the Jungle Gym. I read on my phone for about 20 minutes and then went to check out how he was doing — not a care in the world, he was shooting balls out of a cannon. He accidentally almost hit me in the head with one, but he didn’t even see me, honestly. Just having a blast. Went back to sitting down. A guy next to me nudged me and said, “Is that one yours?” A little girl was up on top screaming for her Daddy to look, but no, not mine! Another kid lost his father and was a bit upset — turned out Dad was sitting on his butt about 50 feet away, one of the few adult sitting areas open, and the kid had walked right by him, out the zone exit and got hysterical. Fun for the workers, I’m sure, and hardly likely a unique experience. I do think that place should institute the same protocols as Cosmic Adventure though — sign ’em in, get a bracelet, sign ’em out, check the bracelet. The kids are a bit older here, but the place was an absolute zoo. Easy to lose a kid, I’m sure. I set up a “lost check-in” point right at the start with Jacob — we get separated, we will meet at the Connect Four game. You can’t miss it, it takes up a 20′ by 20′ section of wall! We played it twice too, so Jacob would definitely know where it was.

After 30-40 minutes in the gym, Jacob was tired. We did mini-bowling (five pin sized balls, small alley, 10 small pins), tried a basketball game, couple of other smaller games, all working well with the swipe card. Reloaded it, kept going. Jacob tried skee-ball, and I was pleasantly surprised. He plays it on the tablet all the time, but when we’ ve played at the fair, it’s too hard for him — he can’t roll the ball well enough to get it to go up the little jump, most of the time it comes back down. This one had lighter balls — no problem! I won’t say he was amazing at it, but he could do it! So he played two or three games of that. We tried a game where you knock down clowns, another where you drop balls in a hole, another where you put balls into fish tanks. Every game you play, you get “tickets” for how well you do and you can redeem them at the end for cheaper-than-dollar-store fare, but all in fun, and nicely, all on the swipe card. They don’t expire either so you could save up — we had about 350 points at the end of the day and they have some hockey jerseys that are about 3000 points, so if you were a regular goer, you might get something good eventually.

By this time, the lineups were getting near ridiculous. Bumper cars probably had about 50 kids waiting, call it maybe a 30 minute wait. Another thing, a laser maze (which Jacob seemed to think was like one-person laser tag based on things his friend has told him) was limited to one person at a time, and there were probably 50 kids in line for that too. Looked like a slow wait. Kids were lined up (well, sitting) for laser tag, and they appeared to be older. Kids were running around in groups of 5, looking a lot like birds returning to Capistrano, they go in waves!

But we did go back and do a bunch more car racing games. It’s really Jacob’s favorite, and I would be tempted to go over some morning first thing, just do the swipe card and the racing game with him before the lineups start. When we first got there, we could have raced a dozen times before we would have had to let someone else have a turn. There were a few other racing games I’d love to try with him too, but the wait was too long, he was tired, and we had a lunch date. We grabbed loot from the ticket redemption area, left some money on the swipe card for next time, and headed for lunch.

We had arranged to pop by work today — Jacob has wanted to see our office again for awhile now, he doesn’t really remember the last time he was there (probably 16 months ago, I think?), and we agreed to have lunch with Mom. Met up, had the Tim Horton’s experience with extra timbits, and Jacob regaled Mom with his stories of the morning. Oh, I almost forgot. Remember that little speech I gave the cub first thing? As were leaving Funhaven, and again with Mom, he said, “I am *so* happy I got to do all these things today.” In fact, he stopped me to tell me he had something important to tell me, and then told me that sentence. He’s such a cutey. Sure, he’s doing it because I told him it’s important, but I didn’t prompt him, he remembered on his own.

We did the tour, and then off we went in the car. We stopped at Chapters to pick up a stuffed toy he wanted — he saw it yesterday when he was out with the daycare woman and I had forgotten to give him some money to buy something if he wanted. He fell in love with the BB8 toy, but didn’t have any money to buy it. Mom wanted him to use his money (he has a small amount saved at home), but I felt this was one I was willing to get him for a March break treat, so I picked it up on the way home. After we stopped at DQ for ice cream, of course.

I got home and took a small break while he played on my tablet. Then we sorted his hockey cards from his latest series, figured out what he was missing, and then headed off with duplicates to the card store. They have a deal whereby they do 2:1 trades (you need card #22? you can give them two cards from your duplicates for it). We were down to needing about 15 cards, and we got them all. I even picked up a couple of other “specialty” cards too. I didn’t splurge though for the Connor McDavid rookie card for $300. We did however get the free McDavid card that completes another small set we have. Jacob was pretty happy, but that might have been partly the location — it’s right next to Lone Star, which is where we had dinner.

Finished dinner and headed home, two tired boys. Best line of the day from Jacob though? When asked by me, Mom, friends at work, if he had fun this morning, he responded repeatedly the same way:

“Of course. That’s why it’s called FUNhaven.” Duh, adults are so silly.

And, I really enjoyed today too, even as a blue.

To quote Bill Watterson, “The Days Are Just Packed.” It may not have been Disney, but he was a pretty happy little boy tonight. Tired, but happy. Mission accomplished.

I have no idea how single parents survive…

The PolyBlog
February 5 2016

I’m not talking the big stuff of single parenting, co-parenting, anything of that sort. I’m not talking money, emotions, dating, responsibilities, decision-making, any of that. I’m talking about something actually quite simple.

How do you handle it when your kid is sick in the middle of the night?

My cub had a bug last weekend, and seemed to have fought it off. Or so we thought. Until just about midnight last night when my wife heard him making weird noises in his bedroom, checked on him, and he’d thrown up on the big comforter, his sheets, his bedspread, his pillows, himself. So she yelled for me to come help, and we divided up duties like we always do when this happens.

One of us is on hair holding duties, comforting, rocking, keeping him warm and sanitary, while the other is on clean-up duty. I did clean-up last night, stripping beds, getting chunks out of various clothes and sheets, getting the FIRST load in the washing machine and dryer. All while Andrea kept him calm and comforted. Probably a half-hour for each of us. Fast forward 90 minutes, and a suprise round 5 was underway, this time with a mess in the guest room rather than his bed which had no sheets. Another 20-30 minutes of comforting and cleanup, each.

Sometimes she’s doing the cleaning, sometimes it’s me, but either way, we aren’t trying to do the comforting while the mess continues to soak in elsewhere. We can get to it, and deal with it properly.

If we were single, we couldn’t. I’ve always known I would not make a good single parent even on the best of days; most of the time I’m not even sure I qualify as a decent co-parent since Andrea handles a lot of the daily load. Maybe parental assistant. But on the simple bad days, I’m not sure how anyone handles it alone.

I’m grateful to my wife that I don’t have to find out.

I confess

The PolyBlog
November 15 2015

I confess that I did something I feel guilty about, or perhaps half silly / half guilty. I didn’t wear a poppy this year.

It wasn’t because I forgot, it would be pretty hard to miss that big day, not to mention that I get it off from work.

It wasn’t because I was doing some sort of protest, like wearing a white poppy (if that’s your thing, keep it to yourself — unless you’ve worn the uniform, shut the hell up would be my likely response).

It wasn’t because I don’t think it’s important or I was just too lazy. I think it is incredibly important, perhaps more than some, which is where the problem lay this year.

For me, the poppy doesn’t represent an abstract concept. Nor my brother who served, or a close friend who still serves. Or a number of other people I know who serve or served.

It represents my mom and dad.

For my dad, he was in the service. He enlisted underage, made it to Halifax, and was discharged early when his mother’s objection letter caught up to the paperwork of processing him in. At least that was the story we were told. He wasn’t a “soldier” in the normal sense. Mostly he learned to cut hair. But he enlisted, was discharged, and was a member of the Legion; when he died, they did the poppy service for him. For those who haven’t seen it, basically the serving members of the Legion have an honour guard that goes to the wake and spreads poppies all around the outside of the edge of the open casket. It’s quite pretty, actually. And when it was over, I snagged two poppies. My mom took one. I don’t know if others did. That was 19 years ago last month.

For my mom, she always wore a poppy for Remembrance Day. It was on her lapel, or her breast, proudly displayed. I never spoke to her about it…did it remind her of her brother who was killed at Ortona? Did she have friends or beaus that left and never came back? Was she around when friend’s parents received telegrams saying that their sons or husbands weren’t returning? I don’t know, it wasn’t something we ever discussed. But it always looked really sharp on her coat. Often, in my memory, she’s wearing it when she went to church. Not dressed fancy or anything, just a little spiffed up. When she died, three years ago Monday, I put one of the poppies from my dad’s funeral on her chest for the funeral. Well, actually, I had my niece do it while I was doing her eulogy (although really because I would have lost my mind doing it). For me, it was almost like a chance for my father to say goodbye to my mother, as she had said goodbye to him. Or maybe it was just a way for him to know she was still thinking of him and her family, even at the end.

Now, you could read the above and think, “Wow, that’s a pretty special connection, of course he would wear a poppy.” But I couldn’t this year, nor last year, and I don’t think I did the year before either. Because I don’t want to wear “any” poppy, I want to wear my dad’s poppy, the one from his funeral. To honour both of them.

But I can’t. I miss them too much. It is too painful to do it. I can’t “settle” for another poppy, I want to be strong enough to wear that one or none. Yet the memory is too raw, the link too fresh to do it. This year I thought, “Okay, I can do this.”

And then I couldn’t find it. Honestly, I couldn’t find it. How could I possibly “lose” the poppy? It wasn’t in my top drawer, it wasn’t on my desk, it wasn’t in my bedside table. It wasn’t in my jewelry box where it was supposed to be, I looked there first. By the time I realized I would have to look harder for it, the fear that I wouldn’t find it was greater than my desire to wear it right then, and my fear that I wouldn’t find it was nowhere near as high as my fear that I would lose my sh** if I couldn’t find it at all.

A coworker lost her husband just over a month ago, and while I didn’t know him, nor was I particularly close to her, it pushed my grief buttons. I have found myself thinking about my parents a lot over the last six weeks, and it was incredibly raw as I approached November 11th.

My son is six this year, Grade 1, and the school was having an assembly. His class wasn’t part of the “performance” for the day, and honestly, I didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to be in the school for a solemn occasion and have the kids wondering, “Why is that guy over there losing his sh**?”. I don’t mean a few tears, I mean there was a real chance I would have a complete sobbing breakdown. I was wound a little tight.

So I skipped the school event, dropped Andrea off, and headed for the river. I didn’t want company, I didn’t want a shared experience, I wanted to be alone for a bit. I sat in the parking lot and stared out over the water, just like the images from our old campsite, and listened to the service on the radio. I watched the planes fly by (they went pretty near where I was before looping back to the cenotaph). And while I didn’t completely lose it, I did let the tears flow freely. When Andrea called me a few minutes after 11:00 to say the event was done at the school, it took me most of the 15 minute drive back there to mentally put myself back together.

Today, I was looking for a highlighter and opened my top drawer on my desk, nothing there, opened my second drawer, no highlighter, but there in a little bin was the poppy. I had seen it sitting on my desk earlier this year, and I moved it down there to be a bit safer.

Maybe next year I can wear it. And then I only have to worry that I’ll *actually* lose it somewhere.

Would it be weird to have two, a regular poppy and a dress poppy?

NAC Pops – Hollywood: The Epics

The PolyBlog
November 15 2015

Do you know the classic cliché that says, “I don’t know art but I know what I like”? That’s me attending an orchestra performance. I have never taken music (except things like ukelele or the recorder in school), I play no instruments, I can’t read sheet music. I’m not even well versed in Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, and if truth be told, my favorite classical piece is Beethoven’s 5th, which dooms me to the dustbin of the pop-version of classical music, not “real” classical according to the experts. For me, it has to be accessible, and so my wife and I have tickets to the Canadian National Arts Centre orchestra “Pops” series.

It’s not a cheap investment, generally running about $65 a ticket for six shows for two people (I’ll let you do the math). Add in a babysitter, and it makes for six date night outings that we plan for and generally use as our formal outings for the year i.e. we don’t plan too many other ones. We found that if we didn’t subscribe, we wouldn’t bother getting individual tickets and would just forget about it; so we go since we have the tickets, and we have the tickets so that we’ll go.

Even though I enjoy the Pops events, I generally prefer faster tempo pieces, more lively pieces over long slow string sections. Honestly, those can literally put me to sleep and I feel like they are almost lullabies-for-adults. Yes, I know, some of them were written that way intentionally, but I want to close my eyes and let my mind drift with the music. I tend not to do that with the Pops series, it just holds my attention better. I mention this as you need to know where the following review comes from, as it is not your typical review perhaps of an orchestral performance. I won’t debate in detail, for instance, the conductor’s choices in the third movement, or how the violinists seemed a tad too slow on a refrain portion.

Last night was the first outing of the year, entitled “Hollywood: The Epics”. Let me first get out of the way that, as always, the NAC orchestra performed brilliantly. If something was off in anyone’s performance, I would have little chance of noticing, and didn’t find anything offputting anywhere. It’s always crystal-clear sound, fantastic acoustics, although perhaps a bit biased by the fact that we sit near the orchestra and in the centre (sixth row last night).

The program was designed with eight items in the first half and nine in the second, but they did an opening impromptu playing of the French national anthem (while standing) in honour of the citizens of France dealing with the tragedies of the day before. It was a nice tribute, although a bit odd when the very next item was “Hurray for Hollywood” (Whiting). The opening number was a harbinger for me. They do something a couple of times a year with the orchestra, which is bring in a large choir to sing with them…in this case, two large choirs. About 75-80 people in total. If you like choral music, good on you, mate. If they were singing clear words of well-known songs, like Christmas hymns or songs, I’d be okay with it; for this item, about the only words I could make out were in the refrain of “Hurray for Hollywood”. Their voices are beautiful, but for me, it is a lot like spices in cooking…throw too many in, might as well be salt. So the choir adds nothing for me. I’d prefer one or two singers at the front, if at all. Nothing memorable in the opening.

As an aside, the NAC has ramped up their bilingualism in recent years, and while the conductor Jack Everly is not bilingual, they have a co-host/animatrice named Manon St-Jules who does a great job giving some info about the pieces in french, and then throwing it back to Jack. I have heard a few grumblings from other patrons about it, mostly from those who don’t understand what she’s saying, but I love her little bits (partly as I can follow most of it until she hits warp speed) and she brings passion and zest to her little spiels. Jack, by contrast, is all about background and trivia about the pieces, who worked with whom, what else they did, or in last night’s case, how certain scenes were filmed that the music was attached to during production.

Overall, I think the evening was a fair to middling set of pieces, and I’ll run through the list quickly for the “also-ran” items:

  • Main title from “Gone with the Wind” (Steiner) — interesting trivia about the King Kong set being repainted to look like Atlanta for the initial burning scene, but the song was sweeping but ho-hum;
  • Suite from “Titanic” (James Horner) — there was a nice slow build, but it was way too long, and not very exciting (hmm, kind of like the remake version of the movie!);
  • The Exodus song from “Exodus” (Gold) — meh, not sure how this fits into a “Pops” repertoire for anything other than the source, it was slow, boring and unremarkable;
  • “How the West Was Won” (Newman and Darby) — The trivia was interesting (Cinerama) and almost as long as the piece;
  • “It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, world” (Gold) — This was very short, with lyrics I don’t remember from the movie (but it’s been a long time since I saw it), and completely worthless for posterity; and,
  • The Lord’s Prayer from “King of Kings” (Rozsa) — Classic, but unremarkable, even with (or because of?) the too large choir.

The second group includes those where it wasn’t particularly memorable, but where there were some interesting sub-elements:

  • Overture from “Hawaii” (Bernstein) — Introduced as representing four themes in the movie, it had a lively middle and concluded with a decent set of elements combined to represent a big storm, kind of cool development;
  • Prelude from “Ben Hur” remake (Rozsa) — I found the start quite strong, and seemed almost Asian interestingly enough, not sure why;
  • Overture from “Around the World in Eighty Days” (Young) — This had a great violin section at the start, sounded reminiscent of the start of a hot air balloon ride (continuing the movie metaphor) but it was slow, and didn’t really progress from there;
  • Main title from “Lawrence of Arabia” (Jarre) — The large drum work was good, and there was something going on in the middle with double bass or the trombone (as my wife identified) that was interesting, definitely not the flute or the piccolo, deeper and gave a different sound and feel to it, but it didn’t last long enough to be truly memorable; and,
  • Lara’s Theme from “Dr. Zhivago” (Jarre) — So quintessentially the sound used to represent Russia, it’s hard to imagine anything else.

The last group includes the stand-outs of the evening, and in increasing order of quality:

  • “El Cid” (Rozsa) — One of three pieces from Rozsa during the night (mostly Biblical style), and this one was in line with the other two except for one major element repeated throughout where the first violins play a small section that is then “answered” by the second violin section, almost like “dueling” or “arguing” violins… I don’t know how much of this is the original arrangement or a conductor’s choice, but it was really cool to see the conversation ripple across the stage as different elements answered the earlier pieces;
  • Danse des Enfants from “Napoleon” (Honegger) — this piece was short, but completely different from the rest of the night…where the others were dark, ambitious, ominous, serious, this one was light, playful, and a strong focus on the flute and piccolo, almost like a palate cleanser after a heavy meal, quite delightful;
  • Symphonic Suite from “The Magnificent Seven” (Bernstein) — This piece kicked off the second half of the night, and it is awesome — bold, definitive, a clear statement that resonates throughout the entire piece; and,
  • Symphonic Suite from “The Lord of the Rings” (Howard Shore) — This piece soared, bringing about easy images of flying, sweeping mountains, battles and more. I haven’t even seen all of the movies, and I loved it, so not sure if I’m doomed to pablum pieces or not, but it was truly “epic” music to match the theme of the night, and the only truly remarkable piece from the first half.

Any credibility I could ever attempt to claim on music is completely lost with my choice of best piece for the evening. I mentioned that Jack Everly is self-described as “steeped in trivia” and he did a fabulous little bit of trivia showing the music that accompanied the 20th Century Fox logo and the extended version of the logo music to also play while the Cinema scope logo appeared. The reason he played them was that it was about how they defined a lifetime of the studio, and the logos still often appear accompanied by the same music. It was the rampart that called people’s attention to the fact that this was a 20th Century production about to follow.

George Lucas wanted the same “hallmark”, and John Williams gave it to him, as exemplified by the last piece of the night, the main title from “Star Wars”. Maybe it’s the geek in me, maybe it’s the fact that Empire Strikes Back was one of the first movies I ever saw on my own with friends, and even one of the first five I ever saw in a theatre (rather than on TV or at the Drive-In). But John Williams piece is, and will always be, one of the iconic moments of Star Wars. So many scenes throughout the series use pieces of that opening as they transition from one scene to another, whether it be from space to Tatooine, Cloud City to Dagobah, or space battles to Endor. It combines the harsh overlord style of the Empire with the softer peaceful areas of some planets with the rebel uprising, with just a dash of old swashbuckling music thrown in to keep it lively and not quite so serious. I loved it, and it was awesome hearing a professional orchestra play the notes that a generation lived and breathed as they realized what a combination of effects and music could do, the places it could take you unlike any effort previously.

The same goal that all “Epic” music should aspire to, and few in the ensemble tonight delivered. Overall, the three way split between yawn, interesting bits, and really engaging left the evening being rather ho hum. But as ho hum nights go, there are worse ways than listening to a fantastic orchestra do its bit.

Grief is a fickle mistress

The PolyBlog
September 29 2015

Grief is one of the strangest emotional processes that I have ever experienced. I never knew my grandparents really, so their loss was quite minor to me. Equally, I wasn’t super close with aunts and uncles, so when they passed, it was relatively unaffecting. My first brush with death was when I was in about grade 3 and one of the kids in our school drowned in a winter creek. I wasn’t close to him, didn’t know him that well, but kind of in line with some of the emotions you see in the movie Stand By Me, there was some sort of effect.

Fast-forward to age 28, and I lost my father. The exact cause wasn’t determined, we didn’t do an autopsy, but he had been a heavy smoker and he had had several heart attacks over the years. In the end, he was having blood clots and the bypasses were only partial remedies. He deteriorated over the course of a year, always bouncing back but never quite as high. So, while it was to be “expected”, it was a shock when he was gone. The big strong man in my life suddenly felled by time and nature. I went through most of my grief alone. It wasn’t something I talked about with people, and for most of the first six months, I shunted it aside to help my mother. But you can only push that aside for so long before it no longer budges.

Looking back, I know I was depressed around age 29 to about age 31, although I didn’t recognize it as such at the time, and am frequently curious looking back to see if it was general depression or simply unaddressed grief, or a combination of the two. I wasn’t happy with my life, and it eventually catapulted me into a difficult five years of self-reflection — what I call my tadpole years — and allowed me to come out the other side with a re-integrated psyche, for the most part at least, and a much greater acceptance of who I am and what I wanted out of life.

Fast-forward again to age 44, and my mother’s passing. She too deteriorated over the course of a year, and very obviously downward in the last 8 weeks as ring-cell cancer ravaged her body. The blessing was that she was without pain throughout that time; the hell was that she was in palliative care and basically not eating anything so that her body would eventually fail. Almost 7 weeks in palliative care. Which gave us time to mentally prepare. Except there is no real preparation I suppose. We talk about it like it will be easier, but who knows? She was 83 years old, she died relatively at peace with her life, loved ones by her side. There are worse ways to go.

Yet the grief hit me far more profoundly and more visibly than it did with my father. I have a better support network now — including my wife, son, my wife’s family, some of my siblings. It’s a different world that I live in now than when I was 27. Yet the grief knocked me on my ass for almost 2 years. The first year was dealing with all the estate stuff. The second year was dealing with emotional stuff.

For me, grief was like a heavy blanket thrown over everything. I was sluggish in all things. My normal senses for detecting problems were dulled, my reasoning flawed. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t quite tell what. I am pretty good at figuring out what’s bothering me…I call it the “sore tooth approach”. Kind of like touching your tongue on various teeth, probing to see which one is sore, I do the same thing with emotional issues. I “probe” my psyche…am I worried about money? No. Is it an issue with work? No. Is it this, is it that? And usually I can gauge my response to see if I get a disproportionate level of feedback from my psyche to tell me, “Ah-hah, you’re upset with x or y”. But with grief, I probed my senses to see if it was grief, and got no feedback. Which I interrupted as being “Okay, so it’s not grief.” Yet I kept probing and couldn’t figure it out. I went to see a social worker / therapist through a referral from our work’s Employee Assistance Program, and working through some of the classic signs, we were able to narrow it down from depression or a specific cause to more general dampening from grief.

For me, as I said, it dampens everything. I feel listless. I lose interest in things I normally enjoy, I just don’t get the positive output / feelings from them. I distance myself from others. I feel even less extroverted than normal. The energy required for social settings is a greater tax than normal on my system. I need longer recovery time afterwards to want to be around people again.

So why am I writing about grief? Because it’s hitting me again this week, and from what I would have thought before was an unlikely cause.

A coworker at work lost her husband last week. He was 55, in good health, and the death was both sudden and unexpected. He has two daughters, was training for a marathon, etc. There is very little in his profile, or even my teammate’s, that I can identify with…I don’t know her well, although we work together regularly. We’re not social outside of work. I have a vague recollection of maybe meeting her husband in passing once, but that is all. There’s nothing in this relatively distant event that should trigger grief in me. Sympathy, sure. Compassion, sure. Empathy, maybe, although again, hard to draw a lot of links between loss of a parent and loss of a spouse, so more imagined than from experience.

Yet grief is kicking up its heels over the last week. I feel less patient with delays at work. Things that regularly wash over me with no effect are pissing me off with wild abandon. I feel the urge to tilt at windmills and say, “Seriously? This is your idea of a high-performing organization? THIS is what you waste your time on creating?”. I’m a corporate planner — I drink the kool-aid for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it goes with the job. Hell, I even have to make it and serve it regularly to others. But my tolerance level is down. I almost blew off dinner with Jacob and Andrea last night as I didn’t want to be around people. Or more specifically, around people I have to interact with. I’d prefer to be faceless in a small crowd, like at a sports bar for wings. I’ll likely go Thursday night.

But planning for the funeral this week has been odd. I often find the dance around visitations and funerals confusing. Generally, my view is that if you didn’t know the people socially, or didn’t work directly with them, your connection is too tenuous to attend the visitation or funeral. While the grieving might find it supportive, I find it too intrusive, almost like an imposition. Some people treat it like a social occasion, to catch up with old friends, but for me, funerals and visitations are about three things only:

  1. Saying goodbye to the deceased;
  2. Paying your respects to both the family and the deceased; and,
  3. Supporting the family through a difficult time.

Nowhere in there is there anything about socializing. If you are close to the family, the order probably reverses; if you are farther away, maybe that is the order. I also generally feel like visitations are for extended family and friends, whereas the funeral is more intimate, more personal, more for family and immediate friends.

So, like most coworkers, you do the dance. My parents would have never had to think about it…there were certain norms they were used to, it was obvious to them whether they went or not, and to which. I never cracked the code, but it was obvious to them. Not so obvious to me. So I debated whether or not to attend the visitation or the funeral, or both. “Neither” wasn’t an option, I obviously feel a strong enough connection to my teammate that I would go, but to what? Similarly at work. I did some in-person notifications, and sent out a nice note to the directorate with the details. We avoided the “group card” where everyone scribbles in corners with something that I thought was potentially weird and turned out quite well — I bought some simple blanks cards and envelopes, pretty much just folded construction paper really, and people are writing notes on them to put in a box for now. We’ll collect them at the end of the week and pass them along. I haven’t written mine yet, will do so likely tomorrow. But it’s going well and giving people an outlet to move forward.

It didn’t, however, solve my question about which event to go to. And then, my wife shared a little phrase that I am sure I heard my mother say a 1000 times and that never really registered with me. “Visitations are for people who can’t make it to the funeral.” Maybe it’s a Peterborough thing, but that resonated with me strongly. And I realized some of my hesitation.

At the visitation, I would feel incredibly awkward trying to comfort the daughters I have never met, or pay respects to the deceased who I also barely met. I would feel like I was intruding in what should be, if not private, at least reservedly intimate or personal. I would feel like a looky-loo at a traffic accident. Whereas the funeral, by contrast perhaps, is more manageable. Part of a large group, no need to intrude into their personal space, their personal grief, their experience of saying goodbye to their husband and father.

And with that decision, my body has released some of its tension. I have been close to tears several times in the last few days, with thoughts of my mom and dad, but never so close as right now writing this. If anyone asks, I’ll swear it’s allergies. 🙂 I found it difficult even talking to people last week — I told about 5 people and that was my limit. I was starting to lose it. Talking about the death of someone I barely knew.

Grief is a fickle mistress who comes into your life, uses you up, and discards you at her whim. But at least I have a way forward. I will attend the funeral. Odd that a simple cliche is what is comforting me today. I should ask my wife for her advice more often. 🙂 Just don’t tell her she sounded like my mom.