Existential Angst

The Legend Of Orm Part 4

If The Dog Hadn’t Stopped To Have A Crap, He Would’ve Caught The Rabbit

That was one of Dad’s more philosophical aphorisms. He considered the game of “WHAT IF….” to be ridiculous. 

He was all for learning from life’s experiences, but in his opinion, wasting precious time obsessing over ‘what might have been’ was shit for brains.

However, I’m thinking he must have speculated at least a little about how different his life could have turned out had he followed through on an opportunity he and a friend tossed around just after the war. 

An oil company was hiring men to work in South America. I don’t know the details, but I imagine the lure was good pay and benefits. The downside was that you had to agree to stay for a number of years, maybe five. With no ties anymore and a vow to never get attached to another person after his Mother had died, he likely thought, “Why not?”

With all the soldiers returning, jobs would be scarce, so it must have been tempting. But had he opted for Peru, he wouldn’t have met our Mother, and consequently (excuse my obviousness), neither I nor my three siblings would exist. 

In any case, I think his desire to start playing in a band caused him to trash the idea. 

Here he was, twenty-two years later, a widower with four children. So much for his resolve to stay unattached with no responsibilities. 

Over the next few years, we worked to keep things together. Dad continued at his job, which, for some reason, required driving longer and longer distances, a situation he hated. 

Days Of Wine And Roses

He had always enjoyed a few drinks but now he was having a few too many.

The Sunday living room concerts were getting shorter and fewer; he didn’t laugh as much, and he started to fall into that washed-out sepia world that lies between dreams and reality. He was let go from his job at Burns and began spending his day either sitting at the kitchen table listening to the jazz station or debating the world’s problems with our neighbour Fred, who in his own way, was finding the meaning of life in a glass of whiskey.

Dad wasn’t abusive, and he was still attentive to our needs. But he was self-destructing, and Pat and I knew it. He was smoking two packages of cigarettes a day and had a chronic cough that gurgled loudly — like a tuba with a clogged spit valve. A few times, his diaphragm would seize up, making him unable to take a breath, and a terrifying wheezing sound would begin.

Nothing in my first-aid or CPR training prepared me for that. Slapping him on his back at least made my sister Jane and I feel like we were doing something. He would come out of it and look around, wondering what the fuss was about.

I’m relating this dark side not to show any weakness on his part. Not at all. My intent, surprisingly, is to describe how strong he was. 

In November of 1973, he went downstairs to the basement and came back up a week later sober. No rehab, AA, or counseling of any sort; he simply went, as they say, cold turkey.

I wondered if he had gone down there to die. And I wasn’t alone. I learned later that Pat also quietly thought the end might be coming, and who could blame him? Death for us wasn’t some abstract concept. It was real and waiting at the door for another opportunity to rob us.

For a while, Dad was a different man than we remembered.The jokes and quips were gone. The philosophical talks that previously could last into the wee hours stopped but he was still open for business if any of us asked for advice or just needed to talk.

Turn Him On His Side

There were a few things about Dad that really annoyed us as we were growing up. It’s weird that what irritated us back then is now just amusing nostalgia.

Like a lot of families in the second half of the last century, we were addicted to television. At any time of the day, if someone was home and awake, the TV was on. Actually, let me change “home and awake” to “home and not in bed”. 

It seemed like every night by at least 9 oclock, Dad would move from his chair to lie on the floor in front of the TV. Within minutes, he wouldn’t just saw logs, he’d grind up the whole tree. It was so loud the ornamental plates and figurines in the corner cabinet vibrated. The neighbour’s dogs howled. It registered on Environment Canada’s seismograph in Ottawa. 

Some of our favourite shows were on during this cacophonous assault.

Saturday at nine the big theatre movies would frequently make their TV debut. Sunday at nine was Bonanza. On weeknights Dad would start earlier, forcing us to either sit close to the TV or turn the volume way up for shows like The Addams Family, The Flintstones and Bewitched. 

With such compromises to our quality of life it should be no surprise that we devised ways to make it stop. Yelling “DAD” or stomping on the floor would cause him to stir and we’d earn ourselves a minute of blissful respite. 

But like strong pain medication, those devices would lose their effectiveness if over-used. The tricks we thought up to actually get him to go to bed were particularly sensitive. For example, our ploy of turning the TV off, nudging him awake and saying “It’s 1am” when it was really just 9:30, had to be used sparingly. More than once a month was pushing it.

We had other ways as well to get him to go to his room where his dreaded apnea spasms were at least toned down to the level of an Oklahoma thunder storm. To be fair, there were times when he’d wake up on his own and rise Lazarus-like, with us suddenly convinced there is a God…..

This, however, is where it could get sticky. Unlike most people, he’d wake up in a good mood with no brain fog and the jokes would start. It was crucial not to laugh. To show any amusement at all was to risk an hour long routine that interupted the TV show as effectively as the snoring. 

So Pat and I had to keep a poker face until discouraged, he would trudge down the hall to his room. Don’t for a second think it was easy to not laugh. He wasn’t amusing or funny. No, he was gut-wrenchingly hilarious. 

Animal Farm

One time he gave up a little sooner than usual, said good night and headed to his room. It was late, the TV was off, and we were sitting in the kitchen talking quietly.  

“Moo”. WTF? It sounded like a cow was just outside the house. It was summer, and the windows were open. About five minutes went by.

“Quack”…this sounded like it came from inside the house. 

When we heard water splashing and some fake farting sounds, it clicked. Our resolve to not laugh was shattered. I had tears running down my face and I thought Pat was going to need the heimlich. 

We’d heard it before but the pacing this time was perfect as was the timing. 

It was, tada…. one of Dad’s classic originals:

A Quiet Night In The Barn

Next: The conclusion. Epiphany