Albert

My father-in-law and I did not have an easy relationship. I can’t even say that we liked each other because I don’t believe we did. That’s odd, considering how alike we were in so many ways.

This is not to say that we liked the same things. We did not. There was very little overlap of interests. Albert liked to hunt and fish and watch sports. I do not hunt or fish. I never have. It’s not that I dislike sports, I don’t; I just don’t watch them often. Watching sports on TV takes a lot of time. Talking about sports takes even longer. About two hours for every hour watched, if observation of those people I work with serves as a measure.

But Albert and I both liked a good party. Maybe too much so. That goes for both of us.
We’d both been bachelors a long time, and neither of us had been what I’d call a stay at home kind of guy. We both liked our social outings, we both liked to chew the fat into the night.

I’m not sure why he disliked me. Maybe it’s because I stole his daughter away from him. Maybe it’s because I was not a hunter or a fisherman. I doubt that, though. He never once invited me to either. Maybe that’s because he knew that I didn’t do either, so he never asked, sure I would decline. I probably would have, too, but I would have appreciated the offer. Either way, he never asked.
We didn’t get off on the right foot. The first day I met Albert, he barely said two words to me. He was too busy repairing a broken lamp with a length of PVC pipe. When he did speak to me, it was to ask me what I thought of his fix. I thought it ugly. I thought he ought to just throw it out and buy a new one. What I thought is not what I said. “Does it work?” I asked. He didn’t know. He hadn’t plugged it in yet to find out. I was ignored after that, for the most part. I suppose he thought I was just a temporary presence and that I’d go away, after a time. I was just a boyfriend, after all. No need to pay me much mind.

I was confused. I was being introduced by his daughter. You’d think that would have meant something. It didn’t, apparently. I didn’t feel that welcome, and said as much to Bev, so I didn’t go back for quite a while.

Albert and I did not have much cause to cross paths much for some time, after that; not until Bev and I decided to buy a house together.

I was treated with what might have been fury. There was a barrage of questions, none of them friendly. “What are you doing? Aren’t you putting the cart before the horse?” In his mind, we should have got engaged first, then married, then bought a house. That was the time-honoured tradition. And I was breaking that tradition. I couldn’t see how it was any of his business. It wasn’t the ‘50s, after all. I didn’t need his permission to ask Bev anything. I needed hers. And I was getting on in years, years I didn’t have to waste on time-honoured tradition if I wanted to have children. And I did.

Things did not really improve, not really. His anger cooled. But he never really warmed up to me. We came to an understanding, though. He really didn’t have much choice, after all. I’d become a fixture in his daughter’s life. Albert and Alma spent a few weekends with us on Manitoulin. But I was new to the place and wanted to explore, so we were up and about and not there all day, where Albert wanted me to be, so I could pitch in on maintenance. Albert apparently forgot that I’d had a back injury. Fetch and carry and working at height wasn’t my forte, anymore. I did my bit. I cleaned gutters and mowed the lawn and fetched water from the well, replenishing the kitchen and sauna supply. I was less inclined to participate in the physical maintenance of the place so the “boys” wouldn’t have to do anything when they showed up to hunt deer in November, something I was never invited to participate in. The fact that I was on holiday was less important than their being on holiday.

When I popped the question (a moot point, considering we’d been living together for years at that point), I sat Albert and Alma down, and with Bev sat my side, I asked for their permission to marry their daughter, Alma was thrilled. Albert did not say a word. So, I married his daughter without his permission. Like I said, it wasn’t the ‘50s, anymore.

Time passed. Bev and I did not have children. Albert brought that point up once or twice, especially after his son began to have his. “Don’t you think it’s high time you had kids,” he asked. I did. But I wasn’t physically capable of having them. I didn’t have the ovaries for it. I wanted kids, but we were getting on and when it didn’t happen, I considered adoption, and then as more time passed, that ceased to be an option, too.

Then Alma passed. Albert sunk into a funk. It’s hard losing a spouse. I don’t know how hard it can be, but I can imagine how devastating it can be. I suppose it’s like having your entire world pulled out from under you. Even more so when you’ve been together for many decades. He grew morose. He fell into depression.

We’d always spent Sundays with Albert and Alma. We carried on after her passing. I cooked dinner. I was hell bent to make sure he ate, too. I almost never cooked the same thing, either, thinking that he needed variety in taste and diet. Albert told me that I’d make some woman a good wife someday. I let that pass. I let a lot of things pass.

Sadly, Albert never really recovered from Alma’s death. His health suffered. He became diabetic. His hearing, never good for as long as I knew him, grew progressively worse, until we were forever raising our voices in his presence. His knees failed him and he took to a motorized chair. When that happened, his muscle mass faded away. He grew weak. His breathing became laboured.

He put himself on a list for assisted living, but passed when his name came up. His name never came up again.

He rarely left the house in his final years. He became timid. He became ever so lonely. He demanded that we spend more time with him than we already were. He argued when I said that would be difficult. So then it was my fault that his daughter had been taken away from him in his hour of need. I could have been more patient. He was in his 90s, after all. His life was coming to an end and I think he knew it, even if we couldn’t see it at the time.

But I was dealing with my own shit at the time. Not terribly well, I might add.
Before long, he became sick. Pneumonia settled in, and he was hospitalized.
Then he too passed.
I’m sorry to say that his passing was solitary. We did not have the same warning we had for Alma. There was no gathering of the family.
There was only a phone call to tell us that he’d passed away in the night.

A Slow Recovery

Bev almost died. There’s no doubt about that.

She spent three days in ICU, doing little more than laying still and suffering excruciating pain (that’s an understatement; that’s all she did), while I sat on, leaving only long enough to take care of our dogs and get a bit to eat every now and again. And to sleep.

I didn’t call in to work for a few days, only reminded to do so when I heard the message from my boss, enquiring as to Bev’s status. When I did, he wasn’t at his desk, so I left a message on his machine: “Yeah, as you know, Bev had an accident. She hit her head and bled in her skull. She’s in ICU. So, I won’t be in for a while. Put me down for Emergency Leave, or Sick, or Holidays or AWOL. Whatever. I won’t be calling you every day to tell you that I won’t be in. I’ll probably be back once Bev’s out of ICU. I don’t know when that will be. Maybe Thursday. Maybe not then… I don’t know. I’ll have to see how things go. I have to go.” And I hung up and went back to the hospital.

It was a quiet few days. I read a novel, started another. I whispered to her when answering her whispered queries. I kept her abreast of well-wishers well-wishing.

She was not allowed food. She didn’t want it, anyway. Her skull was cracked and chewing was a misery. She did sip a little water from time to time. I directed the straw to her lips and kept it nearby until she said she was done. That was never for more than a sip or two, though. Otherwise, nothing passed her lips. She was allowed food her last evening in ICU. They brought up a sandwich and a fruit cup and some juice. Chewing was still a chore, so she attempted no more than a nibble before waving it off. She did eat the fruit cup. She declared it the best fruit cup she’d ever had.

ICU is a good place to recover from a head injury. Very quiet. But she couldn’t stay in ICU forever. After a few days they moved her to “gen pop,” as I called it, took her off the narcotics and from then on only managed her pain with Tylenol. Not even Tylenol 3s. Just Tylenol. It was noisy in gen pop. And she was light sensitive. Her head throbbed with each dropped pin and each shaft of light.

When I found out that they were only managing her pain with Tylenol, I asked her how often the nurse popped her head in to see her. Not often; she had a floor full of patients to care for, after all. Well, I thought, if all they’re going to do is give you Tylenol, I can do that at home. I asked the doctor if I could I could do just that, so she could recuperate there. He asked if I would be there. I would, I said. Then she can go, he said. But he extracted a promise from me that if she expressed any discomfort whatsoever, I was to bring her back without delay. I promised to do just that.

I packed her up that day and brought her home. It was torturously bright, even for me. I tried to give her the smoothest ride she’d ever had. Not an easy feat, but I did my best.

I set her up in the bedroom and closed the room-darkening-blinds (a blessing from my shiftwork days). I turned on the TV and set it to a classical radio station and turned the volume down as low as it would go without being off, altogether. Did it bother her? I asked. No, it was okay, she said. White noise, if you get my drift.

I became head cook and chief bottle washer for the next while. I was always the cook (I was home two hours before Bev, and unless I wanted to eat at 7 or 8 pm, I had to take it up, or be resigned to eating an hour or so before bed; besides, I like to cook, so no complaints), but now I did all the washing and all the dishes and all the fetch and carry, too, without help. I walked the dogs. And I was at her beck and call, bringing her all she desired: water, ginger ale, whatever. And I tried to anticipate her needs, too. There was always a bowl of grapes near at hand. There’s not a lot of chewing required when it comes to grapes. All as silently as could be.

I went back to work after another week. She agreed that I should. She lay about most days, not requiring much, so she gave me her blessing, so to speak.

I came home to find her crying. She’d tried to read her Get-Well cards, and suffered a migraine after reading only a few words. “I’ll never be able to work again,” she wept.

“Yes, you will,” I said. “You can’t see how far you’ve come in the past couple weeks.”

She had. Her recovery was rapid. She just couldn’t see it. The time was long for her. The improvements incremental. But I could see the difference.

And after a time, so could she. She’d get up to change rooms for a little while, at first. Then she began to watch a little TV. Then she began to watch a lot of TV. She still couldn’t read, reading still gave her migraines, but she could watch twelve hours of TV without interruption or ill effects. That may inform you how much you use your brain when watching TV. She couldn’t watch just anything. The pace of modern movies hurt her head, too loud, too flashy, too much rapid editing. Turner Classic Movies was perfect, though. Slow editing. Long cuts. Not too loud, not too much flash. Black and White helped, too. Before long, she was running out of patience, though. There’s only so long you can remain in bed, only so long you can stay in a darkened room, and you can only watch so much TV before you’re chomping at the bit to do something.

And then, after a time, she could read a little without pain, then a bit more, then more still.
She went back to work after three months. A couple hours here, a few hours there. “You’re sure you’re ready,” I asked her before she went back. She was, she said.

She probably wasn’t. She probably ought to have taken a couple more months, but she was bored.
Can you blame her?

As Close as It Gets

How does someone make new friends? Get involved, I thought. Somehow. Play sports. Join a team, take music lessons and participate in what group functions that affords you. Take art classes. Volunteer. Do what you can to get out there. That’s where the people are. Not online. Not on TV. If people are to become friends, they must be present, in the flesh. You just have to get out there and meet them, I thought. Maybe those activities will lead you to the type of people you like. There: a plan. Now to implement it.

I’d always thought I might like curling. I have no idea why. I’d never curled. That’s not entirely true; if you recall, I did curl once in an HSM curling bonspiel. But that was all. I heard it was a social sport, and I remembered that past bonspiel to be very sociable, so I thought I’d give it a try. The Mine hosted an annual curling bonspiel, a funspiel, they called it, so I asked Bev if she wanted to sign up for it. She’d curled before, so she was up for it. We got a team together, paid our admission fee, and had a good time. We liked it so much I thought we might join the club and take instruction.

But it never led to anything. We never looked into joining the curling club, but we did sign up for the Kidd Recreational Bonspiel every year. When the CIM chapter began hosting one, we signed up for that too. They were fun. We began to look forward to them.

I can’t say we were any good. Sliding out of the hack was problematic. I’d wobble and fall down. And even when I did keep upright, I could never hope to place the rock in the house if I did slide. So, I didn’t. I kept my foot on the rubber grip and thrust the rock down the ice. I didn’t use a slider when sweeping, either. “I’d likely crack my head open,” was all I’d say if asked why I didn’t. I probably looked foolish. But what the hell, I only curled a couple times a year. So long as I kept on my feet, I was happy. I fell once or twice, but I never hurt myself. The potential was there, though. But I always had fun. That’s the main thing, I suppose.

Our last funspiel was not that fun.

We set up to play our first game. We gathered, introduced ourselves to the opposing team, shook hands and I set about throwing the first rock of the game. I threw it right through the house. I turned my back to the rink and crouched to gather my second rock. When I stood again, I saw a group of people gathered mid-rink.

“Did someone fall?” I asked the other person at our end.

“Yeah,” he said. He looked concerned.

I looked to see who it might be. I saw a white sweater through the grove of legs. Bev’s got a white sweater just like that, I thought. Then I realized that it was Bev. Holy Crap! She was flat on her back. She didn’t appear to be moving.

I rushed to where they were, taking care to not fall, myself. I thread my way through them, coming upon our friend, a nurse, on her knees beside Bev, with another guy with his hand under her neck, already manipulating her neck. If she’d had a neck injury, it would have been too late to prevent injury, she’d have been paralysed. I decided it was pointless to point out that he ought to know better than to wiggle a person’s head about after an injury, thinking afterwards, but not then, that he must have asked her if she could wiggle her toes before he began messing about with her neck. He was a mine rescue man, after all. Bev says he did not.

There was no visible blood. But she was dazed.

I took over. The Mine Rescue man backed off. Maybe it was something in my eyes that told him to.
I asked her how she felt. Dizzy. She couldn’t see well, she said. Her head hurt. Her back hurt.
I asked her to move her arms and legs for me. Wiggle your fingers. They wiggled. Can you wiggle your toes? She could. Everything worked fine, so the Mine rescue man was forgiven.

Someone asked me if I thought that we should call an ambulance. I was surprised that no one had already, so I told him that I’d like him to do just that. My voice was deathly calm. I was not.

Bev was cold, so I asked her if she thought she was okay to move. She thought she could, so we sat her up slowly and once she gained her feet, we helped her off the ice and into a chair in the glassed observation area, away from the chilled rink. She was not steady. She was far from steady.
I began to worry.

She grew too dizzy to sit, so I tore a few parkas off their hangers so she wouldn’t have to lay on the hard floor, then another as a pillow. When we laid her down, she couldn’t lay on her back, she thought she might throw up. I didn’t really care if she puked all over everyone’s coat.

The ambulance arrived. They did a thorough inspection, and finally put her neck in a brace and strapped her to the spinal board.

She wanted me to get a few things from home, in case her stay at the hospital was longer than expected. Oddly enough, we both still thought they’d give her a quick once over and we’d be on our way. I even said as much, fully expecting that we’d be back for the gala Chinese buffet at evening’s end, at latest. Our friend, the nurse, took me by the arms and said, “Dave, you are not coming back today. They’re going to want to keep her for observation.” She didn’t want to worry me, so she didn’t tell me how serious Bev’s injury might be.

Even so, the severity of her injury began to sink in.

When I got to the hospital, I was ushered into her triage room. She was to have an MRI. The neurosurgeon in Sudbury was waiting to watch, in real time, to assess. But first, they wanted her to sit up. They gave her the largest bowl I’d ever seen for her to clutch while she did. She needed it too. She sat up, the world whirled, and her breakfast was in the bowl. The headache that rushed up and took hold of her paled the pain she’d been afflicted with until then. She almost passed out. The ER got very busy with her just then. She was rushed to the MRI, after which I was told they’d found a couple intracranial hemorrhages. But they were slow. She wouldn’t be rushed for emergency surgery in Sudbury. Not yet, anyways. They’d reassess in the morning.

Surgery? In Sudbury?
She was being transferred to ICU for the interim.
The ICU?
That’s when it struck me.
Bev had almost died. Right then. Right there.

Bev’s Lost Year

Her mother’s passing had been hard on her. She was in a funk for some time, but I suppose losing one’s parent can have that sort of an affect on you. I’ve yet to experience that.

When I was suggesting vacation options with Bev, she was disinterested. Of course she was; she was grieving. It probably felt like a betrayal to even consider heading out and having fun. That’s the reason why she didn’t go with me to New Orleans and New York. I was rather oblivious to the depth of her pain. Like I said, I’ve never lost a parent and had no idea how deeply it affected her. And I had no idea how long it would take her to push through her funk and pain and come through the other side.

Bev tells me that she was extremely depressed during that year of her life. She hid it well, focusing on work mostly. When she cried, she did so alone. She’s a very private person, not given to lavish displays of affection. She’s like a man in that aspect; you have to look for the signs, like her doing little things for you, routing out the lost, patiently sussing out what might be the problem with electronic devices, keeping track of utilities and personal taxes and dog grooming. She’s very much like her mother in that regard.

Her mother passed in March of 2009. She grieved, but somehow made it through our trip to New Brunswick without falling apart, not that she would fall apart; she’s not that sort. If she did, she’d do it privately, and in her own time, inside her head, where no one else could see.

She had work to occupy her. Then we went on our annual “big” trip. She didn’t have a quiet time between, not really. When things did get quiet, she got busy: she went to Manitoulin in August to convalesce. I was not invited. Neither were the dogs. “I need some time to myself for a little while,” she said. I understood. Sometimes you just have to go on a vision quest or some such thing to come to terms with yourself. If not a vision quest (I really don’t see the point of such things; you’ll only find yourself in the end), then certainly a walkabout. That I can wrap my head around. Put one foot ahead of the other. You’ll find yourself walking beside yourself the whole way.

She packed up for her walkabout. I fussed in the way I can, asking her if she had everything she needed for a week by herself, reminding her that she’d be able to get whatever she might have forgotten in Gore Bay or Little Current, and barring that, most certainly in Espanola. She left on her “Bev’s Big Adventure,” as she called it, the first time she’d ever actually ventured out on her own. Manitoulin was as good a place as any. Better than most. She knew it like the back of her hand. It held a cherished place in her memory, years of summer trips piled up, one on top of the other. It was a safe place. A good place to go and try to center herself.

She called a few times, to set me at ease and to give me updates on how she was and what she’d done. But, for the most part, she spent it with herself, cherishing the quiet and her memories and her newfound freedom.

But it was not enough. She was still sad, still depressed, still in need of time to heal.

Bev was working at the Mine for a while through this, subcontracted by Ross Pope to set up a cost accounting routine for D-Mine at Kidd. While there, one of the girls mentioned a Woman’s Wellness Weekend Retreat being held at Cedar Meadows in the spring of 2010. Bev mentioned the upcoming retreat to her friend Lynn who thought it a great reason to come up, so Bev and Lynn enrolled and set to room together while there.

I remained to hold down the fort and take care of the dogs in her absence. This is not to say that I did not hold down the fort or care for the dogs when she was around, just that I was to have the roost to myself while she went off and did what women do at such things, ridding themselves of their men for a time. Maybe that’s just the point, to be rid of us for a short time.

While there, Angel, the woman who’d mentioned the Retreat to Bev, put another bug in Bev’s ear. They should go to Vegas. The girls were on board, Bev said, naming a few who were. I spoke to one or two and found that they were not.

Time passed. Long story short, the Vegas week didn’t happen in September as planned. The girls backed out, one at a time, and the trip was downgraded to a weekend in Cochrane, or more specifically, a cottage just outside of Cochrane.

Lynn came up for that too, I suppose so that Bev wouldn’t be spending time “alone” with strangers. They bunked together again.

Bev began to come to terms with her mother’s passing. I can’t say how many times she cried; she never did in my presence, not really; I happened by a couple times as her composure was breaking down after seeing something of her mother’s; like I said, she’s a very private person; but what I can say as that she became her old self again, little by little, until she broke through and left her heavy grief and debilitating funk behind.

Would that have happened anyway, those times spent alone and in the company of women notwithstanding? Maybe. Probably? Who’s to say?

But her mother’s passing had prepared her for her father’s passing, still a few years away. She picked up pamphlets about palliative care and grieving and what to expect. These lessons served her well then.
But that’s just like Bev. It’s just like her mother too. Plan, make lists, be prepared.

Alma was a pragmatic woman.
Her daughter is much the same.
As they say, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.