The first and the last
Do not be afraid. These were the only words my maternal grandfather had ever spoken to me. He committed suicide in July of ’95, after arguing with his girlfriend. My grandfather was eighty-four, his girlfriend was sixty-eight, and I can only assume she was right. According to my mother, my grandfather’s girlfriend was always right.
My grandfather died in his car after turning it on in his youngest son’s garage. He had been dead for around six hours before my uncle found him, according to the coroner.
Do not be afraid. He gave me this nugget of wisdom and five dollars fifteen years ago, when I was nine. I spent the five bucks on a Greedo action figure the next day.
That was the first and last time I saw him.
When my mother told me about her father’s death, I asked her if she wanted me to attend the funeral. She hung up. I called her back and told her I would go with her. She apologized for hanging up.
On the morning of the funeral, I had a raging hangover. I took a couple of aspirins, chewing them before swallowing them, chugged two cups of instant coffee, then set off for the funeral home.
I was five minutes late, but the service had not started. My mother was speaking with seniors I assumed were friends of my grandfathers. Nobody was crying. Everyone seemed more annoyed than sad. I know I was. I did not have any plans that day, but I did not feel like spending it at a stranger’s funeral.
I went outside and smoked a cigarette with my Uncle Gerry. He took long drags that he held for a few seconds before exhaling long streams of blue smoke. We watched the downtown traffic crawl past us. Uncle Gerry was usually very talkative.
My mother joined us. My uncle finished his cigarette and flicked it onto the ground behind him. He turned away from me and my mother and walked into the funeral home.
My mother lit a cigarette. I lit a fresh one off my previous one. I had not talked to my mother in the two months since I had moved out of her house. “So, what’s new?” said my mother.
“Not much. Work’s OK.” I said, “I spend most of my days with my boss as he drives around from Tim Hortons to Tim Hortons. I don’t actually know what he does. He’s supposed to be showing me how to be an infrastructure engineer. But all we do is go to Timmy’s. He says his goal is to take me to every Timmy’s in Ottawa-Hull by the end of summer. That’s fine by me, but I’m tired of listening to him complain about his ex-wife.”
“He’s probably entitled to it,” my mother said.
I rolled my eyes and said, “I’m not in the mood for this.”
“I know, I know.”
We finished our cigarettes and entered the funeral home. There was a small crowd assembled in front of the chapel doors. Most of the group consisted of my grandfather’s friends. My sister Wanda and I were the youngest people in attendance. We were the only grandchildren.
The rest of the crowd consisted of all but one of my grandfather’s children: Gerry, his older brother Paul, my mother, who was a year older than Paul, and Georgina, the eldest of the siblings. My uncles and aunt were with their spouses.
My Uncle Albert was not at the funeral. He had died of exposure in a forest in Pembroke ten years previously. I had never met him. My mother once told me that Uncle Albert had robbed a bank with a pen and a piece of paper, sometime in the late seventies. That, and the fact that he had a quick temper, was all I really knew about him.
The chapel was small, but it still seemed roomy once all the mourners had entered it. The lighting was dim and the room smelled like a freshly cleaned house. My hangover made a vague comeback. I felt sick and drowsy.
The service was short. I looked around at the mourners during the service. Not many of them were crying. My mother, her sister, and Uncle Paul were crying. My grandfather’s girlfriend was crying. My sister and I were not crying, nor was Uncle Gerry.
After the service, we left the chapel and consoled each other in the parking lot. We watched the pallbearers load my grandfather into the hearse. The driver was unable to start the vehicle. The funeral home director apologized profusely and sent for another hearse. The pallbearers unloaded my grandfather and set him on a steel gurney. They stayed at the entrance while the rest of us walked to our cars.
I smoked and paced and watched the traffic. It was slower than it had been before the service. Occasionally, I looked at the pallbearers. My uncles were two of them. The other four were my grandfather’s friends. The old men chatted with Uncle Paul. Uncle Gerry smoked in silence.
My sister, Wanda, stood beside me. “How are things with Carrie?” she said.
“We broke up last week.” I said.
“That’s too bad. Two years is a long time.”
“No, not really. It’s hard to forget, that’s all.”
“Do you remember him?”
“Vaguely. He seemed like an interesting man, full of stories and jokes,” I said.
“He told me not to be afraid of anything,” said Wanda.
“He told me pretty much the same thing.”
Wanda and I watched the second hearse as it pulled into the spot where the former one had been. The replacement was as pristine as the first. The pallbearers hoisted my grandfather’s coffin into the hearse. It was hot and the sky was overcast, but it felt like clouds would vanish at any moment.
Everyone got into their cars. I rode with my mother and my sister in my mother’s car. We pulled out of the parking lot and followed the hearse. Just before we exited the downtown core, a red Mercedes that wanted to make a right at the same intersection cut us off. “You sonofabitch,” my mother said through lips pursed so tightly she seemed to be pulling her face into her mouth.
I said nothing. My sister was trying to find a good radio station. The car’s speakers pumped out tinny static, vapid talk shows, dull mid-day pop, terrible new country, and more static.
“Turn that off,” said my mother.
My sister turned off the radio.
When we arrived at the cemetery, my mother started weeping again. My sister put her hand on my mother’s shoulder as we drove to the gravesite. My mother parked the car. She was still weeping as she got out.
I looked over at Uncle Gerry, who’d parked a couple of spaces to the left. His eyes were clear as he marched in step with his wife. He was scowling.
The grave had been dug. Two caretakers were taking a break under a tree that stood to the right of my grandfather’s grave, about ten feet away. One was reading a newspaper and the other was eating a sandwich. They looked relaxed and content as they watch the crowd gathering around my grandfather’s grave.
The last rites were read and the coffin was lowered into the grave. Uncle Gerry put his hand on my shoulder and said, “He was a good man.”
I shook my uncle’s hand and nodded at him.
We returned to our cars. My mother had stopped weeping. She drove me home. I told my sister I would call her the next day. I went up to my apartment and made myself a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread. I wrapped the sandwich in waxed paper and placed it, a can of cola, and an orange in a plastic grocery bag.
The phone rang as I was leaving. I re-entered the apartment and stared at the phone. The answering machine took the call. It was Carrie. “Paul,” she said, “we have to talk.”
I picked up the phone. “Carrie?” I said.
“Paul. Hi. How’ve you been?”
“Would it mean anything to you if I told you?” I said.
“Yes, of course it would,” said Carrie.
“Mm-hm.”
“Look, Paul, I didn’t call to argue with you.”
“Then why did you call, Carrie?”
“I want my books back,” said Carrie.
“That’s it?” I said, “Some books?”
“Yes, just my textbooks.”
The textbooks were for Carrie’s upcoming summer accountancy courses. “I threw them out,” I said, looking at her books on one of my bookshelves.
“You what?” said Carrie.
“You heard me.”
“You goddamn sonofa . . . .”
I hung up the phone.
Do not be afraid. Even if you are wrong, do not let it show.
The phone rang again. I let it ring for a while, considered answering it and telling Carrie to come over and get her books, then left the apartment and walked to the park behind the building.
The sun was making occasional appearances now, dissolving the grey ceiling of clouds, clearing the way for simple blue sky. I stopped into a corner store and bought a newspaper. When I got to the park, I found a cool shaded area beneath a large maple tree and sat there. I ate my snack and read the paper.
A young couple was feeding a small flock of seagulls down by the Ottawa river, which ran south to north along the east end of the park. They laughed as the scavengers fought for the stale breadcrumbs the couple tossed. A few pigeons mustered up the courage to hop along the edges of the elevated riverbank, in hopes of snatching a few stray morsels. They were unlucky, but persistent. The couple ignored the pigeons and the larger gulls chased the pigeons away.
The sun finally emerged victorious. I glanced up at the perfect blue sky then returned to my paper. I looked for my grandfather’s obituary. I found it in the bottom right corner of the obituaries page:
HOGAN, Russel Eliot
At Smiths Falls, on Wednesday, July 9,
1995. Russel Hogan, aged 84 years.
Funeral service to be held on Friday,
July 11, 1995 at 2 pm at the Kelly
Funeral Home, 585 Somerset Street.
That was all. No mention of surviving relatives, no mention of his ex-wife or his girlfriend. No mention of dead Uncle Albert. Eighty-four years summed up in five lines in the back of a local paper. I began to feel sorry for him.
What had he accomplished? I did not know, nobody ever talked about him. He had left my mother’s family when she was three years old. My mother had tried to connect with him when I was a child, met him a few times for meals or drinks, and that was it.
Uncle Gerry was the only one who had kept in touch with my grandfather. Uncle Gerry never spoke of him to any of us. My grandfather was a stranger to all he had created: three sons, two daughters, and two grandchildren.
I folded the paper and put it in a trash can. I stopped feeling bad about my grandfather. I thought about my late Uncle Albert and wished I had had the chance to meet him and get to know him.
The sun was setting, the blue dissipating into clear layers of yellow and pink, growing into solid layers of red and purple along the horizon. The couple who had been feeding the gulls walked ahead of me as I headed home. The woman was resting her head on the man’s shoulder. They walked slowly, without concern for direction or time. I passed them and walked into my building. The couple passed by the building, into the cool young evening, slowly, silently, obviously in love.
