THE OLD MAN DIED on January 25, 2015, at the age of ninety-three, surrounded by his family. The Globe and Mail, the CBC, and all the media in the province reported the passing of “Mr. Crime” with love and admiration. Several colleagues described him as a “friend to all,” and I thought that was as nice a thing as you could say about anyone.
After the service we all went back to my brother’s house: Mom, my two sons, Jacob and Will, Mike’s wonderful wife, Kathy, and their daughter, Lucy. For the first time in days there was just family, and for the first time Dad’s absence seemed real.
My brother broke the silence. “Want to play a record, brudder?”
“We should play one for the old man,” I said as we started to shuffle through a box of his records.
“It has to be a 78 then,” Mike suggested, rightfully. “Jolson or John McCormack.” We carefully flipped through stacks of the brittle discs to find something appropriate. My eyes spied the familiar black and gold label of a Jolson disc and I pulled it from the box, dusting it off.
“I win,” I said, passing the record to my brother to play.
Mike paused for a moment, studying it. “I don’t know about this one,” he said, reading the label. “When I Leave The World Behind.” Neither of us had ever heard of it. That was rare for us. The chances of pulling that song out of the stack were a million to one.
“We picked it,” I said, curious to hear it and knowing what I might be unleashing. “Them’s the rules.”
My brother placed the disc on the player and it started to revolve. I heard the familiar scratching sound of a needle on vinyl and the distant whirr of an orchestra recorded long ago coming through the speaker. Then I heard a voice singing that was as familiar to me as my father’s…
I know a millionaire who’s burdened down with care
A load is on his mind
He’s thinking of the day
When he must pass away
And leave his wealth behind
I haven’t any gold to leave when I grow old
Somehow it passed me by
I’m very poor but still
I leave a precious will
When I must say goodbye
I leave the sunshine to the flowers
I leave the springtime to the trees
And to the old folks I leave the memories
Of a baby on their knees
I leave the nighttime to the dreamers
I leave the songbirds to the blind
I leave the moon above to those in love
When I leave the world behind
When I leave the world behind
I looked at Mike. Mike looked at me. We both looked at Mom. And then we all cried. We cried together for the first time ever. We didn’t just cry. We bawled. Things we didn’t even know were inside of us came out, along with tears and mucus and God knows what else. We held each other and cried and I knew we were going to be okay. Families change and grow and shrink and evolve, but they remain families. The little house on Kenmount Road was long gone, but we were still together.
Mom lived on her own for a few years after Dad died. She was always on the go, and she moved like a bolt of lightning. For a decade or more she’d been slowed down by my father as the pace of his walk slid from a slow stroll to an eternal shuffle. She was a good bit younger than he was, and now the energy that had been pent up exploded like a sprinter at the bang of a starter’s pistol.
But as the years passed, and more and more days lived alone were crossed off on the calendar, she began to slow down, too. Suddenly I’d find her feeling anxious and confused, two sides to her that I hadn’t witnessed before. I’d never met anyone as full of life as my mother, but now it seemed as if she was ready to let that life slip away.
Things progressed to a point where she couldn’t live on her own anymore. She came to stay with me for a short spell, then stayed with my brother as I left town to shoot 22 Minutes. Mom spent some time in hospital, and when she was released she moved into an assisted living facility. By the time Christmas 2017 came, my mother, a force as bright as the sun and as explosive as the big bang, began to fade into night.
In the space of time it took me to write this book, she grew too sick to carry on. It felt as though she was slipping away a little more with each chapter I wrote. I’d hoped that my mother would be the first person to read this book, but I didn’t write fast enough.
On the day before she died, I took my mother to get her hair done. There was a Christmas party at the seniors’ complex she’d recently moved into, and she had to look her best. I sat next to her that night and held her hand as the residents sang “Silent Night.”
When I came back to her building to see her the next day, I found two police officers waiting for me. The last thing Mom had done was tell the lady at the desk that she was going to meet me for breakfast. Then she left the building, walked along the freshly fallen snow of the trail, and died. The medical examiner told me he was stumped. “It wasn’t any one thing,” he said. “Her clock just stopped ticking.” My mother had a laugh that you could wrap around yourself like a blanket, and I would never hear that beautiful sound or feel the comforting warmth of its embrace again.
I asked them if they would walk with me and show me the spot where she fell. The cop advised against it but said that, if it was her, she’d want to do the same. I walked the path on which she died, following my mother’s tiny footprints in the freshly fallen snow. I realized that this was the last time I would ever follow my mother anywhere. The most natural thing in the world for any animal is to follow its mother. Ducks, bears, wobbly footed baby deer—they all follow along behind their mothers. It’s our earliest survival instinct. Mothers lead the way to safety. I walked slower with each impression, knowing that soon those tiny steps would disappear and I’d have to find my own way. I got to the edge of a frozen pond and then they were gone, like the tracks of a bird that had suddenly taken flight. I was alone.
My father had been worried that there wouldn’t be room for his mother in the family plot. Years later, my brother and I had been worried that there wouldn’t be room for my father. Now, at her burial, I found myself wondering if there would be room for my mother. Of course, I needn’t have worried. There was just enough room for her next to my father in the top right corner. She slid in like the missing piece of a puzzle. And as she did, I looked at my brother and realized that we were orphans. I was forty-three and he was fifty. But at that moment I felt as orphaned as if our parents had died when I was five years old, still up in that little house next to the radio station on Kenmount Road.
This was the first bad thing to happen to me when one of them wasn’t there to help me through. We didn’t have our parents, but we did have our children. I had my sons, Jacob and Will, and Mike had his daughter, Lucy. And we had each other. Our parents weren’t there to help us through this, but we were there to help our children. I looked at Mike. For the first time, I could really see my father in his face. I looked at Lucy as she happily twirled around in my brother’s kitchen. I could hear the slight lilt of my mother’s laugh in her voice. I looked at my two sons. I could see the promise in them of all the wonderful things yet to come.
I was home.