Robert Burns 1968

My Dad died last night.

I wasn’t there to be with him when he left, but said my good-byes two days earlier as he lay in the hospital bed sleeping peacefully. He had suffered a stroke a couple of months previous and kept smoking cigarettes until he had another one. Who knows how many he actually had, but a suspected heart attack and at least one more stroke while he was in the hospital this time did him in. He slept… and last night sleep deepened.

He was my Father. My blood. Life decided that he would not be the man who would raise me and I was a man of around forty myself before I would get to know him, but I am very grateful that I did.

I met him and his family once when I was around twelve or thirteen years old and spent the day with them. I was with my family on summer vacation in Nova Scotia from Labrador, where we had moved when I was four. My new sister ratted me out to Dad for smoking cigarettes, and I showed off to my two new brothers by putting snakes in my mouth. My memory is faulty, but I always remembered pieces of that day. And when I was sitting in a cell in Her Majesty’s Penitentiary just after my fifteenth birthday I would sometimes wonder ‘what if’.

I moved back to Nova Scotia when I was 34 – thirty years after leaving Nova Scotia. One night my wife and I were driving around the north mountain back roads, “Booze Cruisin'” when I started talking about my father and where he lived and that maybe one day soon I would go and introduce myself to him. A few more beer later and I was driving towards the valley, heading to his house, far too drunk to be driving and far too stupid to be stopped from doing what I wanted to do. We got to his house and I took a deep breath, and stepped out of the car. I staggered as I approached the door, and I actually remember for one spit second changing my mind and deciding to turn around. But the second passed and I knocked on the door. No answer… I believe it was around eleven o’clock at night and maybe it was later than that. I knocked again, and waited. To this day I am glad no one answered that door: ‘Hi I am Barry your son! Too drunk to walk but I drove thirty miles to come see you!’. Not my proudest moment. But at the time I was very disappointed as I turned and walked back to my car.

It would be several years later before I finally did get to meet him. It was Canada Day. I was living in Waterville and just a five minute or so walk from my father’s house. There were four of us out in the back yard drinking beer but running low. We were all too drunk to go anywhere so my buddy Ron and I decided that we had to have more beer, so we would call a taxi and have a case delivered. It would cost us about seventy five dollars for a 24 but that was not part of the considerations. We needed more beer. Then when I asked which taxi to call Ron looks at me with a wide grin on his face and says “Call Burn’s Taxi. Your Father!”

I kinda stood there blinking for a moment, my booze soaked brain taking it’s time deciding what this actually meant… and then it decided that this was a great idea! “Fucking right! Let’s do it!” I said. And we did. Even with all the beer I had in me, I had butterflies in my stomach waiting to see who actually pulled in with my case of Canadian. When the Burn’s Taxi van pulled in the yard it was Robert Burns himself driving.

“That him?” I whispered to Ron.
“Yup. How ya doing Bobby?” He said as the van pulled up beside us. “I want to introduce you to someone!” he said to my father through the open driver side window.

Robert was staring at me, grinning widely, as I approached.

Dad and I both have slightly differing versions of the conversation from that point. One part that we both agree on is that as Ron got the beer from the van I walked up to the drivers side door and said something to the effect of “Hi, I’m Barry. Your son.” His response (I will use his version) was something like “Well I can see that! It’s like looking in a mirror!”

People come into our lives and sometimes it is a while before we see the impact that they have on us. I didn’t see it while it was happening, but things began to change in me from that moment. Some little piece of the puzzle just slid into place. Something missing was found. I did not realize that just meeting him would change something in me, but it did.

I got to spend quite a bit of time with Dad from that point. When he was driving taxi he would call (often from out in the parking lot) and tell me to put the kettle on. “Ok. Where are you now?” He would often reply “Sitting in your driveway” and chuckle. Other times I would get a call telling me to “Put your boots on!” He would be going on a run somewhere and want me to go with him. If I didn’t want to he would tell me that I could leave my beer for that long, it wouldn’t kill me. More often than not I would throw a couple in my pockets to take with me.

I got to hear stories about when I was a baby and things that happened in his life back then. About the trouble him and my uncle used to get into when they were young. More important issues that were just between him and I – those are the discussions that I hope my melting memory hangs onto. The Real conversations that we had. And very often I would hear how he had gotten tired of drinking and just gave it up.

“You will get tired of it too before long. You are around the age I was when I gave it up. You’re over by just a few years maybe.” He would say.

Many times I would hear “It’s none of my business, and you can tell me to go to hell, but Barry you drink more than anyone I have ever known. You never take a break from it boy!”

He was right about that last item. I had dropped into a deep dark place, and it was getting worse rapidly. He would still drive me to the liquor store when no one else would, or come pick me up somewhere when I needed it. However I could even see myself that he hated seeing the state that I was in. Eventually he would look me in the eyes and tell me that I was dying. Again, he was right. The issue was I did not believe there was a way out. I accepted my fate. This would be all my life would be until I ended it or the drinking killed me. Case closed. I firmly believed that he was wrong regarding my getting tired of it someday. That, I told him many times, will never happen.

But it did.

The last beer I drank was at my Dad’s – Shortly after I walked out of my house and my marriage with two grocery bags full of clothes and nothing else, not knowing what the hell I was going to do next or where I was going to go and walked to my Dad’s house to ask if I could sleep on the floor somewhere for a couple of days. “You’re my Son ain’t ya? Of course you can stay here. We will always find room for you somewhere.”

That was the beginning of “Life Part Two” for me. I did not know how I was going to start over at 45 years of age… and the process is still underway. But the start was walking to my Dad’s house and telling him that I had to start over. I was dying and had to do something about it.

Only once after that did I ever hear “I told you that you would get tired of it eventually.” Now I wish that I could hear that every day.

There are a million ‘What If’s’ and ‘I Should Have’s’ that keep racing through my mind and a boat load of guilt that I have to beat away from me regarding the ‘I Should Have’s’. I could have done much more for him. I should have. However I need to focus on the good that has come from knowing him. He knows that I am getting somewhere now. That I have escaped the living death that he watched me wade through day after day. I made it out in time for him to see it. I heard him tell me that he was proud of me! That I will hang onto as I fight off the negative. The fact that he was proud of something that I had done. I have a future now and I just hope he knows that he played a part in that. He believed when I couldn’t.

I am so grateful that I got to know him. That, although not for nearly long enough, I had him in my life. I got to know him and through him, more about myself. Some things just make sense now.

Of course there are all the conversations that we should of had running through my brain. Things we should have discussed. Things I should have told him about. None of that matters now and I have to turn it off. I also have to learn to turn off the tears the fill my eyes every time I catch myself saying “Mother Trucker.”

I may change this or I may delete it. I have no idea. If it does stay here, then it becomes part of Inside Out, which is fitting as that is exactly how I feel right now.

I love you Dad. And thank you.