the firefly files Page 11

My family have always been great readers. Among the books that I inherited from Mum is one that I now have two copies of: the original brown and gold leather-bound book with its well-thumbed and yellowing pages, and a second slim volume (with delicate water-color illustrations) that I found in a second-hand bookstore - The Rubyiat of Omar Khayyam. (It was a phrase from the Rubyiat that inspired the title for my web site, "Magic Shadow Shapes").


We are no other than a moving row
Of magic shadow shapes that come and go
Round with the sun-illumined lantern
Held in midnight by the Master of the Show.
But helpless pieces of the game He plays
Upon this chequer-board of nights and days
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays
And one-by-one, back in the closet lays.

The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on.
Nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back
To cancel half a line
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

Which if you boil it down simply attests to the fact that sooner or later, we're all going to die.

Death. Now there's a word that will probably have you scurrying back to page 10 in a hurry. No matter how you might wish to avoid the issue, it's still something we all have to deal with one way or another at some point in our lives. Every minute of every day, someone somewhere is dying. Now that's an interesting, if morbid, thought. The only thing that brings it home to you in spades is if it happens to be one of your someones.

For all the philosophy and poetry that's been written about death, we still have no concrete idea what "being dead" really means. If you're of one particular mindset, it's the beginning of an afterlife, perhaps even reincarnation to a new life in another form. If you're of another mindset, it is the end. Period.

By the time I was 18, I had experienced only the death of my Grandfather, Willie, who died when I was eight, (and several pussy cats) but it hadn't really touched me.

While I was working in Halifax, my Grandmother Jean wasn't feeling well. She had fallen down our basement stairs and while she wasn't seriously injured, she just wasn't feeling "like herself" she said. She even accepted a trip to Florida for a week with some friends "for a rest" (this from the whirlwind who never really sat down, but just perched on the edge of a chair, ready to leap into action). When she came back, she finally went to see our family doctor. In due course, she was told that she had lymphatic cancer and went into hospital for surgery.

There was nothing further they could do, so they simply sent her home. She was dying. I remember sitting on her bed while Mum gave her a shot for pain. Whether it was the medication or not, she told me she could see a strange little creature crouching in the corner of her bedroom. "Look, Patsy...over there" and she struggled to raise her hand to point to the corner closest to the window. I couldn't see anything and said so. "Ah, child", she sighed..."Of course you can't. That little beastie is waiting for me...it looks like a twisted dwarf and it's waiting for me." It took several months before she died a slow, painful death. I wasn't very rational about it all. At the funeral parlor, I begged them not to turn off the lights at night, because toward the end she hadn't liked to be alone in the dark.

Daddy & I, Jean & Willie
Daddy and I, Jean and Willie

Not long after her death, I was coming home for the long July 1st weekend and when I got off the bus, I met our Minister walking down our little side street. I called to him and he turned and waited for me. I was chattering away to him but stopped abruptly when he came up on the porch with me. I didn't want to be rude so I asked him if he wanted to come in for a minute. He told me that had been his intention..."I have some bad news". Daddy had been drowned in a diving accident at Elliot Lake. Mum had just received the news and was actually hanging up the phone as we came into the kitchen.

We had a phone on the wall, just outside the kitchen door. I can still see her, in a yellow sun dress, sitting on the little seat below the phone. She wasn't crying but her face was red and blotchy, as if someone had slapped her.

The mining folks shipped Daddy home by train in a plain pine box. They were very upset about the accident, although it had happened off-site. He had been swimming with friends and dived off the high board into what should have been about forty feet of water. As it turned out, there was a huge silt build-up and there was really only about two or three feet of water. He broke his neck and was pronounced dead on the scene by an RCMP officer who had been part of the swimming group. He would have been 42 on his next birthday on July 4th.

He had been a member of the Masonic Order and they gave him a Masonic funeral. With bagpipe music. I wish I could remember what they played. It's clear that funerals are for the living, not the dead.

Again, I didn't behave very well. All our friends and relatives came back to the house after the funeral and I remember having a loud argument with my Aunt Bertha. (I'll tell you about her another time; she inevitably backed her car over our clothes pole that held up the clothesline in the back yard). She had asked me to make some more sandwiches or something and I exploded in anger. "Why don't people go home", I remember yelling at her. "Don't they know we need to be left alone!". I still had a lot of growing up to do.

In retrospect, I know that my anger was just a part of my own grieving process. But it was more than that. It was guilt. The last time I saw Daddy, he had brought me a record player and I remember him saying that as soon as the house was built, we'd all be together again. But I was angry with him for not being around when Mum and the boys and I needed him; angry that he thought a record player could make things better. We had a nasty little row and he left to go back to the mine without our making it up. We never spoke again.

I can write this now with a minimum of sorrow and regret. It was a long time before I forgave myself for that spurt of bad temper. But in time I realized that he loved us, no matter how we behaved and so I've forgiven myself for being young. Wherever they all are now, I'm sure they understand.

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call to make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"

"Yesterday's the past and tomorrow's the future. Today is a gift - which is why they call it the present." - Bill Keane

Magic Shadow Shapes Midi Music The Gnome Home
The Unabridged firefly
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