15/09/2014
You can blame this on those people of late who have been asking me when I would write more on the website… well, it’s down so this is the best I can do for now. As usual, it is written while heavily influenced by alcohol and in one sitting, so I hope there is some judgment reserved on any awkwardness and/or grammatical errors, and your attention on the underlying notions contained here within. Kind of an open letter to my father on one of my annual days of self destruction and repair.
Two years ago today this life stole from me something more precious than anything I have ever known. Something that taught, molded and teased me. Something that taught me to stand, to fall and laugh, to stand again. It has been Seven hundred-thirty days since the inevitable conclusion of thirteen years of being forced to watch a cruel disease take hold of a man that taught me everything I know of strength and humility and pick him apart, piece-by-piece. And still, the last time I saw him, twelve years after being given a year to live he asked me for forgiveness for not being a better father, for not being able to beat it. And I suppose, that’s where it all comes from, your constant refusal in the face of insurmountable odds, and your statistically significant success against them; my favourite saying, and honest belief that we are Keith’s and we do not lose. It has been 1,047,900 minutes (give or take) since you were taken from me, and it seems so foolish to count such a thin in minutes, but that number still seems puny for the amount of time I have lost to it. Be it a song or memory that sends me into a brief fit of tears, or a day torn apart waking from nightmares, it seems I am always in some state of repair these days. It would be fraudulent for me to pretend that I do not harbour some depressive tendencies, and to anyone who has read any of my writing, that should not seem any surprise. Though, I usually strive to illuminate the beauty hidden within those darkest of moments. I thin the problem for me now is that I get caught up in the darkness of this whole thing. But, you always taught me to control darkness, to harness and feed from it. I just don’t think you have ever actually shown me to channel something this formidable. The only lessons I have are fragments of stories that you were brave enough to share with me in those last years. You once confided in me how, after the loss of mom, you ran yourself to exhaustion and had to drive out of town on your lunch hours and pass out, just so that you had the energy to come home to me and Jess each night. And, I hope I don’t betray you by sharing your secrets, but I think there is an immense power in it, that you inadvertently withheld from others. And also is the reason, that I think you above all might understand my technique for dealing with this type of thing. I have carried in my wallet, for many years now, the first hand accounts of those who have survived some of the most gruesome punishment and demeaning circumstance, along with the words “worse things have happened to better people.” And whenever I start to feel sorry for myself, I look on it and it reminds me just how blessed I have been. But for the longest time, this internal battle has just been too much for me to forgive on the words of people unknown. But, in the last few months I have begun to take refuge in what might be your final lesson… or maybe your first if I had ever taken the time to pay attention. At the end of your life, you apologized. Your biggest concern was my brother, and me as it always was. I cannot fathom the strength it took you, in 1985, a world with no cellphones, to make it two hundred yards to the house with two screaming toddlers and the love of your life lying shattered on the ground. But you did, and you carried on. You gave us everything that we could have ever needed or wanted, and still at the end you felt ashamed for the brief moments lost to an infantile life to allow you some semblance of weakness. For me what I have found works is what I think has been best described as controlled detonation. Grandma once wrote a poem about me called Chameleon because she noticed an ability to adapt to any situation, and display outwardly whatever was needed even when I was falling apart inside. You had to drive out of town just to pass out every day, so I think you can probably understand the extreme energy required to be outwardly happy constantly, especially at times like these when I feel like I am being held together with loosely wrapped duct tape. For me, I store it for long periods of time and it really doesn’t bother me. I let it out in little bits when I am writing. But some things have proven just too big to bury. You and Geoffrey mostly. I suppose I should feel blessed for having to deal with is loss, he was like a brother and it proved a stepping-stone to losing you. And the way my silly brain works, I think I am one step closer to understanding what it might have been like for his parents and Krissy to have to let him go. We were just kids, and he was taken from me. So on your anniversaries, when it seems to build up into something that I cannot restrain, I let it out. I drink, and I write for you. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes it is just s**t. Sometimes I can’t bring myself to look at it a second time. I remember stumbling down near the oceanfront on a February 22nd in Vancouver amidst my ritual for Geoffrey. The way the light and steam reflected of the frosting windshields near the beach. So I wrote him a poem, and I have looked at it several times since. I bet, if I wanted to, I could even decipher the ragged, drunken scrawl in my book. But, on some level I am happy to covet that as one of the final moments I have with him that I never have to share. And these moments of weakness, when I let you two tear me apart affords me the strength I take from you memories the rest of the time. Over time Geoffrey has turned into an almost constant source of strength, I am not ashamed to say that I have not yet learned to shape our own past into such emotional nourishment. I lost a solid year when you left us. Last September I celebrated a 40oz 30th birthday. Partly because it was my thirtieth birthday, and why the hell not, but mostly because I was had been spending much of my life at the time at the bottom of a bottle, so why not take the excuse to push it to excess. Soon after, I began to plan my return back to Calgary, not a retreat, just a reclaiming of a city once ours. And it has proven to be well worth it, to re-immerse myself within the love and familiarity that I had to extricate myself from when I went to Vancouver. This year has been quite a bit better. Filmed my first feature, made a difficult move for a job with merit, started sober September. You always taught me to identify my weaknesses and take actions to belie them. My birthday has become a big one, all it really brings to mind these days are goofy and now sad memories. Every year you got me a chocolate cake, and every year, as if part of the festivities you remembered that I hated chocolate cake and just wanted ice cream. Not to mention that most of my birthdays were celebrated early or late because Labour Day just happened to be the best time for salmon fishing. And, I don’t mean that as if to complain it’s just one of those goofy memories that reminds me of you, besides if the cost of me having you was the insignificant sacrifice of few birthdays, then it is my honour to bare it. And, as Shakespeare put it, “there’s the rub”, and there always is one. Because I know I am losing memories of you with every moment, but at the same time the most innocuous things can bring back the most vivid and forgotten recollection. Today I told the story of when we were in as Texan diner and the owner looked at us and said, “Canadians, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before.” The door has been sticking on my apartment, and it popped open after I shut it. I thought of the porch door at the acreage house, and how it used to pop open. You used to give us s**t about it, and one day it popped open when you closed it and I made some snide comment, as teenagers do. You grabbed me by my collar, lifted me, spun me, and slammed me against the side of the Explorer. I can remember it vividly, but I don’t remember ever being afraid of you hurting me, I knew you never would. I remember even then, being in awe of the power you harboured and the times I might have inspired it’s wrath, but this was the closest I had ever come. The closest you had ever come to losing control. I fell down a few times this year, pops. Especially these last few weeks. I have been trying to curb it. When I have been feeling low, I have been forcing myself to go to the gym. After all, it was there that I learned to turn Geoffrey’s memory from fear and panic to bridled rage. Still, some days when there is nothing to get in the way of, I would rather just drink and sink into it. But that is how I have always accessed the release that is my writing anyway, Charlie Chaplin said, “to truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it.” For me, I spend so much my life ignoring and suppressing the negative that I have to allow myself these moments of uncontested weakness, to take my pain and ‘play with it’, to create something from it, something beautiful and hopefully worthwhile. I know you would have hated him but, amidst the drivel that falls from his face, Eminem can sometimes be quite eloquent really. “My honesty’s brutal, but it’s honestly futile if I don’t utilize what I do for good at least once in a while, so I wanna make sure somewhere in this chicken scratch I scribble and doodle enough rhymes to maybe try to help get some people through tough times.” I don’t think I have ever written anything with the intention of helping or even inspiring someone else, but it is not as if I don’t hope that beautifying this life’s ugliest moments might be able to help someone else find their way in the dark. I suppose that is what this is about. More than an apology, though that’s kinda what we do in this family, apologize any and every time we don’t succeed. And, I’m not saying how I choose to handle this sort of thing is necessarily healthy, but I have seen it take down others because they don’t seem to have a proper vent for the pressure that builds up. And I think that is probably the best way to describe it. As I get nearer to the days of detonation, the weight builds. The last couple weeks I could feel it like a firm hand and strong push on my chest which bubbles to seconds of shutters and tears. But I can hold it back knowing that a release is coming. Then today, a day worth mourning, I let it all out. I dive into drink, and I write for you everything that may want to come out. Much of it not worth s**t, but some of it (hopefully) worth sharing with the world. And I can already feel the pressure easing, like an open steam valve when there is no one and nothing to be harmed by it. And true, it may be just that I know my day of release is coming that subconsciously allows me to feel the build up, but I think you, above all, will understand how exhausting it can be to simply be happy some times. Yet, we managed to do it almost exclusively in exchange for these brief moments of resolute despair. Thank you, so much for everything you taught me. For fighting so hard and becoming my best friend before the end. For teaching me so many things worth knowing. And for loving me, unconditionally and at cost to yourself. If more people had fathers like you, this world would be an infinitely better place.
Track 12 from "Remembrance Year" (2012) I do not own the rights to this music. All music and artwork belong to their respective artists.
