Tag Archives: death

ninety more

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“You know dad, nine years old is the best year of my life.”

He’s stretching in bed.

7H30 in the morning. I let him sleep in as much as I could even though it’s a school day. He went to bed at 11 last night.

Really late.

“Dad, I had such a great day.”

“No kidding, ten hours of crazy fun with your cousins at La Ronde (amusement park).”

“More than that, we left like it was not even 10:30 in the morning and and and …”

His eyes are still closed, but the counting and contradicting parts of his brain are fully awake.

“….and yeah so like 10h30 to 9 o’clock, because that’s when they stop the rides, so that’s euh euh, ten and a half hours, dad.”

He stretches with a loud satisfied ‘aaaaahhh’.

“What you don’t understand dad is that like the last half hour it’s like the best because we did The Monster like four times in a row because like the guy you know who measures you? yeah, he like let us ride over and over, because most people were like leaving, you know?”

“Yup.”

The last five minutes in therapy is where everything comes out. The last few points are when the true sports champions rise to the occasion and win. Deadlines, or a noose, focus the attention.

The last moments before death is when you realize that all that matters is love.

The cat jumps onto the bed in the small space available. She butts noses with Noah.

“Okay, Ouaga, I’m going to feed you.” He stumbles out of bed. The cat swipes at him because that,s what cats do. The two head for the bathroom.

“Aaaaaaaaahhhhh, my god!”

“Tired, Noah?”

“Tired, cold and hungry,” he yells from the bathroom over the sound of pouring cat food, loud miauling and morning urination.

We cross paths in the hallway as I head for the kitchen to prepare breakfast and he stumbles to the futon for more rest. He looks up at me with a lazy, satisfied smile.

“Life is good, dad….”.

…and then you die.

“Yes, it is, Noah.”

The other version is ‘life’s a bitch and then you die’ , says this old dog.

Same destination, different ride.

Noah throws himself onto the futon. Total abandon.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

I’m in the kitchen wondering if I should warm the day-old raspberry turnover.

“I love Melina and Vince and I love my whole family. They’re so awesome.”

Last night they got a ride back from my sister and her husband. So at 10pm, Noah was in the living room storytelling his day, surrounded by a forest of trees way taller than him. We all rustled and bent benevolently towards him. He was like a sun filled patch in a clearing. The heart of the forest.

His pleasure became ours.

I poke a finger in the turnover. Still flaky. No need to warm.

As I lay the turnover and a glass of milk in front of him, he sits up and rubs his hands in anticipation.

“Nine years old is really the best year of my life.”

“Ninety more to go.”

“No, dad, like…. .” He starts counting on his fingers.

“Ninety-one, dad, because like my generation, like, I’m sorry to say this but like we’ll live longer than you, so yeah a hundred years is like ninety-one more. Get it?”

“Got it.”

He bites into the turnover which raspberry farts on his fingers. He licks the fruit with an expression of nostril-flaring pleasure.

Yes, life is good….and then you die. But not for a while.

 

serendipity

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“If you don’t find the head, there’s nothing you can do.”

Street corner. 8:18 a.m. The school bus is late.

“Dad?”

“Huhn?”

“In Fossil Fighters, it’s such a cool game because you can dig up like the whole body, but it’s not really a body, it’s really a skeleton because it’s a fossil, get it?”

“Yes.”

“…yeah so, it’s like this… the head is never where the uhm, the rest of the bones are, so yeah, you’ve got to….”

And on and on and on…

Last night I drank scotch while she drank Perrier. We both smoked and talked about Icarus. She was drawn to his flight towards the sun. I was in the labyrinth, with the Minotaur.

Fundamentally irreconcilable.

Today, there is a silence in my body. An acceptance. Come what will.

8:20. Still no bus.

“… so when you find the head of the dinosaur, you can activate it and yeah then you do battle, soooo coool…yeah and you can also…”

By this time I’m generally already home, preparing to head out on a day of walking, writing and occasional writhing. So the passersby are all new to me

A few moments before or after and the whole human landscape is different.

A bright red-head girl comes running out of a house, squealing. Chased by her more burnished red-headed mom.

Crazy fun.

I smile. Meters away, the mom senses my look, she turns and smiles and then resumes her pursuit. Perhaps with a little more delight than a moment earlier.

Tomorrow the school bus will be on time and the redheads will disappear from my world.

Come what will.

“…oh dad, and you know what’s really funny about the game? Yeah, when you find the head if you screw it on the wrong dinosaur it goes all gaga, and then…”

Click click click. The sound of high heels coming closer and then…

“…and then the head drives you nuts, because you can’t get away from the head, man…”

…and then a woman turns the corner at surprising speed, considering her polka dot stiletto heels. She whips her straw bleached blondness as she clicks clicks by with nary a look.

Damn! One of the highest perched sweetest asses I’ve seen in a while. And I live in a neighborhood which is the sweet-ass capital of Montréal.

“…so yeah, it’s like that, dad,” says my boy.

“Yup.”

Noah actually stops talking.

Rare.

Yesterday was a day when nothing went quite like planned. I missed a bus because I had a conversation with an acquaintance, not seen for close to a decade. We crossed paths on a street that I never walk down.

Now and then I change trajectories in my daily peregrinations, for no other reason than that.

He told me he was dying.

He smiled. His life was in order. We hugged. He’s the one who patted my back, then we went our separate ways.

Forever.

I missed my bus. I couldn’t be late. I was auditioning actors for the principal role in my film. I tapped on the window of a taxi waiting at the red light. He waved me in.

“Hello.”

“Welcome, welcome,” says the heavily accented driver. I smell the rich aromas of cumin and cinnamon in his Northern African voice. Tunisia? Morocco?

He turns to me and puts his hand on his heart.

“A thousand thanks.”

“Oh, but what for?”

“For having tapped on my window.”

“Oh!”

The light goes green. He turns and merges into traffic.Throughout the ride we talk about children, his, 18, 26, 28…mine 9 1/2.

When I reach the casting agency, I realize I screwed up. I’m an hour early. I head back out and choose a direction, through streets I know nothing about.

Come what will.

The day ended in an erotically charged conversation with a beautiful woman, for no other pleasure than the serendipitous phrases we discovered on each other’s tongues.

“Dad, dad…the bus.”

8:30. Really late!

He blows me a kiss as the bus turns the corner. I turn the other corner and automatically head home.

Suddenly, I stop.

I turn and head down an alley I never take. The long way home. I’m late so who knows what or whom I will discover.

Come what will.

 

eros and thanatos

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I’ve decided what my epitaph will be. Assuming that there will be a tombstone, plaque, urn, coffee jar or dust pan that will contain my remains and on which there could be a label.

A macabre consideration? Only if death is considered somehow outside life. In fact it is contained in life, like a fruit contains it’s seed.

“Dad, can we go by, you know, that nice one, the one with the really crooked stones?”

That’s when Noah was four. I would have to plan our vehicular itineraries to include the cemeteries he had invariably spotted on previous trips.

“I don’t now why, but I really like seeing them, you know. You know, my friends? They find them freaky.”

“Horror movie freaky? Like Zombie freaky?”

“Yeah, dad. But, like I know zombies aren’t for real. You know dad, in Scooby Doo? Yeah, it’s always a human. Yeah, so that’s it. Why I’m not afraid. You know?”

“Yup.”

“Uhm, dad? We missed it.”

He would crane his neck from the kiddie seat in the back.

“Coming up on your right….now!”

“I see it. I see it.”

Like a kid and candy.

Like when I had my first third-base sexual experience. There was no other place in our world that offered privacy and the guarantee of no parental intrusion. The girl, whose name now escapes me, and I found a quiet grave on which to explore our erotic possibilities. She was afraid of spiders but not maggots. Two happy incompetents excited by life and untroubled by death.

A fruit and it’s seeds.

Now, Noah is nine, going on ninety.

“Dad, did you see like a dead person when you were like a kid?”

“No, I didn’t”

“It was weird you know, uh, seeing Nonna lying there in the uh, uh…”

“Coffin?”

“…yeah, coffin. I miss Nonna.”

His grandmother, my mother, died almost a year ago. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t move my hand back from the urge of calling her.

“It sucks dad, that I don’t have any grandparents.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Where are we going to do Christmas?”

“Like last year, Noah, we’ll invite everybody over to our place. It’ll be nice.”

“Okay, dad.”

We’re walking back from his school. As we do everyday. A half hour, forty minute trek through our neighborhood.

When he was younger and in his kid seat in the back, we would have very profound searching conversations about life and death and family and friends and eternity. Since we had no real eye contact it’s as if he was on a shrink’s couch.

Walking has the same effect.

“Dad, my legs are so tired.”

“Second day of school, makes sense that you’re tired.”

“Can we stop, you know at Kahwa Café. I really want like a merguez sandwich. They make them sooo goo. And this way I can rest too, and, I don’t know maybe we could play chess, remember like last time there was the sidewalk sale?”

We settle down on a couch that the owner has set up on the sidewalk. He and Noah, high-five, rough each other up affectionately. As we wait for our merguez sandwiches, Noah squeezes into me.

“Dad, it sucks that you have to die before me.”

“That isn’t going to happen for a long time, Noah.”

“I know. But still, it sucks.”

“Yeah, it does. But you know, Noah, the way we walk all the time?”

“Yeah, we walk everywhere, all the time.”

“So you know what I’ll put on my tombstone?”

“You mean like there’s always something like, son of… or, uh, uh, father of…?”

“Yeah, and sometimes there’s a sentence of what the dead guy believes. That’s called an epitaph. Mine will be ‘Walking still’, so that you know that I’m still walking with you, even if I’m still. Get it? Still as in always and still as in not moving.”

“That’s a nice one, dad, walking still, haha.”

A silence.

“Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I be like buried with you when I’m dead?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks dad. So, yeah, so like, this way we can share. You know? Walking Still will be really true because we’ll be like, Walking Together. Get it?”

“Great idea.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I have a lemonade with the merguez?”

 

 

 

 

 

bury…

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…the dead

“Check this out, dad. It’s like the most fun I’ll ever have, ever, of my whole life like.”

This was last Friday morning on the way to the school bus. It has been the theme of his week. The upcoming unimaginably wonderful weekend.

“First, Alissa comes tonight and I can go on the computer…”

“Only if you…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know dad, only if I behave right at school. But listen, after I go on the computer, tomorrow … ”

Now that had an impact.

“…tomorrow it’s Edgar’s birthday and we go go go go…hah, did you hear me dad?…yeah we go go go go-karting. Aaaawwwwessssome.”

I must admit go karting is pretty awesome. Small, powerful, smelly vehicles careening around an indoor track in barely controlled mayhem.

Too bad it’s with a bunch of kids who have only recently learned to control their bowel movements, let alone hurtling vehicles.

“Yeah and then, Sunday, it’s the Pokemon Pre-Release Tournament where we get like, eh, you know, sixty, yeah, sixty, imagine sixty new cards that are not even released yet, That’s why it’s called Pre-Release. You understand?”

He’s told me everyday, several times a day for the last few days, so, yeah….

“I understand, Noah.”

“Yeah and then Monday its Halloween and we go to school in costume. Dad we gotta get gray and red and black make-up.”

“On the way home, tonight.”

“We need lots.”

“Of course.”

I’ve learned that you don’t argue about taste or quantities. My feast is another man’s poverty.

“And then, it’s Trrrrrricccckkkk ‘RRRRR  Treeeaaaatttt, oh yeah, oh yeah, aaaawwwweessssooommmeeee.”

He’s still dancing and singing as he disappears into the school bus.

That’s his weekend, so, by definition, it’s my weekend.

The hell with the things undone that rot my life. The unpaid bills, the unwashed dishes, the unswept floors, the unfilmed screenplays, the  women unloved, the depths unplumbed, the heights unconquered.

Saturday, I strap on a helmet and whoop in the noxious fumes of Kartomania.

Sunday, I rah rah and fist pump my future Pokemon Master on his quest through the Univa region.

Monday, I’m the bag man as he roams the streets as the Soul Reaper, harvesting candies in such abundance that I carry two spare bags for the overflow.

Halloween weekend… celebrating the departed through derision, fun and noise.

My illusions are lying in a shallow grave, in between the tombstones of Past and Future.

I have finished mourning them all.

BOOOOO…..you don’t scare me anymore. PPPPFFFFFFFTTTT…. you don’t seduce me anymore.

Focus, dad. Relax, dad. Enjoy, dad.

Just before he disappears in the school bus, this  Halloween Monday morning, my little Soul Reaper flashes me a smile and mouths a silent ‘Aweeeeeessssommmmeee’ complete with fist pump.

I may be slow, but I’m getting the message.

 

 

 

 

she’s dead…

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…dad

7 am Sunday morning.

My bedroom door blows open.

“Dad, dad, bad news!”

I had finally fallen asleep after an insomniac pack of cigarettes while watching the Irish National Hurling championship in Gaelic on a channel with three digits at 4 in the morning.

Weird and unbalanced days…worse nights.

“Whaaaa….!?!”

“Bad news, dad. She’s dead.”

My Mother died two weeks ago. I know she’s dead. My mind (the small part actually operating) races to connect.

“Krustia is dead. She’s floating, dad.”

His goldfish.

“Really?”

I jump athletically out of bed…

(I really do)

…and we rush to the fish bowl.

Noah had just gotten the fish, free from the neighborhood pet shop, as we cruised the sidewalk sale on Mont Royal street.

The fish was floating.

We proceeded to a quick  ceremonial burial “at sea” . The golden cadaver twirled down our brand new, crystalline toilet.

“This way, dad, she goes back where she came from, right?”.

“Yup.”

I won’t tell him she ends up in a toxic bath that will be mulched and sanitized before being belched out into the river.

I have never found the disposal of dead bodies to be anything but empty pomp.

Still. My boy seems to care….so…

“Dad, its sad, you know, that fishes only live like a short time, and humans like Nonna, they like live longer. But its like still too short. It sucks that we don’t live for an eternity.”

Sometimes it feels like an eternity…like when they slowly close the casket on your Mother’s nose and she disappears forever from sight.

Later, my brother in creation, the alter to my ego, or ego to my alter, Marcel, buys Noah a Beta fish, commonly called Siamese Fighting Fish.

“Awesommmmmeeee…..now I have a second pet, that I can like talk to, sing to, you know?”

I know the importance of sharing, that I know.

“I’ll call him Crouncy, dad, cool huh?”

“Real cool.”

I’m just hoping it won’t be floating in the morning any time soon.

Have had enough death….would like to breathe fresh air, fall in love, destroy a tyrant, write a novel, travel to a country where I understand nothing.

I would like to sleep.

 

sunny days…

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…with probable thunderstorms

38 degrees celsius. Sidewalk sale on Mount Royal street. Noah up at 7 am ready to go to David’s Teas to help his buds sell their wares.

“Dad, why can’t I go now?”

“Because they’re not open yet.”

“I could help them!?!”

“No, its technical, adult, commercial…you’ll go help them out for a couple of hours later, and…”

“….I know, I’ve got to listen to them, help but not get uh, in the way, stay calm, remember I’m eight and a half, blah blah….it sucks being a kid, big time.”

Try being an adult. Now that’s a big time suck state.

My brother is travelling across Northern Italy on a wine trip….across the land of my father.

My sister is emptying her basement so it can become the lair for her teenage kids.

I’m accompanying my little merchant in a beloved activity where selling is not about money but about friends and social gatherings.

We are all returning to our lives?

Hardly.

We never left the daily rumble of sun and rain and thunders and pain and sadness and absurd laughs and occasional pleasures.

Death and life are as necessary as a terminus to a bus or a cleanup to a party.

“Dad, can we go now?”

“In an hour or so….”

“Awwww…but dad…”

“Keep talking and it’ll be in a couple of hours or so….”

“Ahhhhhh….”

He runs off waving his arms in semi-mock despair.

My Mother is dead.

I keep having to say it, to realize it.

But remembering the dead does not mean forgetting the living. Make an effort.

“Noah, wanna go for a soft ice cream? Before you go to the tea stand.”

“Really? Youhooooouuuu….”

He’s already down the stairs.

Take advantage of the hot, sunny days gorged with humidity… they are filled with the threat of lightning and thunder, and that’s a good thing.

It must be since its inevitable.

Like life and death and love and hurt.

bitches, madonnas…

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…and their sons

“Dad are you ok?”

Noah has been asking me that question ever since my Mother died, two weeks ago, tomorrow.

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

“Your face went all like sad and long.”

Yes.

“You were thinking about Nonna?”

Yes.

I get ambushed by the sudden realization that she’s gone forever. I know it, but I haven’t metabolized.

“Dad, I’m hungry.”

Breakfast number three for Noah, and he’s been up for a total of 25 minutes.

So many simple gestures are intertwined with memories of my Mother. My day included a quick call to see how she was and to tell her news about Noah.

Funny stories that made her laugh and love him even more.

I thought I was doing it for her, because she lived alone and bored. I now realize she was a loving audience, a witness to my life since birth and, most beautifully, a witness to my new life as a Father.

She was a fan. Finally.

For most of my life she was a bitch. Unhappy, dissatisfied, angry against my dad, against her crushed illusions, against the prison she had constructed in her mind. Against which nothing was possible.

Sad.

As a kid I felt responsible. She was my Madonna. I remember thinking she was so beautiful. Then at night, I would dream she was a witch.

She was both. And I could not make her happy.

As soon as I was old enough I ran away, as far away as I could. Only to pursue beautiful new Madonnas and wonderful bitches. One of them gave me a son.

Noah brought me back to Montreal. Back to my my Mother.

“Dad, this is the best grilled cheese ever.”

His crooked toothed smile is filled with charcoaled bread crumbs.

My Mother was a bitch and a Madonna and most importantly a human being of vast imperfection, to match her vast love for me and my brother and my sister.

Life is a spiral. Round and round as if you’re doing the same thing over and over.

Noah snuggles up. We’re both in underwear watching Scooby-doo before we run off to the school bus.

I don’t remember snuggling with my mom.

Life is a spiral. But at each cycle, you have changed your world.

Noah’s crazy mother was my choice. My less-than-balanced Mother was my Father’s choice.

I carried the burden of her unhappiness for all of my life.

Noah is free of his Mother’s pain.

Life is a spiral where bitches, madonnas and sons of bitches go round and round in a dance of love.

Mine has been beautiful and painful.

Noah’s will be beautiful.

 

 

 

 

big boy…

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…now

“The coolest thing, dad, is that now that like I’m in grade three, I’m on the side of the big kids. Yeah, like last year, we weren’t allowed because we were too small. Now, like I know I’m bigger.”

He straightens out. It gives him a whole micro-centimetre more.

“I grew like this much, this summer.”

He holds up his fingers. The space between his thumb and forefinger is four inches. If he’d grown that much he would have been screaming every night as his bones stretched visibly, like in one of those weirded out cartoons he watches. I know. That’s what happened to me at 16 when I went from fat baby to scrawny teenager in one summer.

“I know that I grew a lot, dad, because my socks hurt.”

I’m surprised by the sudden burst of laughter coming out of my face.

This kid’s my salvation.

He’s beaming at me. He knows.

“Imagine how you’ll feel when you’re in grade six…you’ll be one of the really big boys.”

“Cool.”

He loves everything about his school except that Pizza Day is only every second Friday.

“Yeah, but what really sucks is that like you know I’ll be like ‘Hey, I’m in grade six and I’m the big boy’ and then whoosh, in high school, ‘Oh no! I’m the smallest kid all over again’.”

Little boy becomes big boy becomes little teenager becomes big teenager becomes young adult becomes big man who then shrinks to an old man who becomes ever smaller until he is nothing but decomposition and atoms.

If it grows it will eventually die.

“Enjoy, Noah, you’ll be one of the big boys for three, four years.”

“Yeah.”

He whistles a little tune.

“Dad, do you think I’m taller than Nonna now, I mean Nonna before she died.”

Wham! In the teeth.

My boy has his grandmother on the mind.

The school bus turns the corner. I bend down to hold my little big man. We hug so hard his cap pops off.

We both giggle at the cartoon comedy moment.

As the bus pulls away he waves at me from behind the window.

My day alone has begun.

How do I close the trap door flapping in my heart?

Time….big boy.

Now that I’m an orphan, I’ve got to grow up.

 

 

rest (3)…

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…and freaky stories

Noah is counting fingers on his two hands.

“Nine! Nine hours standing there with a dead body. That’s freaky dad.”

“That’s why I told you to bring books and stuff to distract yourself. We’re Nonna’s family and its a last chance for people who loved her to come and see her.”

“Yeah, but they like come and say hello, then goodbye and they’re gone and we’re there like…”

He stands at attention like an honor guard.

“…forever.”

Forever is what my Mother’s body returns to. Forever are the stories we will continue to tell which will become the tales of my son and his cousins and the distant legends of the generations that follow them.

“Noah, we’ll be the whole family together, that’s what you’ve been waiting for.”

“True, dad, but you know its not fun…its freaky.”

What’s freaky is my Mother meeting my father in war torn Italy. She was 14, he was 21. Their love story ends here, in Montréal, seventy years later, whenshe will be interred in the crypt, head to head with my Father, Fortunato.

To be continued….by three grown children with four growing grandchildren.

All of us taken by emotions and a mutual affection that goes beyond the common lived experiences, that extends deeply enough that my kid, 8 1/2, feels it though he’s seen his cousin Scott, once, his Uncle Enzo, twice, his Auntie Cathy, none.

Its the stories,  filled with meaning and knowledge and mostly funny. That won’t end with that monstrous moment when they will drop the lid of the coffin on my Mother’s face.

“Noah, why don’t you do a freaky cool comic book about Nonna and how though her body is dead, things she knew become things a character like you knows.”

“…like special powers?”

“Why not.”

“And an adventure…oh, no dad, better a quest for a treasure that reveals eeeeverythinggggg.”

The last word in that deep, creepy narrative voice.

“Cool.”

He’s got that, “Quiet, me the artiste is thinking” look.

“Could be a good story…but I would like, you know, not choose that one. I prefer a fun, exciting story with no one I know who is dead.”

“Me too, kid. But that’s why life is freaky scary and freaky cool and why having family and people you love is freaky and beautiful.”

“True dad, true.”

He walks quietly away.

“I’ll go get dressed dad. With my cool white shirt, you know the one I partied with at the day camp. Is that ok?”

“Perfect, Noah.”

From party rock to funeral dirge, same clothes, same humanity.

“I’m going to miss Nonna.”

“Me too.”

P.s. Noah has done a drawing for his Nonna that he will include in the coffin… his Trexx character for which he’s been planning a whole series of world famous comic books, to be published soon, before its made into a movie. With a note, ‘Thank you Nonna for everything and the really good pasta’.

Nonna will have a world preview of Noah’s future creations….stories, stories and more stories.

rest (2)…

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…of our lives

“Dad, we have good times together.”

“We sure do.”

“You’re the best dad ever.”

“And you’re a great kid.”

“Are you ok, Dad?”

“Yeah, I’m just sad.”

“I’m sad, too.”

My mother’s body is being viewed on Thursday, all day. The funeral is Friday. I don’t know which I dread the most.

“Dad, it’s like 1:30, Harry Potter at the Imax starts in one hour.”

“Noah, you know with Nonna’s death it won’t be possible to go to the movies this week.”

“I know. Its ok.”

He’s trying to find the right words.

“Dad I’m just saying, you know tomorrow its the exposition like of Nonna, and then there’s the funeral Friday, and Uncle Enzo he’s leaving at six on Saturday. So like, Sunday, we’re free. I’m just saying.”

Damn, nobody gave him the schedule.  But I guess he’s right… the first day of the rest of our lives.

“We’ll see, kid.”

“Ok. I was just saying, you know.”

“I know.”

“Dad, could I go on the computer tonight?”

I guess the rest of our lives never stopped. Until it does, one day. As late as possible.

Perhaps, mourning the dead is rededicating yourself to the living.

“No, it makes you all cranky before bedtime.”

“Aaaaawwwwwwww.”

Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!

The rest of our lives.