A Tribute in Words and Photos

My dad died last month.

It still feels strange to type that. We knew it was coming—it was a gradual fading from life, not a sudden or violent exit. But even though we had months to prepare (and I know how blessed that makes us), the reality still catches me off guard. Grief hits out of the blue sometimes, a mourning possibly less for him (because he was as ready to go as he could have been), and more for myself and all the things I’ll never get to do again.

I’ll never be able to hug him again or talk to him on the phone. I’ll never be able to tell him I love him and hear him respond, “I love you too, dear” (always sounding slightly surprised to hear me say the words aloud). The clock ran out, and now I’m mourning all the last times I didn’t know were Last Times.

But that’s not what this post is about.

This is about my dad—who he was…what I’ll always remember.  

My parents met when my dad was 44, the same age I am now. He was a solitary English bachelor living with his dog on the coast of Nova Scotia, repairing fishing gear and renting out a small cottage to tourists.

In the late ‘70s, he rented the cottage to an eccentric American writer. She fell in love with the province, and then the cottage…and then the landlord. She changed his life forever.

My brother and I grew up knowing our dad was “old” and hearing stories about life in England during World War II (he and his mother were almost hit by a V2 bomb once—a story that excited me as a kid but terrifies me now). He introduced us to the music of Fats Waller and Benny Goodman and sang us old radio jingles when he tucked us in at night (“Brylcream, a little dab’ll do ya…”).

He was soft-spoken and unassuming, but people who met him never forgot him.

My dad lived life with a twinkle. He loved whirligigs, miniature steam locomotives, handmade wooden toys, and classic British comedy routines.  He told the funniest bedtime stories and took the silliest photos. He could be reduced to tears of laughter by a well-timed fart joke.

When he got a partial denture, he would joke about his “plastic parts” and solemnly stare at you while he created a hilarious snaggletooth with it. When he was scheduled to receive a radioactive implant to treat a touch of cancer, he immediately ordered a Geiger counter online so he could see if he would set it off after the operation (he did, much to his delight).

I miss him so much.

My dad was naturally drawn to ritual. He had apple slices, aged cheddar, and bread and butter (sometimes spread with Marmite) for breakfast most days. He had specific mugs for tea or coffee, depending on the day of the week. His tea of choice was Morse’s, steeped in a mug and “stewed” in the microwave at 30% power for 3 minutes. He always took it with milk—not cream, and never sugar (one long-ago landlady had always served tea with slightly rancid cream, another had loaded it with too much sugar, and they both had a permanent effect on his preferences).

He played old-school jazz when he washed the dishes—the sound of those tinny brass orchestras blaring from the stereo. He read and napped in the sunroom every afternoon, stretched out on his specific chair. He had an evening beverage of choice that slowly evolved over the years (my husband remembers years of nighttime Dark & Stormies).

My dad always wore light tan pants or shorts (never jeans), a button-down, and a V-neck sweater in colder weather, with socks and sandals, sneakers, or boots depending on the season. He wore earth tones almost exclusively, and my mother would knit him sweaters (and many, many socks, which I recently inherited). The front pocket of his button-down was always stuffed with writing implements and whatever focal-length glasses he wasn’t wearing at the time (he preferred to switch between pairs of dollar store glasses instead of getting bi- or trifocals). I only discovered after his death that he used actual pocket protectors, which explains how the shirts survived the strain!

My dad loved what he loved, and he was in for the long haul. For 73 years, he regularly chatted with people from all over the world on his ham radio (his memorial page is full of tributes from hams all over the world). For over a decade, he gleefully drove a vintage, right-hand-drive Land Rover with his dog or a giant teddy bear riding shotgun, to the great consternation of other drivers—the locals still talk about it. He restored an ancient Ford tractor and happily rode it in the antique car parade one Canada Day, proclaiming that both the tractor and the driver were antiques, with a combined age of—I forget what it was, but something truly astounding and well over 150.

When I was small, my dad had a tiny sailboat and would head out on the bay for a sail (and a break from our chaos, I imagine. He couldn’t stand a ruckus—now that I’m grown up, we have that in common). His ancient cider press was eventually donated to a museum, but I remember us all working together on the back porch, squashing the juice out of bushels and bushels of apples.

He brewed hard cider and beer for years. He could build or repair almost anything and often did—when my husband and I moved into our house, he extended the life of our crappy kitchen chairs for half a decade, at least.

The years caught up with him in the end, but this is the dad I’ll remember, “old” but also ageless, moving gently to his own rhythm (not dancing—never dancing). Puttering from sink to ham radio to garage to workshop and back. Quietly supportive, if occasionally bemused, appreciative and kind, and creating wonderful things without looking for fanfare of any sort.

He would be mildly taken aback to know I wrote this and put it “out there” for other people to read—I hope that, wherever he is now, he understands and knows how much he means to me.

One of the last things he told me was how proud he was of the people my brother and I have become, but the truth is that I’m just as proud of him.

I love you, you old fart.