The Pique seems to be full of eulogies lately, so let's call this something else. A homage maybe, or a posthumous thank-you note to a man who is no longer with us - us being the small and somewhat fractured Mitchell family.
I was a day late. If I could have arrived a day earlier, or my dad held on a day longer, then I would have been able to say goodbye properly. One of the last sounds he could have heard in this world would have been my two year old daughter Elly telling him all about the airplane ride.
Arriving at Toronto airport I was sad to hear that Pop, as my brother and I called him, had passed away as we were flying in, but at the same time I was also proud. We all suspected that he was not long for this world, and I suspect that he suspected the same. He was no optimist. And after a dozen or so hospital stays in the last three years or so my father bravely said "nope" to yet another trip, and the staff at the seniors' centre made him as comfortable as they could for that last day or so of his life. He may have been afraid to fly, but in the end he wasn't afraid to die.
Death just wasn't a topic he took all that seriously.
He always said that funerals were a waste of money and called graveyards "the biggest waste of real estate." He was of the opinion that all of the tombstones in Mount Pleasant Cemetery (the largest in Canada, if you're holding your breath driving by) ought to be ripped up and the area made into a park.
"Just drop me on the curb in a hefty bag," he would say. Often. Not because he had a death fixation, but because he smoked a pack a day, drank huge quantities of cheap beer and ate red meat like he was on display at the zoo. He was realistic enough to know that those things would probably kill him, and called his shot so to speak.
There were a few tears, many shed by me as I drove more than six hours round trip to get his ashes. He lived away from Toronto the past 15 years, but it only seemed right to bring his remains back to the city he lived most of his life and spread them as a family.
There would be no funeral, as per his wishes. In fact, my father made all the arrangements with a group called Simple Alternatives. Everything cost less than $2,000 and they delivered Pop in a plastic bag in a plastic container, wrapped in a plain brown wrapper with his name on a label. My father even had the foresight to save enough of his pension to cover the cost.
But while I'll admit to tears, there was also a lot of laughter as we remembered James Barry Mitchell. He was a funny guy.
For one thing, he was accident prone. If he wasn't bashing himself over the head with the garage door he was falling through a fibreglass balcony cover while trying to sweep off some snow, smashing the patio furniture to pieces. He nailed himself to some things. Glued himself to other things. Once he sponge plastered the stairs to the basement before we had a chance to move the furniture down, then had to go back and paint over the blood. He must have launched himself 10 feet the first time he rode a T-bar.
A few years ago my dad broke his back and never stood up straight again. It was the beginning of the end for him in a way and he got weaker and weaker since then, but even that story had its funny side. He broke it while carrying a friend's lame German Sheppard up some stairs, and falling backwards. He spent something like an hour waiting for help, with a 70-pound dog on his chest.
Pop was a great storyteller. He was self-deprecating and could keep a crowd entertained with his tales - many of them from his old hunt camp that involved falling off cliffs and getting chased by wild animals. In his final hours my mom said everybody in the centre stopped by to say a few words, and my dad had only been in that place a couple of months.
My dad knew things. He knew the names of birds and ducks, of trees and plants. He was an outdoorsman through and through, not being strong enough as a boy to play sports after surviving polio as a child. He knew railroads and rail companies. He knew current events. He collected railroad stuff and duck decoys and antiques like barometers. He liked machines - lawnmowers and snowblowers and leaf blowers and things. We were the only family in Toronto with a chainsaw in the shed, which was weird in a way but after a storm my dad was the most popular guy in the 'hood.
If you're wondering, we spread Pop's ashes in a wetland so he could be close to ducks. We didn't see any that afternoon, but a turtle popped to the surface of the water to say hi. He would have liked that.
