A Game of Queens

For the last few weeks, the urge has been strong upon me to play a game of cards called Queens. Now it is no good having the urge by yourself if you have nobody to play it with because it is not a single player game. So, the gnawing sense of needing to play has been tumbling around in the white noise of the day, creeping into silent gaps, and waving for attention. I know the underlying cause, there is a picture of my father on my computer table. He is in the usual stance, shoulders pulled back, arms by his side, and making a funny face. That’s the way he posed for every single picture that he was in by himself if he knew the snap was coming.

If he was corralled to be in one of our wedding or the children’s christening photos, there was still the chance that the developed face would not be “resting face” Dad, but the distorted frame that you got. When he died on February 10^th, 2001, the funeral director couldn’t quite get that proper “resting face” though he was really resting then, because even in death, Dad had the last chance to make a face (just a little one, but I saw it and smiled).

He is gone 23 years today as I write this. There are no tears and not because I don’t miss him or because it’s been 23 years and you can’t possibly grieve somebody for that long, but because he wouldn’t want it. And by the way, only people who don’t experience grief put a limit on it. Do your own grief thing.

The want to have a game of queens is that grief playing in the background sending subtle reminders that somebody is missing, there’s a hole, and that I miss somebody because of it. Back in the day, we wouldn’t get our coats off on any day but would meet Dad walking toward the table with the two decks of cards and the biggest grin. We'd have to have an all-day game with a break for a mug up on the first day of a visit. He wore out some decks of cards and was the most cheerful when he was winning.

He could have had so many reasons not to be cheery because there wasn’t a lot of sunshine for him to brag about. His mother died when he was just a baby, 18 months old, and his dad died when he was a young boy. He lost many of his brothers in their youth and all his siblings moved away. He was a young orphan during the Great Depression which couldn't have been easy. He was working when he was twelve. He spent most of WW2 in the Forestry Unit in Scotland. He learned to read and write on his own and was dubbed to have a grade 8 education even though he hadn’t stepped inside a schoolhouse. He married at 36 and reared a big family with very little. He moved his house from John's Pond to North Harbour all on his own and board by board and then built it back up based on the numbers he’d traced on them as he took them down. Then, not too many years later the house burnt, and five of his ten children were gone. How much more we know nothing about because he never spoke of nor dwelled on hard times.

My father had a reverence for the past. He liked to talk about this old fellow or that old fellow and who he was related to and how. He’d be so proud to know of all the connections we’ve made to relatives in far away lands that are his great nieces and nephews through DNA and my writing. When my oldest daughter was around eighteen months old, he asked me to bring her in one November day. She was born on his birthday, and he wanted to see how big he was when his mother died. He still had memories of her.

As a young girl, I spent lots of time “in the country” with him at rabbits or trouting or picking berries. Bakeapples, especially, required a long hike of more than an hour to get to the right marshes. He had lots of patience with young legs and carried us across rivers on his back no matter how many of us went. And there was always a mug up or two somewhere during the days. He’d light a fire and boil a can of water for tea or bring a thermos or two. The pause in the day was important to him. When all of us got more interested in throwing berries at each other than picking, he’d round us up (not mad or impatient) and we’d head for home.

He also didn’t miss a day going to the church. No matter the weather, he’d rig up to step over our fence and make his way to the church for a few prayers. Even when he broke his ankle, he still went until later in life when his body didn’t allow him to go any longer. He continued to pray at home.

He was resilient because he had to be, a man of faith because he wanted to be, kind because he knew the value of it, happy because he also knew the value of that, and so many more great things that he passed on. Though a man of solitude, he was the epitome of a father by all accounts when we were growing up. I have lots of great memories of all the love that was shown in so many untraditional ways.

We’ve all got stories of how we came quietly into being. My father’s wasn’t remarkable by no means, but like many things, extraordinary happens when nobody is looking. Now I have to round up a crew to have a game of queens.