Morbid curiosity

I did an odd thing the other day. It had strange repercussions. 

Having navigated the treacherous waters of adolescence before the advent of social media, most of my misdeeds, failed experiments, and plain awkwardness went blessedly unrecorded, except for those things that I foolishly put in my journals at the time.  This is probably the reason I don't go back to read those entries, so I don't recall if I wrote much about Dale.

Dale was my first kiss.

Oh, there was little that was romantic about it, apart from the thrill of its being my first kiss.  I barely knew Dale, who was a grade ahead of me.  We were both in band; he was in the brass section, and I was in the woodwinds.  I have no idea why he singled me out on a school bus returning from a band performance at a civic function on a distant New Year's Eve.  It was a French kiss, and wildly un-erotic, but I was thrilled at the concept, which seemed to bode well for the new year.

This proved to be the case -- kind of.  I was the girl Dale necked with at parties, although he barely spoke to me at school. On rare occasions, he'd hold my hand or put his arm around my shoulder while walking home.  He'd point out the make and year of every car that passed, something that didn't interest me in the slightest, but I was thrilled at the attention.  He changed schools at the end of the term, and I never saw him again.

Years later, at the annual pre-Christmas Holiday presentation at younger daughter's school, a young man did a rather peculiar presentation on biblical themes.  (It was not a religious institution.) I didn't recognise him, because he was a few grades ahead of younger daughter, but I recognised his unusual surname, and asked him afterwards if he had a relative named Dale.  He said vaguely that there might be someone in the family named Dale, but he had died "a long time ago".

I went home, did a search, but could only find the obituary for Dale's father.  It said that Dale had predeceased him.  The list of living relatives revealed that the vague young man was, in fact, Dale's nephew, so I guessed that Dale had died before he was born.

Family history research has taught me to return to searches after time has passed.  For some reason, it occurred to me to search for Dale this week.  Once again, I ran up against his father's obituary, but tried a few more times, using different keywords.

And there Dale was, in an obit published in The Ottawa Citizen. He died there in an unnamed hospital, some years before we moved to Hades.  One of the few things I knew about him, when we were teenagers, was that he had some sort of heart condition, which would turn his lips blue.  I remember a parent staying with him, when he became faint during a bikeathon to raise money for a band trip, so although I felt sadness, it was hardly a shock.

I did have a shock earlier this year, but the greater trauma of Demeter's death pushed it from my mind.  I have just remembered it while thinking of Dale.

About a week before my mother's final fall, the Resident Fan Boy and I had a couple of friends to dinner, one of whom had attended last year's high school reunion, which I had been delighted to skip.

"Don't blame you," laughed my friend, easily.  "It was great being able to chat with some people, of course, but it was a bit rough seeing that big memorial poster with the names of everyone who's died, particularly Dylan. He committed suicide, you know."

Thunk.  

I knew Dylan way better than Dale.  We were in the same grade, and often the same classes, between Grades Six and Twelve.  I've written about him in this blog before.  We were not friends. Nevertheless, I was shocked, and found myself wrestling with unpleasant memories, and imagining the impact on his children, his wife, and his siblings -- until my mother died less than a fortnight later, and I had a whole new raft of unpleasant memories with which to wrestle.

Four months on, after examining what little I knew of Dale's death, I looked into that of Dylan, wondering if by "suicide", the high school alumni meant "MAID".

I somehow doubt it.  There are three or four obituaries online for Dylan, who was  reasonably prominent.  They are circumspect about the cause of death:  "sudden".  Generally, when MAID has been used, as it increasingly is, the wording is usually something like "on his own terms" or "at the time of her choosing".  The pictures accompanying Dylan's notice show a man with pale skin laced with fine lines, and eyes rather large for his face, little resemblance to the preteen and the adolescent I remember. The obituaries are, of course, glowing testaments to his work. Again, no traces of the calculated cruelty I, and others, experienced in school.

Some years ago, at a gathering of university pals who had also attended our high school, a good friend mentioned Dylan, because he briefly lived in her community. I couldn't help myself, and blurted:  "Is he a nice person yet?"  One of the women bellowed in laughter, but my friend knew the question was genuine, and paused thoughtfully before musing: "I'm not sure..."

Dale and Dylan are both gone, and, for the time being, I'm still here, and I'm not sure I'm a nice person yet.  Letting them both go is probably the kinder thing.

When the old man died

Fairly recently, we reached a notable numbered anniversary for the death of my father-in-law. 

It snuck up on me, but when the realisation hit, I felt no stab of grief, nor did I feel like doing a jig.  He was the Resident Fan Boy's dad, and the grandfather of my daughters.  Elder daughter and the RFB genuinely miss him; younger daughter is too young to remember him.

I'm afraid I don't particularly miss him.  He was high maintenance, and not fond of me.  Nevertheless, I was chagrinned to find, running through my mind on a mildly disrespectful loop:  When the o-o-o-ld ma-a-an di-i-i-ed....

"My Grandfather's Clock" was a fairly regular part of my childhood.  It was a staple of so-called "songs for children" - even though, as a little girl, I found the lyrics quite creepy:  a clock that carefully measures out a man's lifetime and dies when he does?  I have a vague memory of my sister's Grade Two class singing it at assembly:  Ninety years without slumbering - tick-tock, tick-tock - His life's seconds numbering... 

Ick.

Like a lot of songs aimed at children in the late 20th century, it certainly wasn't written for children.  It occurred to me that my daughters, children of the dawn of the 21st century, may not be familiar with the song.  I have no recollection of their ever singing it.

I looked it up and discovered that: a)  the term "grandfather clock" originates with the song; and b) it was written in the 1870s by Henry Clay Work, same guy who wrote the Civil War song "Marching Through Georgia".  Work came from a Connecticut family with strong Abolitionist beliefs, and is distantly related to Frances Work, the mother of Diana, Princess of Wales.

There are probably several parodies of this, but the one I know of is "My Grandmother's Cat" by Garrison Keillor.  It seems to be carefully copyrighted, so I won't put it here, but it's possible to listen to it through Apple Music.

My late father-in-law didn't quite make it to ninety, although I think I remember a grandfather clock in the front hallway.  Don't know what became of it.

Squirming squirrel

 

An unfamiliar movement caught the corner of my eye, as I sat in the living room, doing something else. It took a moment to realize that it was a black squirrel squirming through the dead leaves in the concrete well that constitutes our "patio". It moved on its belly in an odd serpentine pattern, and I noticed that one one of its legs was injured.

I called the Resident Fan Boy, as I watched in growing horror and despair.  The creature was attempting to leap out over the wall, which is roughly thigh-high (for us humans) at one end and knee high at the other.  

The RFB and I consulted the internet and discovered, that for injured squirrels in our province, the institution to call is the BC Animal Helpline (1-855-622-7722).  There was also a suggestion to line a cardboard box with old towels.

"We don't have a box," declared the RFB, who had left a message on the helpline.  (It was the weekend -- of course.) Without a word,  I marched down to our condo building's recycling room, found a flattened small container, reassembled it, and returned, where the RFB was on the phone with someone who had evidently called him back.

They wanted a video, so we scribbled down the email address.  By this time, the squirrel had retreated to a corner by the lower wall, a curled-up fluffy mass of defeat and exhaustion.

I opened the sliding window, and stepped out, closing the screen quickly behind me, although our cat was napping and missing the entire show, which he would have found engrossing.

"The tail is covering the head," I called to my husband.  "They'll want more action than this."

"They suggested scaring him."

"Isn't he terrified enough?"

I took a couple of steps forwards, my phone in video mode.

In a flash, the squirrel sprang over the lip of the wall, and, still moving on his belly, disappeared over the garden soil, farther and faster than I would have thought possible, out of reach and out of our responsibility.

I wondered if he would be able to climb, or whether a predator would get him.

Squirrels die every day, of course.  We just don't witness it.  I was relieved to not have to watch.

The RFB called the helpline to update them.  I suppose we should donate...