Monday, March 17, 2014

"Bury Me At Sea" 4

Previously on...

“Bury Me At Sea”: A Father’s Final Voyage 

A WW2 Navy veteran’s request becomes a son’s great adventure




Most of the pressures I felt on November 26 paled in comparison to what I thought lay ahead during discussions with my father.

Fortunately, while anxious thoughts filled my mind I received two gifts that brought some relief.


* * * * * 


The first was the gift of time, and it could not have come at a better one. Because the ground at the cemetery was frozen the interment of mother’s ashes would occur in the spring, so I had three to four months in which to talk things over with my father.

The time was used with benefit in a variety of other ways. My brother, sisters and I had time to plan a wake in the comfortable setting of our family home in Norwich, during which my mother was remembered in conversation, stories and song by all, including many thoughtful friends. (At no time did anyone mention they really missed the opportunity to stand out on the frozen tundra to say a final goodbye to my mother while facing into a biting Canadian wind). My brother had time to search for and find a ceramic orb for our mother’s ashes, and I had time to find a wooden box - formerly for someone’s 78 rpm record collection - and velvet bag, into which the orb would be placed and later lowered into the ground.

The other gift was that of sound advice. Glen Pearson, a neighbour in London and the best of friends during the best and worst of times, heard about my plight and responded with a few very helpful ideas. He felt it would be worth mentioning to my father that a burial at sea offers surviving family members no place to go to visit and remember ‘the dearly departed’, e.g., at significant dates during the year, like on a birthday or Father’s Day. On the other hand, a grave site in or on the outskirts of mother and father’s hometown, and a suitable gravestone upon which both parent’s names are inscribed, provides a definite place for sons and daughters and other family members to visit and think good thoughts.

After doing a bit of research I found I could bury father at sea by going aboard a Canadian Navy vessel (e.g., HMCS Sackville, Halifax) at a prescribed time or by mailing cremated remains to a certain pastor with connections to the military, and that a detailed map is provided with the exact location of burial in Halifax Harbour, but I felt the map would not provide the same type of connection to my father - once dead and buried - as an actual site in our long-standing hometown.

Armed with such options and ideas, I slowly nudged my father to think about what he felt the best course of action would be as we considered our shopping list of future responsibilities, i.e., purchasing and preparing a grave site along with a fitting gravestone before the spring thaw.

Fortunately, we both liked big cups of hot coffee and long car rides in the country together. So, on (just about) every Saturday during the winter of 2000 and spring of 2001, I’d pick him up at the front door of London’s Parkwood Hospital (he moved there shortly after mother’s death) and we travelled up this country road and down that one - just following our noses, my father would say - and when the time felt right, I’d ask, ‘slow and easy’, like a man who had about four years to decide and not four months, what he thought about this option, i.e., a single grave site for mom; or that one, a double for both of them. Or this one, i.e., a grave site on Quaker Street (north-west of his hometown); or that one, in a harbour near Halifax.

["SS Silver Walnut under construction. Details to follow"]

“No pressure,” I’d say. “Take time to think and I’ll see you same time next Saturday.”

I kept my siblings informed about our progress by email and only by studying them closely could anyone discern whether I was both inwardly and outwardly calm at the same time. But I say now that the discussions with my father didn’t result in an ulcer like I thought it would. (It could be true I have, at times, an overactive imagination).

As weeks went by and a long list of winding roads in Middlesex, Elgin and Oxford counties became more familiar to us both, we not only got closer to final answers but grew closer as father and son. At the beginning of our travels together a medium coffee was all we had time to drink before I dropped him back at Parkwood, and I was sometimes hesitant to get to the point of the matter. As spring approached only a large coffee would satisfy our needs (and sometimes we’d stop at a small town along the way and pick up refills), and it seemed we both approached issues together more confidently. Talks about mother were not only getting somewhere but doing us both some good.

Finally, the day arrived, not by accident but by some small surprise, when just thinking about things had to come to an end and final decisions had to be placed upon the table. And I found I had little trouble turning to him after we’d taken a second look at gravestones in Norwich and asking the question: What do you think you’ll do?

More to follow.

Bury Me At Sea 3

Photo by GH

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