Story Time: Bury Me At Sea (4)

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

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

Part 3 of the story concluded as follows:

Today, though he has been gone for eleven years, (my father and I) are very close and have very much in common. But when he was alive we kept very busy with our own lives, including our homes, hobbies, sports and hundreds of other activities, and very seldom shared serious conversations about important matters. Such is life, my father would say.

About my ‘no worry, no hurry, Dad’ attitude in 2001, I say I got lucky.

As well, I say my mother’s death broke the history of silence between us and helped make the impossible possible.

* * * * *

The Impossible Is Possible

‘Round about 1953, during a Sunday drive on the only south-bound road out of Burgessville, Ontario the family car caught on fire. My mother expressed heated concern about the smoke entering the car so my father pulled over to the side of the road and hit the brakes. Everyone important to me jumped out of the car and, with me, stood safely in a nearby ditch. Dad then popped the hood and smoke flew everywhere.

The car caught on fire near the fiery red tip of the toothpick! GH

I was four or five years old at the time and cannot recall how long we stood in the ditch or how we got home. But I do know this - that car ride was the most exciting of my short little life.

The most exciting car ride of my adult life took place during the early months of 2001, not far from Burgessville as well.

My father and I were heading east together on Quaker Street, toward Norwich, and looking at a few of his bluebird houses located on a family farm that was also home to a wee golf course. Conversation was steady, friendly.

Exciting Ride 2: Quaker Street (blue line), runs east to west,

one mile north of where 'Norwich' appears above. GH

One of Dad's birdhouses on Bertrand's farm, Quaker Street

And he turned to me and said, “I’ve decided about where I’ll be buried.”

He could have picked a better road before telling me. Quaker Street is very narrow and hilly where we slowly cruised, not a shoulder within miles, just steep-banked ditches. I felt the moment was very dramatic but I sat still in my seat, didn’t white-knuckle the steering wheel and kept the car safely on the road. I just turned my head toward him for a second and nodded.

“I’m going to be buried in Norwich with Edith,” he said. He didn’t go into details.

Surely I said something wise and discerning, like “That’s a good decision, Dad” or “I think you’re doing a really good thing”, but I honestly forget if I even spoke a word.

In spite of my earlier thought, he couldn’t have picked a better road before telling me. Shortly thereafter we remarked on spectacular snow-covered scenery on the south side of the road where a railroad line from the Norwich Co-op to Woodstock used to be, where his mother used to walk to take meals to his father at the old tile yard. And a minute after that we passed the new Quaker Street cemetery where mother would be at rest in a few months.

With his decision made I felt relief. My family could go ahead confidently with plans for our mother’s interment and I could get final arrangements made related to particular notations and symbolic etchings on a double gravestone. And I found consolation in the knowledge that my mother’s burial wishes had been granted, that she would not be buried alone.

Had I been a wiser, braver son I might very well have turned to my father and asked how he felt about not being buried at sea, or what factors helped him choose the one over the other. But I wasn’t that son. While he was alive we never discussed the matter again.

After his death, however, it came up - and not out of the blue - one more time.

More to follow.

But first, more photos below of Doug Harrison's birdhouses at Bertrand's farm:

The Impossible Is Possible (continued)

With his decision made, plans for mother’s interment went ahead without any hitches, and she was buried at the Gordon Walker Cemetery on Quaker Street, Norwich in the spring of 2001, mere steps away from the remains of her childhood church.



For the most part, my father’s life and my own went on day by day without hitches as well. He kept busy with several activities at Parkwood Hospital, London (his last place of residence) and I kept busy with several of my own pursuits. And, as in the past, our lives generally intersected on Saturday afternoon at one o’clock. I’d drive to Parkwood to pick him up for coffee and a ride in the country and he would be waiting at the door, looking for me.

When we travelled together the atmosphere inside the car was warm, comfortable. Our first stop was always the same, a coffee shop at Commissioners and Adelaide two blocks from the hospital. We sought out and arrived at interesting destinations by slowly zig-zagging along backroads - south and east of London more times than not (towards Norwich perhaps... a homing instinct?) - and as the car meandered so did our talks.

During one we discussed selling the family home in Norwich. He made the final decision to ‘go ahead’, so I went ahead, sold the house, paid the final bills (with the help of my wife) and passed along the proceeds as he desired.

19 Washington Avenue, Norwich, 1917

While involved in the process I made a significant connection.

Upon seeing the house for sale, Mr. and Mrs. Byle, my father’s next-door neighbours, decided to buy the house for their daughter. I was as happy as a clam to sell the house quickly to people known to the family, especially my mother and father, and I was astute enough to set one informal condition.

“Mr. Byle,” I said, “Someday you’ll likely think about tearing down the old barn, and when you do, I want you to call me. I’d like to have some of the lumber from the inside walls.”

He agreed to call. We shook on it and we both filed away the agreement in the back of our minds. But I’m ahead of myself.

During another ride, after the sale of the house, my father told me a form of cancer had returned to him, and that he wasn’t going to fight it again.

“I can’t bear to go through any more operations. The cure is worse than the disease,” he said.

On that day, the implications of what he said seemed clear and I struggled to find encouraging or comforting words to fit the moment. I muttered something about how he at least could make his own decision with a clear mind (“That’s a lot more than others can do,” I said) and that I was proud of him for talking to me about it.

Gord and Doug stopped meandering long enough for a photo. 1969

"Cabbage. 17 cents each. Not bad, eh Dad?"  "If you like cabbage!"

As usual, more details were sparse, slow in coming. My brother and sisters likely know more about his actual condition then, and I’m sure the health care system is sitting on a tonne of informative medical files related to my father’s various aliments, but at the time we just drove on together, eyes on soothing countryside, down another road, around a corner and down another road, and around another corner and down another road.

My father died, none too peacefully, on February 3, 2003 in his room at Parkwood Hospital, less than two weeks after our last car ride together. The ground at his chosen burial site in his hometown was frozen and plans were made for another spring interment. During preparations, not one word or any thoughts concerning burial at sea were ever discussed.

I told my four siblings I would build a box for his cremated remains because I had the perfect lumber - but not, as things turned out, the perfect set of plans - on hand in my workshop.

More to follow.

Please click here to view Bury Me At Sea (3)

Doug Harrison (RCNVR/Combined Operations 1941 - 45) and members

of the Effingham Division at HMCS Stadacona, Halifax, late 1941

Unattributed Photos GH