RONALD JOHN VELEY

Condolences & Memories (1 entries)

• I have a picture of my father, dead now these past ten years. It is summer in this picture; the colour of the sky is changing from light to Alice blue with a few milk-coloured clouds settling near the horizon. My father is standing on top of a small pile of large, heavy planks of wood, painted black and crisscross-stacked, resting upon a base with four large iron wheels of the same colour. Behind him is a cannon, facing away from him and aimed just over a short rampart of pale granite stones. He is wearing a pale, yellow-green t-shirt and denim jeans the colour of midnight. Hanging around his neck by a thin strap is a black nylon pouch with blue trim; I do not know what it contains - a camera, perhaps? On his left wrist is a medium-sized wristwatch and on his right elbow, peeking out just below the sleeve of his shirt is what appears to be a tensor bandage. He is facing the sun, his eyes squinting as he peers into the distance. I cannot quite tell if he is smiling. He looks happy. I miss my father. I knew him as a quiet man who worked hard, and he loved to laugh, making jokes whenever he could. He had recently re-married only a few years before he died, and he and his new wife were travelling regularly to various exotic vacation destinations. His death was the result of a series of strokes, unexpected and sudden, as is often the case with death. When we received the news, my sister and I flew back to Winnipeg, our home town which had stopped being home for over ten years by that point, to be with our stepmother. He was in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital, breathing quietly, peacefully, as though only resting, about to wake at any moment. The truth, however, was that his brain had already lost and had admitted defeat, even if the rest of his body didn’t know it yet. After spending hours at the hospital, we went back to our stepmother and father’s home and waited. The expected call came the next afternoon, and we began the preparations for the funeral. There was a viewing of his body at a nearby funeral home, and then a couple of days later, his funeral, both equally sombre events, attended by co-workers of his, as well as family and friends. He was cremated and I went to the funeral home to see him one last time, his body now laid out in a cardboard box, sitting on top of a gurney in the small, brightly lit crematorium. His body was cold, waxy and still; I touched his forehead and said good-bye. It took nearly two hours for his body to be transformed by the flames and heat, and I waited in an adjoining parlour the whole time. It was mid-March, but I remember that it was snowing that day, the sky the colour of ash. I miss my father. I miss his laughter, the sound of his voice. Whenever I look at pictures of myself, I often see him looking back at me, like a ghost lurking just beneath the skin. Perhaps we were secretly more alike than either one of us knew or could admit. Were he still alive, I often wonder if he would have any advice for me on getting older, if there was a way to do it with a certain amount of grace or style that he had discovered. But there are no lessons being passed from father to son here. That is all there is to this story: my father died, and you will die, and I will die, and that is all I can promise you. In the meantime, you live. If there is one commandment, it is this. You live until you die. - Posted by: Sean Veley (Son) on: Feb 24, 2013