Category Archives: Stories about Dad

I will continue on where my story left off but from my point of view. I think I wrote the first part of this story in a way so I could distance myself long enough that I could write it, but I am ready now.

The days that followed my father’s death were a mixture of family and friends, tears, wine, karaoke and planning. I will never forget the song I leaned on to get me through the first few days of shock, grief and pain, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’. Belted out by Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, it was and is my saving grace. With a mixture of my loud voice and unending tears, I sang that song in every quiet moment I had to myself.  

Those moments were, however, very few and far between, as we had an average of 15-20 people at any given moment in the house, but the company was nice and it was necessary, at least for me. 

I have noticed that we distract ourselves with the planning of funerals. It’s a small reprieve the Creator grants us so we don’t get forever lost in our pain. Mind you some still do but I wanted us to plan this right for our Dad so we could honour him, Gilbert Cheechoo style. 

My younger brothers were a source of love that fit in perfectly with all of our grieving hearts. They were the 2 youngest of us 10 siblings, and they brought me out of the dark.  They brought me out of that dark place I wanted to stay in, live in, cry in, breathe in and never return from.  They do anything specific, they just had to be them and I just needed to be around them.  One day soon I will thank them for that, when I can explain to them exactly how they saved me.

I won’t speak for my grown siblings when it comes to our Dad but I can say that they saved me too. When everything was bleak, we had our bond, our love for one another.

Before I continue on, I have to talk about one thing- the negativity that can arise when death occurs. It may have surrounded certain pieces of my Dad’s death, but is purposely going unnoticed in all parts of my story. Why? You may ask. It’s because everyone all around, including me, was reacting, not as themselves, but as the shocked form of themselves. We were all not ourselves and I plead forgiveness for my ‘unself’. If negativity still lingers for anyone, my Dad’s death did not contribute directly to that but perpetuated feelings that were already there.

There… now that I got that out of the way, I can continue on.

My youngest daughter who was with me when the accident occurred cried for days, and I cried along with her.  She cried in the arms of my Dad’s partner. She cried for the boys who would never get to know their father in this life. She cried every time we talked about him. But fortunately, she found distraction in the loving chaos of our house and when a good friend took her off and on over the next week.

My older girls were a wonderful source of laughter along with my Dad’s step-daughters and niece-in-law. Although we we didn’t know any of them really well, it didn’t stop them from playing and smoking and talking with each other, and being there to support us older ladies who needed it. I will always love them for that.

I received a card from my step-sister afterwards that had me crying (yes, I am a crier) but it was something that I didn’t expect. Kitchi-miigwetch Jayde, I love you. I don’t know if I ever told you that.

People were coming. We had to clean the house. Drink a bottle or two of wine a night. Prepare, prepare, prepare. And I believe I drank at least a bottle of wine a night for the next 7 days. Or maybe few weeks, after. But we gotta do, what we gotta do.

So, the million dollar question–how did we do it?  How did we plan a funeral for someone with 10 brothers and sisters, 10 children, and many relations?

Well. I would like to think that we did it by focusing on my Dad, or —“The World According to Gilbert Cheechoo!” I told my Dad many times over the years that I was going to write a book titled that, and he loved it.  His ego took a big boost the day I proposed that book title to him.  

I smile now as I write this, thinking back on that memory, hearing his voice and his laugh. I can still picture the look on his face.

All of the family contributed something but we didn’t have a ‘traditional’ funeral… it was a Traditional funeral. And we had to make it as extraordinary as my Dad was, as someone who challenged the very fabric of our mainstream thinking and pushed us to be woke, to look behind the curtain and pull it down.  We had to, it was the only way.

Family and friends continued to come and go, with some faces we had not seen in a very long time. We all shed tears, held onto each other tight and condolences, oh how they are bitter-sweet, but always welcome. And those little boys, still maintained as a comfort. 

But we still hadn’t seen everyone yet. We were still in Timmins planning, remotely with family up north, as we waited for his body to be released.

As it got closer to us packing everyone up and heading north to bring Dad home, we received a phone call. It was the funeral home. They told us they couldn’t release the body without a positive ID, which meant that family would have to identify him or we would have to wait beyond our plans to bring him home until the Coroner could make the ID with dental records.  

We were semi devastated as we did not want this process to linger on.

We had plans. The funeral home had already refused our request to see our Dad as the accident had been a rather bad one, so we were in a dilemma.  

Then Eric stepped up.  

He had been a cop for almost 40 years and had seen more bodies than any of us put together. It was decided Eric would be the one, so we called and let the funeral home know we were coming.

After Eric and I got to the funeral home, it took, what seemed like hours to me, to positively identify my Dad.  I waited in the front Lobby for him until he finally came walking down the hall and we left.

Afterward, I had so many questions, which he answered patiently. Not that I don’t doubt that everything was handled well, but when he told me that it was definitely my Dad and that he could tell it was him, I cried.  I cried from relief that we knew it was him for sure, and from extreme sadness that we knew it was him for sure. I also cried for Eric for having to see my Dad that way, and out of extreme thanks and grateful that he did that for us, so that my Dad’s journey, and ours, would not be delayed.

To be continued…

I have purposely skipped over parts of the full story, like the Memorial that was put up, and other smaller stories within the story that I would like to keep to myself for now. I will share them in time. Meegwetch.

Once upon a time, in a small suburb of a small city, there lived a woman named Catherine.

She woke up one cold but sunny January morning and in usual fashion, and slowly got herself ready for work.  Her daughter and partner were still asleep, as were the overnight guests who had come in off the train the night before.  She made herself some toast, grabbed her backpack and off she went to work.

She arrived at her office which was pretty quiet as it was a slow-down Christmas holiday schedule and she was only one of three people in the office that day.  Her two co-workers laugh could be heard all through the floor as she got comfortable in the boardroom, her office for the day.

She did her rounds in the office and made casual chit chat with her co-workers, before getting settled with her laptop.  She scrolled Facebook for a while and saw that there was another accident on the highway, and then scrolled on not giving it a second thought.

She checked her messages as her Dad was supposed to travel in the night before for a doctor’s appointment.  He was bringing in Christmas presents and was going to be coming to see their new home.  She wanted to let him know that she will come and drop by the house from work once he was done with his appointment. But he wasn’t answering, so she assumed he was still sleeping.  She messaged him again and the messages were not going through at all, but she still didn’t worry too much. It was only 9:30 am and his appointment wasn’t until 11.

She messaged with his partner, who was going to pass along the…well… message.

Catherine took a quick break from work and checked the time.  It was almost 10:30 and she still hadn’t heard from her Dad. She called the hotel and they put her through to his room so she hadn’t thought the worst yet, at least he was there, wasn’t he?  She was concerned at that point, and she told her co-workers she was going to go look for him.

She left the office, got in her vehicle and drove to his hotel.  On her way there, she called the doctor’s office, but they hadn’t heard from him.  As she got closer to the hotel, she called her sister and told her what was going on.  She pulled into the parking lot and told her she would call her back once she found their Dad. She knew he was driving a black Dodge van, and there was one parked there in the lot, which was a relief.

She walked into the hotel and proceeded to explain the situation to the front desk attendant.  Since she told them that her Dad knew the owner, and the seriousness of the situation, they gave her a key to her Dad’s room so she could check on him.

She walked down the long hallway, and once she got to his room she stood outside and paused. She then swiped the key and went in … and found nothing.  No bags, no shoes, and more importantly, no Dad.  She felt a sense of relief, but only for a moment, having had images of her Dad in the room having suffered a heart attack. Relief was temporary — he was not there. Which then begged the question, where was he?

She went to the front and told them nothing was in the room. The front desk attendent looked confused and checked the files. There was a note in his file that said he did not check in. Her father was usually checked in ahead of time, which is why the room key worked. But a last-minute note from the late shift said he did not check in the evening before.

Once it was explained to Catherine, she got on the phone with her partner and told him what was going on.  He was a Police Inspector for the north, and she told him to call the local and provincial police and she would go to check the hospital. She was told that the black Dodge van in the parking lot belonged to the cleaner, when she explained further to the lady at the desk why she thought he was there.

She got back in her truck and left to the hospital. She called her father’s partner, who was already worried and told her not to worry until they knew what was going on.  She then called her sister back and told her she was on her way to the hospital.

As she drove, the images were so clear and crisp. The streets she drove up to get to the hospital, the bright sun shining, the cold chill in the air. It was almost noon and the question of where her father was had still been left unanswered.

She was almost at the hospital when she got a call, it was her partner. He asked her where she was and she said, “I’m almost at the hospital.”  He asked her to come home, so that they could both go together.  After they hung up, she turned around and headed home.  She called her sister again and told her she would call her back once she picked up her partner and they went to the hospital.

A sinking feeling came over her and she felt it in the pit of her stomach as she drove home, but she drove. It took about 15 minutes for her to get there but it felt like hours.

As she drove up to the house, she saw her guest, a cousin and her partner having a cigarette outside. While she pulled into the driveway, she watched her guest and cousin go directly inside.  She turned off the truck and got out slowly, and as she walked up to her partner to see if he heard anything, she will never forget the look on his face or the sound of his voice.

He shook his head, his eyes were broken, and he said, “there was an accident…..” he paused for a moment, “and he didn’t make it.”

That was the exact moment her heart broke.

She cried, “no, no, no, no…” but a million no’s could not have erased the heartbreaking truth in his words.  They stayed outside while she cried, and he held her.

Things were a little blurry after that for Catherine.

After composing herself as best she could, she went into the house.  She did not have the heart in that moment to tell her daughter, so she rushed past her and went up to her bedroom and called her sister right away.  She felt like she was in a dream, a horrible nightmare.

After they talked and cried for a while, her sister told her that she wanted to be the one to call her Dad’s partner and tell her what had happened, as they were close.  They agreed that Catherine would call everyone else and they hung up.

She took a minute, then dialled her Granny’s number.

“Hi Granny, it’s Catherine,” she said as she tried to hold back her tears, “There was an accident….”