The End of the Road

                    “I blinked and you were gone, around the corner and out of my vision”

The rain dropped meditatively against the windshield and dim light shone through the cab of the truck  I was driving. The roar of the engine was white noise and the bouncing seat a gentle cradle, as I rumbled along the highway, and although I was acutely aware of all of my senses, I felt as if I were floating on a fluffy grey cloud.  The air was oxygen rich with the dampness, accentuating the rich smell of oil permeating the truck’s cab. I turned the large black steering wheel to meet the curves in the road, allowing it to ground me to earth and my rhythmic heart beat.

Thumping steadily, the windshield wipers relaxed me into a deeper peaceful state and I drifted along, casually noticing how brilliant the green foliage was blurring by my side window, a sharp contrast to the grey of the day. Suddenly large buckets of rain started thundering overhead, and although I turned the wipers on high, they did nothing to clear my vision of the road.  Panicked, I geared down but it was too late, a millisecond later I knew I was about to hit something dark and ominous. A horrendous crash filled my brain and then everything went black.

I awoke totally disoriented, trying to catch my breath and assess my surroundings. “Where was I?”  reverberated through my brain as I sat up and opened my eyes. Early morning light filtered through my bedroom venetians, centering me and I collapsed against my nest of pillows. Oh! it was only a dream.  Picking up my cell phone from my bedside table, I saw it was 6:28 a.m. and the date was September 14, 2017.

I sighed and laid back, pulling the comforter up to my chin thinking gratefully that I still had another half an hour before I had to get up and get the kids ready for school. My husband David was still sleeping quietly, laying on the bitter edge of our queen size bed.  I always tease him about sleeping on the edge, and he says, “yep, that’s my life, living on the edge.” Breathing deeply and sighing a second time, I closed my eyes and furrowed my brow, trying to remember the last vestiges of my fleeting dream. Who was I in that dream because it felt like I was there and yet, I was looking through someone else’s eyes? What a weird sensation and the more I tried to capture the images, they floated even farther away, like a balloon let loose in the wind, drifting steadily upward. 

 Then I remembered that today was the anniversary of my Dad’s death.

 September 14, 1965.

I’ll never know what happened to him. They say that it had been a hot and dry summer in Hope that year and on the day of his death it had rained cats and dogs. The speculation was that the #1 Highway that went through the Fraser Canyon, where  he had been delivering oil in his Esso company truck, was probably slick, and despite his excellent driving skills, the conditions had been extremely dangerous. The thought was that he was coming too fast towards the American-Creek bridge and when he tried to slow down, his truck hydroplaned into the side of it, flipping the cab of the truck forward and that action, caused a neck injury. We will never know. The first people to the accident were fearful of the truck exploding, so hastily they moved my unconscious Dad out of the collapsed cab, and in doing so, damaged his spinal cord further, cutting off his airways.

 He died on the side of the road.

 “I blinked and you were gone, around the corner and out of my vision”

For years I lived in the shadow of grief, feeling orphaned and alone. Sympathy shrouded me as friends and family whispered, “oh poor Debbie, five is too young to lose a Dad.” I’m older now than he was when he died at age forty five and I understand that the end of his road was the beginning of mine. I guess that is why I write this blog. That is why I have been working on putting my story into memoir form.

Life is precious!

We never know when our road will end. With that knowledge, I scribble away. I write here on my blog, I keep journals, I make lists, I write outlines for potential books, and I’ve been involved  in a writing group for over a year now, composing little vingettes from my life, in hopes that finally, FINALLY, I will put all the pieces of the puzzle together into a semblance of  something worthy of a lifetime.

Having this blog has been fun, as it’s my way to pass on favourite recipes and little stories about my family; my thoughts and ideas about our changing world and how becoming sustainable will help to heal our planet. I want to hold up a candle of peace as well, for our children and their children to follow. Our oldest children will remember most of the stories  but our youngest, our last four, may not, so this is a piece of me for them. After all, who am I kidding, I’m more than half way through my life (if I live to be a centurion) and my path will end. As my husband’s dad, Ron Reynolds, who was in the cemetery business, used to say with a cynical grin,

 “none of us get out of here alive!”

Some days, my brain is so full of marbles rolling around, that I wonder if anything coherent is being churned out but I continue to write. I write for my Dad too. Yes he drove truck for a living but he was so much more. He was a true Renaissance man. A man of honour and integrity. He was hardworking and would do anything for his family. I can remember going to bed at night to the sweet, woodsy aroma of his pipe tobacco in the air and hearing him tapping away on his black, Underwood typewriter, in the small alcove above my room. After his death, we found love poems he had written for my mom, for his children and other deeply moving pieces. Other nights, I would fall asleep to the gentle, hypnotic melodies lilting into my room, while he played his violin or the accordion, both of which were self taught.

Literature and music weren’t his only passions. In the last years, he enjoyed shooting family movies on his Kodak 8 mm camera and piecing those memories together. My favourite times, were family movie night, when we would sit in our darkened living room and laugh over his latest film. He was a man’s man. He loved sports and was a dedicated hockey coach. In the last year of his life we found countless letters he had written to encourage our little town to build an ice rink and after his death we heard that those words were instrumental in making it a reality. He had also coached soccer with his brother Al. Their team had won a very prestigious title in the Fraser valley, highly coveted in those days. Then there were my floating memories of being a young child and hearing my Dad yelling louder than anyone at my older sister’s basketball games. He was so proud of his athletic girls. He was a ladies man too and I know with his good looks and ease on the dance floor, that he left many women envying my mom, who was the love of his life.

For years I felt fearful that I’d never get my story written, so much of it has been wrapped up with the end of my Dad’s life, but in the last ten years his whispers have grown stronger. He has been encouraging me from the other side of the curtain to follow my bliss and get my writing going. Just as he was yelling support to my sisters at their sporting activities, he is now telling me to pick the pieces up and write.

This will be the gift  I leave for my children; for my Dad’s grandchildren and beyond,

                           because you know,  the road goes ever on.

This blog post is in memory of my Dad, “Marvyn Derwent CLark (April 1920- Sept 14, 1965)

Click on the hyper-link “Don Messer’s final song, “Til we meet again,” if you can’t see it above.

Until we meet again, may you be well, happy and peaceful.

Blessings from Hope