Dada, I Hardly Knew Ye

The first part

My Dada died in 1963. I wish he’d died sooner.

He had emigrated from Ireland to Canada with my Nana in 1961 to live with us, as my mother was an only child and she had discovered – when she and I went back to Belfast for a visit – that he’d had a stroke. My mother was made of sterner stuff than I. I would have immediately returned to Ireland to be with my parents, never mind my husband’s great ambitions that couldn’t be realized as a Catholic in 1950s’ Belfast. My mother – and I dither between the wisdom vs love in this – instead, with my father, brought my grandparents to Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 3000 miles west from everything they’d ever known.

That was my mother. Loyal to both parents and husband. I deeply admire that in her, but I also feel it would have been better 1) to move back to Belfast or 2) leave my grandparents where they were, amongst relatives and friends and the world they’d known for more than 70 years.

It’s only now, that I’m nearing 70, I realize what an overwhelming and formidable decision, and trip, that must have been for my Nana. Yes, she wanted to be with her only child and only grandchild and, yes, it would be good for her husband to be with his nearest and dearest, but…after a stroke?

We know much more now about strokes and dementia and all those things that inveigle the brain and destroy the most beloved of memories – along with so much that is practical and requisite – but, then, in the early 1960s here in Ontario, little was known, if indeed anything.

Sixty years on, knowing my Dada had Alzheimer’s, complicated by a myriad of strokes, and still not yet recovered from my mother’s suffering through the same combination of despicable diagnoses – though she’s been dead nine years – I firmly believe the decision to bring my grandparents here was an unfortunate one.

When we lived in Belfast, we went to St. Agnes Church. It was at the end of the street, Riverdale Park East, where both we and my grandparents lived. My grandparents were very religious; both were lay members of The Franciscans (and both buried in Franciscan robes), and attended Mass daily at St. Agnes Church. My Dada, Frank, a well-known tenor throughout parts of Counties Antrim and Derry (amateur though he was), sang in the Chapel choir, whenever he was needed…which, as I have come to understand it, was often. St. Agnes Church was the centre of his existence once he and my Nana had moved to Belfast to be near my parents and me.

But, then, suddenly, he was in Canada. At the time, when I was five or six, I didn’t really know him. There wasn’t much to know as he was rather a blank slate. I knew my mother adored him, as did my Nana, but he seemed only ever to be annoyed with me, poking his finger toward me and looking angrily in my direction. Never sure exactly what I had done to elicit this reaction, I eventually began to ignore him I think, something I now regret beyond measure. But that is my memory of him up until that point.

As it happened, I attended a school, also named St. Agnes, albeit 3000 miles from the church, St. Agnes. My Dada heard talk of St. Agnes, I suppose, just in general chit-chat and – I am surmising from what I’ve learned about dementia, sadly first-hand – thought them one and the same. He was intent, impassioned and determined to go to St. Agnes every day, as he had done in Ireland, just walking to the end of the street.

The first time I saw him heading toward the St. Agnes he thought awaited him, with Mass and choir, but really nowhere at all as he knew nothing about my St. Agnes school, I was practicing the piano in the front window of the living room. I happened to glance out to the street and there, on the sidewalk, just walking by my line of sight, keenly focused on his goal, with destination determinedly in mind, was my Dada, dressed only in his pajama top. I screeched for my mother and, while I was still more than likely voluble, my Nana and mother had managed to corral him before he got as far as two neighbors’ down.

This was likely where the beginning ended or the ending began. I have vague recollections of him – naked from the waist down – making his way toward the front door only to be shepherded, amidst muted cries of “Frank, Frank…” and “Daddy..” back to his bedroom.

It doesn’t seem to have been long after that that he was placed in what, in those days, was the last place anyone would want to be. It was called a sanatorium, and this one had housed generations of chronically-ill patients. As I recall, it was known as the TB sanatorium. Interesting, really, because all of us who came from Ireland were immunized very soon after birth against tuberculosis, its being a scourge ever since the Famine of the mid-1800s. What I remember of it, the times I ventured inside to visit my Dada was hall after hall of beds with old men, coughing and retching. I can’t recall any room as such. It seemed just hallways, and the stench is something I can neither describe nor forget.

I know the last thing either my mother or Nana wanted was to have my Dada in such a horrid environment, but I believe it was a blessing of sorts that he didn’t really know where he was.

We visited every day. At first, my father would bring Mammy, Nana and me to visit in the evenings when he’d finished work and we’d had dinner. Then, my mother learned how to drive and, every day, when I got home from school, she, Nana and I headed for the hospital-cum-sanatorium to visit. And, again, after dinner, we’d be off to see him a second time. As I got more homework (or perhaps pretended I had), I stopped going in the evenings. In fact, at some point, Nana and my mother must have decided it wasn’t really a suitable place for a seven-year-old girl to be, what with half-naked men clambering about, and all the screaming. After that, I just stayed in the car, in the parking lot, while they visited.

I spent a lot of time in the car in parking lots during my young life. Different times those. The reasons were many, and none of them would be acceptable nowadays but, then, it just was, and I could write volumes about all of it. But not now.

It must have been a year or more my poor Dada, lost in his thoughts and memories, and ever-worsening from frequent strokes and the debilitation they visited upon him, lingered in that horrible institution. I suppose by the standards then, it was acceptable but, now, in my memory, I find it hard to believe that such a place existed in my lifetime, and that my family had any part in such horror.

Yes, indeed, in hindsight, in retrospect, in all things witheringly 20/20, I do believe my wee Mammy should have left her parents back in Belfast. What I would have done was move back to be with them, but it wasn’t me, it wasn’t the same world and my mother did what she believed to be best.

And how can anyone fault that?

You would be excused for believing this tale is one I’m writing about my family and childhood experiences or, perhaps, even exclusively about my Dada and what a wonderful, spiritual, generous, kind and loving man he was. I’ve heard from many of my relatives in Ireland over the years about just these things. He ran a wee hardware shop and, quietly, would carry account balances for customers who hadn’t the money, especially during WWII. He’d make anonymous donations (my Nana told me) to families or agencies or anywhere they may be needed, despite his not having much to spare. And, though I never saw him prior to his illness, my mother assured me many times that the sense of the silly and ridiculous, the somewhat dry and ironic, things that made both her and me laugh until we’d near wet ourselves, came from him.

I regret not knowing that Dada, but I have photos and retain verbatim all the tales told me by my Nana, mother and other relatives.

When Dada died, mercifully I believe, he was – as I’ve mentioned – buried in the robes of The Franciscan Order, he and my Nana being Lay Franciscans. I don’t know exactly all that is, or was, entailed in such a sacred honorific, but I do know that no one we knew then in Canada, not even our priests had been aware of such a custom.

Coarse brown robes, hoods pulled onto their heads, with a rope belt. In their hands, during the open casket visitations for each, was a large Rosary, blessed by Pope Pius XI, or perhaps Pope Pius XII. I only knew it to be Pope Pius.

I suspect my mother and Nana pondered about whether to bury Dada in Canada or back in Belfast in Milltown Cemetery which, for any who may know Northern Irish history, is where Catholics across the six counties would want to be buried. I wasn’t privy to these discussions. I imagine them from my own dilemma when deciding where to bury my parents, who had refused ever to tell me where he or she wanted to be laid to rest, each in his and her adamant, yet wholly unrevealing manner.

As it happened, and I think so my Nana could visit his grave regularly, Dada was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Waterloo, Ontario. The headstone was prepared, too, for Nana’s demise, with her name and year of birth, then a dash after which would appear her year of death. I find all this not only morbid, which it is but, mostly, I cannot bring myself to find any purpose whatsoever - other than preying avariciously on grieving people at their most vulnerable - for the funeral home industry. For myself, I want to be 1) dead, then 2) immediately cremated without ceremony, unless someone wants to scatter my ashes pretty much anywhere. Or, prior to incineration, should there be any part of me that warrants donation, sure, why not? Given my advanced age, I rather doubt there will be much of me worth transplanting.

Dada dead and buried, it became our family ritual to visit his grave after Mass on Sundays, watering flowers and keeping the wee plot tidy. My mother and Nana favored geraniums, as I recall. I think this because it has taken me many decades to get past my dislike of the flower. It has long triggered recollections of death and innumerable funeral home visits to open caskets. Lilies aren’t much better, for the same reason.

Our visits to Dada’s grave included prayers and, sometimes, saying The Rosary. To this day, I feel very guilty that I was the reason The Rosary was abandoned, not only at graveside, but every night before I went to bed. I just couldn’t get through it without a lot of “cheek” as it would be termed by my elders. I’m not sure what, exactly, I did, but it was bad enough that, for my Nana’s sake, our family Rosary was discontinued when I was about eight. I do have great remorse and wish I could go back and fix it, because I do remember how very upset Nana would get because of me.

During the late spring and summer months, and into the autumn, our trip home from the cemetery would be punctuated by a stop at the Dairy Queen just around the corner. Nothing fancy. Just a small vanilla cone each, consumed in the car during the short drive back to our Royal Street house.

Usually, after Mass, cemetery visit, ice cream and drive home, my mother would upbraid and reprimand me for not behaving properly in ‘the chapel’. And, usually, said upbraiding, would include the threat of my hair being cut short (ironically, then, unbraidable). This was the threat I got for everything because of how I loved my long hair. The mere mention of its being severed from my head would send me into torrents of hysterical tears. I remember during Mass, when I was about 10, I’d been threatened with the lop chop in the car en route to the church for some infraction I’d committed. The deluge of salty waters that poured from my tear ducts the entirety of the Mass were sufficient to soak the neck of my coat and convince huge green streams of nasal liquid to settle on my upper lip.

Whatever it was I’d done to deserve that particular reprimand was something I daresay I never did again.

My hair and the care thereof, and the threats attendant upon it and the great lengths (so to speak) I’d go to preserve its length featured prominently in my young life. To this day, I have not yet found a person who believes me when I recount that, because of some time-tested approach to controlling split ends, a mother would position a child in front of a bathroom mirror and, long chunk by long chunk, set fire to the ends of her hair, let it blaze a bit, then pat it out with a towel reserved for this particular ritual. The mother, of course, was mine; the child, me. The ends of my hair were, therefore, shaped like tiny round nubs and I smelled like…well, like burned hair. And not a soul will believe this happened to me, regularly, as just the done thing. I do recall one time that, apparently, the flame got away from my mother's supposed control, and had her flapping madly at my head, with shrieks of "oh,,,oh...Jesus God" emanating from her. Apparently, she managed to quell the impending inferno atop my head and spare my young flesh from incineration. Tears soon followed, as the impacted section of hair had to be removed, a burned sacrificial offering for my vanity.

I've rambled on quite a bit now, and have yet to reach the topic of this tale. Most of this has been preamble and essential to the ultimate thesis but, yes, I admit much more is just that stream-of-consciousness indulgence of memories that oft betakes the aging brain.

For this, I beg your indulgence and, even more, hope to find your eyes once again upon my pages when I continue this tale in Part Two.