It’s been a long time coming getting my dad into this brick. The grief was already well fermented by the time I drunkenly declared, at the first Toxteth Day of the Dead, that he’d finally be making an Atlantic crossing.
William Rodger Stephens was born and died in Ontario, Canada. He visited the United States a couple of times in between, but was adamant he’d travel to no country requiring him to produce a passport. When I smuggled a portion of his final remains onto an Edinburgh-bound flight via a repurposed vitamin jar, he finally made the journey to visit me. Sans papiers, of course.
My dad was a stubborn old bastard. He did things his way to the very end, even when it doomed him to undue pain and suffering. What was initially a small heart attack was followed by a couple of much larger ones. He’d stayed on his couch for days, refusing to go to hospital, thus missing the window of opportunity for stents and plausible repairs.
He could be funny and sometimes charming, especially when telling a tale. His antics were often amusing. He was everyone’s favourite uncle.
Dad was a man who loved the outdoors and dispatching all kinds of nature’s creatures, big and small. He spent his working years inspecting concrete at nuclear power plants, before retiring early to his ice fishing huts, traplines, and deer hide.
For years our yard was littered with self-built, aluminium-sided shacks, ready to be hauled onto the lake in winter, rented to city folks for a day or two. He’d keep back a deluxe, four-man hut for our own use, kitted out with foam-lined wooden bunks to sleep on. So many hours spent huddling around the orange glow of propane heaters to get warm, Dad yelling at us not to knock over the fucking minnow bucket, him nursing a beer and jigging through an open hole in the ice.
A good bargain lit him up, and any chance to make a few extra dollars. We spent many childhood weekends walking up and down back-road ditches, searching for discarded bottles and cans, returnable to the Beer Store for a lucrative 10-cent deposit.
On the same country roads, he’d often pull over to the side when he spotted roadkill. A good specimen had to be hit cleanly with fur intact, ready to skin, stretch, tan, and sell. I’d duck my head between my legs as we parked, hoping no one I knew would spot us. On one such occasion, he flung a raccoon onto the floor of the backseat, before we continued along the road. Soon we heard an ominous rustling. Dad hurried to pull over, rushed round to the back, and finished off the tenacious prick.
My dad had a big influence on my life. As a kid I learned how to argue and stand up for what I believe in when he’d have a few too many beers, keeping me up late with rants and unsavoury points of view. As a young teen, it was the carcasses scattered around his skinning shed which led to my first foray into vegetarianism. He was also the source of all my most colourful turns of phrase.
Dad loved his family, even if he was often less than adept at showing it. He had five siblings, five kids, and five grandkids. As the first born, he often found himself in the role of protector to his mom and siblings. And despite the oh-so-many ways he infuriated me, he was always there when one of his kids called in dark times needing help. By the time his youngest grandkids came along, he’d mellowed out to become ‘Santa Grandpa’, adorned with an unruly beard and wide smile.
I didn’t get much first-hand experience of these somewhat gentler years. My 20s were spent deliberately distancing myself from my upbringing, stomping around Europe before settling permanently in Edinburgh. Phone calls were an annual occurrence and trips back were rarer still. But I returned in time to see him before he died, and I was there to pack up his house afterwards too.
Sifting through his life’s detritus, I found a small bundle containing letters and cards I’d written him over the years. I was taken aback. Partially because I scarcely remembered sending these clumsy attempts at sharing my life; especially because he never acknowledged receiving them. But there they were, carefully stored: tales of anti-nuclear camps in Turkey, climate protests in Copenhagen, squats in Belgrade, and May Day in Berlin.
And now, here we are, nine years after his death, a final journey together. I think he’d be flummoxed: by the brick, the procession, Liverpool, the whole goddamn thing. But happier than a pig in shit to have this new story to tell.