Father’s Day.

 One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

Twenty years ago right about now, my brother Kevin called me from Kingston General Hospital to tell me that our father was dead. “He is with Nanny and Pappy,” Kevin said.

I rushed to the hospital and ran up the stairs and stood at the doorway of the tiny room in which Dr. T Douglas Kinsella MD, OC, had died, very early on June 15, 2004. It was a small room, and my father had refused an offer to put him in a larger one, in the very building where he had saved and healed lives many years before. Better that someone else use it, he had said. He was like that.

I couldn’t look at him, but I couldn’t not look at him. No one spoke. I loathed Father’s Day after that, because I had lost mine.

Through the window of his room, if you were at the right angle, I recall you could see shiny, tiny white sailboats bouncing on Lake Ontario, like little flickers of light. I felt angry at the sailboats, that morning. Why couldn’t they be still? Didn’t they know this great man who had died? How could they not know? Why were they not in mourning, as we were?

Because he was a truly great man; he was. When I was young, I assumed that everybody had a Dad like that. But I eventually learned that they didn’t, and that my brothers and I were very, very lucky.

What a man he was. What a giant in our lives he was!

He came from a poor Irish family in Montreal. As a boy, he overcame rheumatic fever, and decided that he would become a doctor to help those who experience that affliction, and other afflictions. He served in the military, won distinction at Loyola and McGill, and he married my Mom – this radiant, boundlessly-beautiful, dark-haired artist from the East End – and they raised us four boys in Montreal, then Dallas, then Kingston, then back to Montreal and then on to Calgary. He published papers and books. He won awards. He received the Order of Canada.

Some nights at the dinner table, when it got quiet, he’d offer the same piece of advice to me and my brothers and my best friends: love people, and be honest. He always followed that advice, without fail. Me, not so much. I think about that whenever I think of him, too.

And what would he think of the life I have had? That is something that every son wonders about every father, whether they admit it or not. I certainly do. And what would he think of two of my sons, or two of the women I lived with? Would he think less of me, or them?

Even though it has been 20 years, I can still hear his voice; I can still see his handsome face. And, like so many sons of so many departed fathers, I would truly give anything to spend an hour with him again. To ask him what he thinks, to ask him what to do.

About my fight against bigots and haters, seemingly everywhere in these dark days, I think that he would tell me to keep going, but to be careful. About my writing and art, he would tell me to never let those things go, I think, because they offer a bit of life after death. About those I loved and now despise – he would tell me to forgive.

Father’s Day, my father’s final day: I have no acquired wisdom to pass along to you, even after 20 years have slid past. Just the obvious, the thing that you have heard one hundred times: that life goes by so quickly, like a bit of cloud on a blustery day. It arcs across the sky and is gone before you know it. So, cherish every moment of joy. Hug those you love. Dance, sing, laugh. Forgive, if you can.

A couple of nights ago, I was on the 401 and signaling to go into the slow lane and exit at Cobourg, when I saw – in the corner of my eye – a truck barreling towards me at what look like double the posted speed. I swerved and he missed me by maybe a foot; I almost felt it on my skin, it was so close. I exited, and this madman continued rocketing up the 401, moving in and out of traffic until he was out of sight. I hoped he didn’t hurt anyone.

It was only when I stopped that I realized I had come pretty close to getting killed by him. And, when I thought about it – maybe a bit shaky,  certainly a bit breathless like I was at the door to that hospital room 20 years ago – I thought I came within a foot of seeing my Dad again.

And I regretted that I had lost that chance, because he is an angel now – on this, my Father’s Day.