For Your Tomorrow (24 page)

“I know this isn’t a time for celebrating birthdays,” I say, popping the cork on a chilled bottle of Henkel, “but I want to toast Mica. I’m so glad you were born thirty-two years ago.” Her face pallid against her long dark hair, she smiles as I pour the bubbling wine into her fluted glass.

“I still can’t believe I forgot your birthday yesterday,” Marion says, shaking her head.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Mica says, tears welling in her eyes. “Getting this present from Jeff was all I needed.” She strokes
the arm of her chocolate-brown lululemon hoodie. “Jeff bought this when he was home on leave, and left it with Sylvie for my birthday,” she tells me with a thin smile. “Mom said that whenever I wear it, Jeff will be giving me a hug.”

After dinner, we talk about seeing Jeff’s body, one last time, at the funeral home in Dartmouth, a private viewing for our immediate family. Considering the violent nature of his death, we didn’t think we’d have this opportunity. So we’re grateful for this small mercy, but also apprehensive, afraid we may not see Jeff as he lives in our minds, that death’s hand will efface our memory bank of images. I flashback to my first and last visit to a funeral home. Thirty-nine years ago to see my father, who didn’t look like my father at all. The artificial beige skin, rouged cheeks; lips that were too full, too red; eyes sealed shut. The cleft was still there in his chin, but I knew my father was elsewhere. His body like an empty shell left on the sandbar by the outgoing tide.

“I have to see his body,” Sylvie says, wiping her eyes. “I have to see him. Maybe I’ll believe it then, that this is real. We were apart so much. It feels like he’s just away. But I’m not sure about taking Ry.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Marion says, meeting her gaze.

“I’m just not sure how it would affect him,” Sylvie says.

“But it’s his father,” Marion says, leaning forward in her chair.

Sylvie lowers her eyes, and sits in stony silence.

J
ULY
11. Early in the morning, Marion and Russ leave for Dartmouth. They stop for coffee next to the funeral home
and order a triple-triple to take for Jeff. They enter the cool hush of the viewing room. A framed photo of Jeff sits on one table, a bouquet of red roses on another; in between, a half-open wooden casket draped in the Canadian flag, Jeff’s green beret on top. It’s been a week since he died, so even the mortician’s art can’t disguise the mask of death. But his parents can see beneath it—to the face of their beautiful boy, his dimpled chin, his faint freckles, his smooth shorn head. In his tan camouflage uniform, he lies in folds of white satin. Marion requests that the coffin be opened all the way, so she can see and touch all of her son’s body, down to his feet inside his combat boots. Russ embraces him, cold like no other cold, tries to cradle his son in his arms one last time, but he can’t lift him—his body is too heavy.

A few hours later, Damian and I drive the coastal road to the funeral home. A cornflower-blue sky, a calm sea coruscating with sunbeams—so much light and beauty on such a dark day. When we walk into the stillness of the viewing room, Marion asks us to stay back several feet from the casket where chairs are arranged. “You’ll be able to see a truer likeness of him,” she says. “This is what Jeff would want.” With his shaven head and peaceful repose, he looks as he did in the cradle, deep in his newborn sleep.

We sit in a semicircle around him—Sylvie, Marion, Marilyn, Mica and I—trying to absorb the reality of Jeff’s transformation.
This is the body that he has left. But the essence of Jeff is elsewhere—in the very air we’re breathing
. Sylvie stares in shocked disbelief, dabbing her puffy red eyes with
a Kleenex. Lost in the dense woods of memory, we feel a tranquility enveloping us, a serenity so complete that our eyelids grow heavy, somnolent.

Russ comes in, carrying his grandson who has just wakened from a nap in his stroller. As Russ approaches the casket, Ry looks at his father’s body and raises his hand in a high-five gesture. It’s a way we often greet Ry: “High-five!” And he grins and slaps our open hands. Russ turns and regards us, thoughtfully. “Sitting here with Jeff,” he says, eyes tearing up, “are the five women who loved him best.” He passes Ry to Marion and hugs us each in turn.

S
COTT
L
ANG EXITS THE
crematorium. Under his arm, he bears a hand-sewn, thickly woven Canadian flag—the highest-quality flag, reserved for prime ministers, Governors General and fallen soldiers. Bleary-eyed, he drives slowly across the Murray MacKay Bridge, and through the tree-lined streets of Halifax. He pulls into the driveway of his sister-in-law’s home where his wife is staying. She has come from Moncton, New Brunswick, to support him through
these draining days. “Cara,” he says, when she meets him at the door, “I need your help with a very important job.”

They each hold one end of the outstretched 1½-by-3-metre flag. They fold it in half lengthwise, then in half lengthwise again. Scott brings his end forward over his hands four times, leaving one point of the scarlet leaf against the white background. As he folds, he thinks about the colour of blood, stark against the colour of innocence. He is seeing everything now in a different light—his job, his family, his priorities. It’s as if a filter has shifted.

He lays the flag in the shadow box and clicks its glass cover shut.

J
ULY
12. Leaden clouds hang over the grey ocean, churning with whitecaps, as the dark green car pulls into the driveway. The morning has been heavy with nervous anticipation, as we waited for this delivery—this next stage of facing what is still unreal. In his camouflage uniform and combat boots, Captain Scott Lang lumbers up the stairs, cradling a small wooden chest in his arms. Marion and Russ go outside to meet him on the deck. Scott passes the urn into Marion’s outstretched arms. She crosses the threshold into the house and looks at us, frozen in our chairs. “This is my son,” she says, tightening her embrace of the smooth mahogany vessel.

Scott takes a seat on the couch within our circle. His eyes brim through the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses as
he presents the family a large picture frame, wrapped in white tissue. “This is a photo that none of us like posing for,” he says. “No one is ever smiling because we know there’s only one reason our family would ever see it.” In the 60-by-90-centimetre photograph, Jeff stands in front of the Canadian flag in his green uniform and beret, the RCHA badge over his left eye. His hazel eyes are liquid and averted; his down-turned lips project a remorseful awareness of the magnitude of
this moment
. It was taken at CFB Shilo in January, a month before he deployed to Afghanistan.

Scott then opens a square wooden box containing items that Jeff carried with him at the time of his death: a pocket knife, the silver watch he received as top candidate in officers’ training; a small bottle of sunscreen Marion had sent. His fair freckled face burned so easily; she always nagged him about applying sunblock, and he always humoured her—
Sure, Mom
. But there it was, in his pocket, along with Sylvie’s St. Christopher medal and the shiny green pouch with the protective gems she’d sent. She unties the drawstring and lets the stones spill into her hand. Two are broken. “Shattered,” she says.

We choose July 17 as the date for Jeff’s memorial service: 17-07-07, synchronous with his birth date—11-11-70. The multiples of ones, sevens and zeroes emphasize the significance of each number. The service will be private—Jeff’s wish, to have the intimate bonds of his family, close friends and comrades. Moreover, we want to avoid the scrutiny of the media, who feed like vultures on death,
turning people’s suffering into a spectacle or sound bite. The Reverend Jane Doull, Minister of the United Churches in Wallace and Malagash, makes the two-hour drive to Eastern Passage and spends a morning talking with us about Jeff, his spiritual path, and the format for his service:
Jeff’s Time of Remembrance
. She suggests many Buddhist texts for readings, and leaves us feeling confident she’ll prepare a service that honours Jeff in the spirit of his beliefs.

We dig out stacks of albums and boxes of photos. Marilyn and I assemble collages to display in the reception hall, a kaleidoscope of Jeff’s life: from chubby, laughing babyhood to freckle-faced, shy boyhood; from hipster-punk adolescence to shorn, muscular manhood. Every picture has a story, and we remember—Jeff running away to Granny’s house, Jeff committing his “dastardly deed”—and we laugh, and cry. Marilyn’s husband, Mike, burns CDs of Jeff’s favourite songs to play in the background during the gathering at the Wallace Community Hall. Mica and Aaron design the memorial leaflet with photos and verses, and arrange for the printing. Sylvie spends hours at the computer, booking airline reservations for family members travelling from across the country—Air Canada providing complimentary first-class tickets.

Russ oversees the logistical details of the service and the reception, and he drafts a eulogy, stoically in control during the day. But at night he clings to his daughter’s arms, crying: “I love him so … I miss him so.” Marion also writes a eulogy for her son. “I have to do this for Jeff,” she repeats, papers and books spread out before her on the dining room table.
She reviews philosophical texts that guided him, and quotes passages he underlined in his dog-eared copy of
The Art of War
by the Chinese warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu: “The Art of War wars against war. And it does so by its own principles; it infiltrates the enemy’s lines, uncovers the enemy’s secrets and changes the hearts of the enemy’s troops.”

And I compose my tribute, its seeds sown during my eight-hour flight from Kelowna to Halifax. As I pondered Jeff’s journey, from his birth on Remembrance Day 1970 to his death on Independence Day 2007, I gleaned mythical underpinnings: abandoning his Ph.D. and becoming a soldier culminated a lifelong search for purpose, his quest and his destiny. When I pulled
The Power of Myth
from his bookshelf and skimmed its pages, I could see in the many passages he’d highlighted, his own story:
The myths help you read the messages of the world
. Perhaps his death wasn’t random or senseless—“a bit of bad luck,” as his commanding officer phrased it. I hope that this story of Jeff’s life—the hero’s journey—will provide some sustenance for our family. A story can be as essential as food and water in restoring people to life.

And through the week of preparation, sweet baby Ry keeps us going, lifts us from unabated sadness into moments of joy. As we walk and rock him, feed and diaper him, bathe and dress him, we delight in the satiny softness of his skin, his dimpled knees, his snuggly hugs. Gabriel plays on the floor with his little cousin and carries him around if he’s fussy. When he reads him his favourite story,
The Barnyard Dance
, Ry flaps his arms and kicks his chubby legs. “I didn’t know I
liked babies so much,” Gabriel tells me. We assemble a montage, photos of Ry juxtaposed with baby pictures of Jeff. If it weren’t for the faded colours in the images of thirty-five years ago, you wouldn’t know one from the other. But the happiness Ry bestows is “bittersweet,” as Marion puts it. “Just look at what Jeff is missing,” she says, tearfully shaking her head, “and this little boy … will never know his daddy.”