4 — Wednesday, March 18, 1992 ~ North Shore News

Some things you don’t mess around with

MY STEPFATHER lived most of his life on the Prairies.
He was on the rebound from a bad marriage when ire met
my mother who happened to be on the rebound too — and
not just from a broken marriage.

My brother and J were
teenagers then. We'd gone
through the experience of wat-
ching helplessly as our mother
floundered through two heart-
breaking attempts to establish
new, permanent relations with
men.

It wasn’t easy. Despite her good
looks, she was carrying heavy
baggage — two teenage boys, no
less. Boys who were resentful of
any male coming near their sacred
mother.

Accordingly, brother Don and I
were wary and even a bit hostile
when Fred Stein showed up in his
Studebaker to pick up Mom for
their first date.

It took a long time for us to
lower our guard.

Fred had one of those pencil-
thin moustaches favored by men
from his era. His hair was starting
to thin, but he was still handsome.

He didn’t talk much. In fact, he
seemed downright jumpy. So shy
it was painful.

After a five-year courtship,
delayed by my mother’s decision
to wait until the Catholic Church
granted permission, Fred and
Mom got hitched.

It was kind of funny. Mom’s
name was Augustine, which
everyone shortened to Stein. Her
new married name was Stein
Stein.

She and Fred lived happily ever
after, except for the operations
she had to endure to fend off
cancer.

He stood by her every moment,
standing by in the waiting room

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while she went under the knife,
always there holding her hand
when she came out of anesthetic.

He would pace and smoke.

After the lung cancer operation,
when she wasn’t allowed to have
cigarettes any longer, Fred would
go outside in the snow or rain to
avoid harming her with second-
hand smoke.

But he did keep on smoking,
even after his pacemaker went in.
He kept it up until about six
months after Mom died, when the
doctor told him he had the begin-

nings of emphysema.

Three months later, he had a
heart attack and was gone within
minutes.

He just had time to pull his
truck off the road, park, and get
it into neutral.

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No one Furt. Nothing damaged.
A perfect quiet landing.

Through my Aunt Noella, he’d
left word that he didn’t want a
church service. He just wanted to
be cremated and have his ashes
scattered over the stream in the
back acre of our place in Anmore,
where he’d lived for the last year
of his life.

OK. That’s what we would do
— except that my wife Bobbi got
the idea that it would be a nice
thing to save some of Fred's ashes
and bring them to Winnipeg
where we would sprinkle them
over the urn where my mother’s
remains were — as per her own
deathbed wish.

This seemed like a great roman-
tic notion, except that — some-
how, we forgot — it wasn’t what
Fred had requested.

We had a ceremony down by
the creek in Anmore. Forty or 50
relatives showed up. We sprinkled
most of Fred’s ashes in the water.

Brother Don and I made
speeches about what a decent guy
Fred was. Most of us wept.

And that was it. Along with our
two children, my wife and I plan-
ned to fly out to Winnipeg two
days later to finish the ritual.

But the evening before we were
to leave, my wife was out walking
in the yard when she had what
you could call a ‘‘freak accident,’
twisting her ankle so badly we had
to take her to hospital where her
foot was wrapped in tape, and she

was given a pair of crutches with
a warning that she wouldn’t be
able to walk properly for a couple
of weeks.

Weird. Very weird. My wife has
never tripped like that in her life.
It was in the very yard where

she'd spent her entire childhood.
She knew the terrain like the back
of her hand.

We were sitting around the
fireplace later, musing about this,
when the thought flashed into my
mind — sending a shiver through
me — that Fred didn’t want his
ashes spread back in Winnipeg.

After all, it’s a frozen wasteland
most of the year. He had moved
to B.C. to get away from it. He
loved B.C.!

The superstitious and the ra-
tional coexist in our minds more
closely than we like to think.
Maybe I'm just speaking for
myself. But there are moments
when I get strong feelings that
have nothing to do with anything
you can measure or record on
film.

This was definitely one of them.

“Let’s forget taking any ashes
to Winnipeg,’’ I suggested. There
was a pause while my wife and my
brother looked at each other to
make sure I hadn't lost it.

But then you could almost feel
the hair go up on the back of
their necks, just as it had on
mine. They saw the point right
away, and nodded

Maybe it was just an accident

THE

after all. It couldn’t have been
Fred’s ghost or spirit or soul that
tripped Bobbi and wrecked her
ankle, thereby guaranteeing that
we wouldn't carry on to Win-
nipeg. Could it?

Me, I dunno. None of us knew.
And you had to be there.

But that night I went down to
the back acre and sprinkled the
rest of the ashes in the creek, just
as Fred wanted.

Some things you don’t mess
around with.

Goodbye, Fred. Sir.
ee

-SAVE-ON-FOODS:
“CORRECTION NOTICE

In our flyer of March
15-March 21, 1992, the
incorrect size of pot:
was stated for the
Azaleas. The size of pot
should have read 1
gallon, not 6”.

We apologize for any
inconvenience this
may have caused our
valued customers.

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The B.C. Minority Language Education Task Force report
has been released for public input.

The task force, established in May of 1990, was struck to

~ propose methods of providing French education principles
consistent with section 23 of the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.

The deadline for responses to the report is June 30, 1992.

For more information or for a copy of the report please
contact:

The Ministry of Education and Ministry Responsible for
Multiculturalism and Human Rights.

Harley Trudeau

Assistant Director

Languages and Multicultural Programs Branch
356-2527

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_ WLecrioN AEN | Nc

Ministry of Education and
Ministry Responsible for
Multiculturalism and Human Rights