When Your Dad Is Gone

Still can’t say goodbye

By Stephen Pate – When my dad was gone, the first thing I noticed was I couldn’t talk to him anymore.

I could think about what he would say but he didn’t say it.

When I see a dad in movies, I get sad.

Singing “I Still Can’t Say Goodbye” some of the words won’t come out.

If your dad is still around, don’t forget him.

It was not not like we talked a lot but we always did about the important things in life and baseball. My dad loved sports: baseball was his favorite sport. He was a sports reporter for CHNS radio and the Halifax Mail Star early in his career.

When I was a kid he took me to the Halifax Wanderers Grounds, a ball field between Citadel Hill and the Public Gardens. The reporting booth was high in the air. He sat me down in the bleachers with a hot-dog and pop and went up to do his reporting job.

When I got bored, I climbed way up the metal ladder and crawled into the booth. Boy was he mad, since I had a weak leg from polio and could have killed myself.

My dad was good for watching Walt Disney if I didn’t want to go to church on Sunday night and Gunsmoke when I was tired of homework on Monday. “Got your homework done Stephen?” he’d asked and I always nodded yes.

He was good to take you to a movie or out for supper as a surprise. We saw all the musicals and great films like How Green is My Valley. Sometimes, he would bring a 16mm projector home from CBC with a movie.

He was good to take me to my grandmothers for rabbit stew and other Acadian treats. She was an old lady with a sharp wit. You knew she loved you by the twinkle in her eye.

My dad would edit my record review columns for the Halifax Mail Star. He had a wicked ball point pen that removed whole paragraphs if they were fuzzy. I couldn’t use slang or curse words like “bull shit”. He had an editor’s eye for what would work.

My dad had been a jazz drummer. We heard lots of jazz music. When I was 13, he brought me a set of Ludwig drums with Zildjian cymbals. That’s how I learned to drum. We would argue about Gene Krupa playing “Sing Sing Sing” and I tried to learn it.

He gave me my first guitar. Like all the things he did, he just did it without any fanfare or rules attached.

My dad worked a lot and drank a lot. He worked because life was hard with five kids. Sometimes he had two jobs. When he worked for CBC News there were long days and nights over stories like the Springhill Mine disaster.

His drinking was what a lot of men did. When he got older he stopped because it was hard on him. We lived well so it never bothered me much although my mom minded it.

They fought more over religion than drink. She became Jehovah’s Witness and he was Catholic. They didn’t have much in common other than Jesus Christ but they never saw that. Later he converted to the JW’s but I liked him better as a Catholic. When I was thirty I converted from Jehovah’s Witness to Catholic to even up the score.

So that’s a short story about my dad. I still like baseball. I have pennants from almost every team. I wear my Yankees cap and jacket, although I get bored in the middle of a game on TV.

Like my dad, I’ve worked hard all my life, gave it my best. He was argumentative: God knows I am. Five kids: me too. He was a writer and musician: that’s me.

When I need to make a hard decision, the sound of his voice still echoes in my head.