Those Who Were Seen Dancing

My step-father died this week.

That's not exactly right; he didn't so much die as disappear over the horizon, like a ship heading out to sea, or the sun clocking out at the end of a long day.

It wasn't very dramatic and it wasn't sudden; there were no heroic measures taken by doctors and nurses with "complicated" personal histories and no emotional musical underscore.

The end came with Eric and my mom holding hands.

They were, as they had been for most of the last three decades, together.

I say "most" because, for the better part of the last ten years, my mom has had to share Eric with dementia which resulted from a stroke.

For those whose families have not been touched by dementia, or Alzheimer's, no words can adequately explain the slow, inexorable dis-connecting that happens as lovers become partners, partners become acquaintances, and acquaintances become people who keep showing up, but whose names you can't quite recall.

For those who have been through it, no description is necessary.

I won't pretend to speak for my brother and sister, but it took me a while to get it.  I mean, I understood that Eric was the man that my mother had fallen in love with and it was clear that he was nuts about her:  that was clear from the beginning, but getting to know Eric as a person took time.

It took patience.

My dad was loud and one of those people who made an immediate impression:  you knew right away if he was happy or sad, furious or frustrated.  Eric was a much harder read.

One of my father's favorite jokes was "Get into the roundhouse, Mother; the brakeman won't corner you there."  

I don't know if Eric had a favorite joke.

Away from work, my dad liked transformational pursuits such as taking down trees, or fixing broken equipment:  he liked to solve problems.

Eric liked to watch.

Both my dad and Eric liked to be outdoors, but Eric was more interested in being a witness to the wonders of nature and, in particular, its birds.

Birdwatching?!?

When this word first entered my mother's vocabulary I couldn't understand its charm.  What could possibly be interesting about standing outside staring at small objects through binoculars?

Of course, this was more than thirty years ago when the world and I were both in a different place:  everything was go-go-go and birdwatching was stop-stop-shhhh!

Or, at least, that's what it seemed like, before I went out in the woods with Eric and my mom.

As they built their lives together and I had the privilege of spending more and more time with them, I came to appreciate that going out "birding" was an active pursuit, a conscious choice to seek stillness and quiet in  both the environment and one's self.  It was a meditation practice to quiet the noises in your life so that you could hear the song and see the movement that would help you train your "bi-nocs" on another entry for your life list.

Eric's stillness and his patience yielded an extensive list of birds and made him an ideal partner for my mother who came into the marriage looking for strength and stability.

Watching Eric out in the woods, you would see him almost disappear among the trees he was scanning; and not just because he was tall.  Eric would get to a spot and then he would stop moving.  For long periods of time, it was like he was rooted to the spot listening to the forest, picking one bird's song from another until he focused on the one that he wanted.  In a flash, the glasses would come off, one ear-piece would go into his mouth as he raised the binoculars and scanned for his target.  Like a sniper, he zeroed in, captured the image in his mind's eye and then he moved on to another spot, another set of sounds, another bird.

Try as she might, I don't think my mom ever reached the same zen-like state of birding.  Perhaps it might have been because I was there--she was always worried about her guests--but she would always move from a spot before Eric did.

It was a revelation to me to watch the two of them together.  

After growing up in a house where it always seemed as though my parents each had very different interests, seeing Eric and Lois together, in the woods, scanning the canopy for birds was compelling.  I never got the bug for watching birds, but I always interested to watch them, together.

For those to whom birdwatching is a thing, I know it can be pretty exciting to see the heretofore unseen, but, for me, the most exciting part was the annual swan count.  This happens in the winter and involves teams of counters racing around the back roads of the British Columbia interior looking for patches of open water to estimate the number of birds at each location.  It was still birdwatching, but interrupted by occasional fits of road racing.

Eric was a company man; he spent his professional life working for The Hudson's Bay Company, first in retail management, then as a sporting goods buyer and finally back in retail management.  He weathered the often rough seas of retail and corporate life with the same relentless patience that he took into the woods whenever he could. 

In his role of buyer, Eric traveled extensively in Asia and Europe which fed his interest in people and his curiosity.

After retirement, he was able to travel to Africa, see its animals and meet its people.  I know this was an important experience because of the care he took in documenting the trip and cataloging his photographs.  And I know because of the passion he brought to sharing those images and stories with me.

At first "passion" might seem to be an out-sized word to use in describing Eric, but I know it to be an accurate one.  

While he could seem like one of those inscrutable stone heads on Easter Island, it didn't take long to recognize that, like those immense figures, Eric was a witness.  He would watch, he would listen and, quite often in my experience, ask the right questions, or call you on your bullshit.

Eric's passion was evident in his love of jazz, of nature and of my mother. 

It was rare to see him angry, but when it did happen it was most often because he felt that one or the other of her kids were not treating my mother the way he felt she should be treated.  

Eric Burton McAlary was a good man, a kind man and, most importantly, the right man for my mother and it is just cruel that it took so long for them to find one another and, once together, that he should be taken from her in such a manner.

My last visit with Eric was about a year ago.  

At that time he was living in a long-term care facility.  Whether he knew who my mother was, or that she was just a nice lady who came to see him regularly, is hard to say.  He wasn't speaking much.

But he was watching.

At one point, he was in the day room standing next to the window and staring out at the trees that were just across the narrow courtyard.  Now, whether he was looking for birds is anybody's guess, but that is how I would like to remember him:  as a witness to nature; a totem recording history and pointing toward the future.

At one point, my wife worked for the local chapter of the Alzheimer's Association and she told me about one of the people who came to their adult daycare facility.  Her name was Sarah.  She was a petite apple doll of a woman who had bright eyes and a quick energy about her.  She was very verbal, but the language she was using at that time was Pennsylvania Dutch, her first language. 

Sarah was anxious to communicate, but could only do so in a language that nobody at that facility understood.

Kristen explained to me that one way to understand dementia is that it impacts the ability to make and keep short-term memory as it erodes long term memory.  Like peeling back layers of an onion until, at the end, all that is left are your earliest memories.  In essence, you become your true self, before experience, culture and society have taught you what to hide and what to show.

This is where the dancing comes in.

Later that same day we visited Eric, we came back for their Friday dance party.

When we got there, Eric was dancing with staffers, other residents and, eventually, with my mother.

I believe he was fully present in that moment, because I would like to believe that was who he was:  someone who loved life, experienced true passion and was possessed of a poet's soul.

Which, inevitably, brings me to Nietzsche who said:

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

 Farewell Mr. MaCallery and thank you for letting me add you to my life list.