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The long-heralded trip to Canada to visit my father, that is.
We (self, brother & his wife & daughter) met up with him three times, each time for about three hours. He's so physically frail that that's about all he's capable of.
So, some thirty years after we effectively severed relations (though we've spoken on the phone a couple of times a year for the past 5 or 6 years), and 28 years after he emigrated, how was it?
Well, time has changed some things - he's clearly come to terms with homosexuality in general, and is making an effort: he even mentioned Vancouver Pride Parade with approval. But he still sees things the way he would like them to have been ... He either doesn't realise or doesn't remember quite how little he understood or approved of the quiet, intellectual and non-sporting boy I was (and I, of course, equally didn't understand the hetero-male sporting boyhood that my father had enjoyed, and based his parenting on ... I just knew that I couldn't be it!).
He is, at 79, elderly in a way that very few of my acquaintances in their 70's, 80's, and even 90's are. Living alone in sheltered housing, he has no friends within travel distance, and seems to have no interests in life - no future events to look forward to, and little interest in the future plans of other people. As a result, he can only talk about the past, which is (from my point of view) really not a good place.
Pity? Yes, I felt some of that, though I tried not to. Terror? Of ending up the same way, possibly. But mainly I felt that he hadn't really changed, that he still saw the world the way he wanted to, that his (changing) views were somehow the way the world had always been and always should be ... in short, that he has failed to understand (let alone embrace) diversity and the value and challenge that other people of different ages, backgrounds, sexualities and ethnicities bring to life.
My brother, who has always been a lot closer to him that I have, is encouraging him to move back to the UK for the final months or couple of years of his life. I doubt he'll do it, and would worry that my brother was taking on to much responsibility if our father moves to sheltered accommodation a couple of miles from him (my bro is subject to stress-related panic attacks and depression). And I would have very mixed feelings about having my father in the UK again: I think I'd feel obliged to try to re-build some kind of working relationship, though I don't quite see how that could be done.
Anyway, the rest of the time in Canada was fabulous - the best holiday I've ever had (not counting the India Overland hippy trail, which wasn't exactly a holiday). Lots of exciting wildlife, a whale-watching trip, a couple of days lazing on the beach, amazing scenery ... and a guided fishing trip on the Fraser river, where I caught my quota of two "catch, keep and eat" sockeye salmon in the morning, and in the afternoon caught-and-released what passes locally as a "small" sturgeon (they reach up to around nine feet long, but this one was more than enough for my dodgy back to deal with!)
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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