Finnie Walsh (23 page)

My mother has retired and she and my father have been travelling, seeing all those things that, until recently, my father has only read about in magazines. My father misses Pal, who died several years ago at a ripe old age. His will stipulated that he be buried with his claw.

After graduating from high school with the highest marks in the province, Sarah could have attended the university of her choice. Instead she sat down and read every
National Geographic
ever published from cover to cover. Then, perhaps inspired by the string of bizarre accidents that has plagued our family, she became a doctor. I think she’s a good one too, although I have no way of knowing.

When I saw Joyce Sweeney at the hardware store a year after Finnie’s death, I asked her to dinner. She hadn’t been at Finnie’s funeral; she said it would have been too hard. She had been living in Portsmouth for three weeks before I saw her, having decided that larger cities, while interesting, were not the sort of place she wanted to spend the rest of her life. I agree with her. We will probably live here until we die. It will take us that long to pay off our mortgage.

When I try to think of what life might have been like without Finnie, well, I can’t even imagine it. Almost everything Finnie did seemed to be either fantastic or horrible and the same event had a way of being one way one day and another the next. He took us places using roads that didn’t lead to where we were going.

At the end of the 1998–99 season, Wayne Gretzky retired after 21 years of professional hockey. Many think that the records he set will never be broken. The league retired his number and as his banner was raised the announcer’s voice broke and a sob escaped.

A while after Finnie’s death, I sat down and read
Moby Dick
in an attempt to figure out Ahab and Mr. Starbuck and that damn whale. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Maybe Finnie was Captain Ahab, a madman obsessed with a singular purpose, a purpose that brought him to his own demise. Or maybe he was Starbuck, brought to his unfortunate end by the folly of others. Whatever Finnie Walsh was, I would give anything not to have been Ishmael.

Thanks to the faculty, students and alumni of the UBC Creative Writing Program, Carolyn Swayze, Joy Gugeler, the Galloway, Tayler and Haslett families, Chad Hunt, Lynda Milham and Helen’s Grill. Special thanks to Lara, whose love, tolerance and support enabled the writing of this book.