Remembrance Day

Today the Hanna Lodge hymn sing was canceled. It was a stat, I was told. No activities were scheduled. 

I attended no service. Driving by myself to Hanna last night in the cold and the dark and the unknown had wrung me out.

At exactly 11:00 a.m. this morning I stood at attention for two minutes, a silence broken only by the stertorous breathing of Gunpowder, the dog born with misaligned hips, who dozed at peace on the sofa.

And I thought about Maynard, as I often do on this day. His birthday is November 16; I remember him on the 11th, and I think of those who never quite made it to serve their country.

Maynard went to high school with me. We became friends in standard 8, and he was unfailingly kind to me. I was short, stout and self-righteous. I earned some nicknames. Maynard never called me them. He called me Tinhead, a play on Ironside. He chose "head", he said, because my head was smart and pretty and could hear the music. He told me to listen just to the music.

As happens when you go to boarding school in another country, we graduated and went our separate ways. I enrolled in university; he enrolled in his Uncle S's navy.

It wasn't a good match for him. He was a TCK - a Third Culture Kid - a strong, gentle, young man who was somewhat adrift and was looking for a place to call home, for people to call family.

The navy proved not to be that place.

And one day he just showed up at my university.

I was attending a spiritually and socially conservative university, and this was in the early '80s. Visits from friends of the opposite sex had to be pre-arranged and approved in writing by parents. My parents and his parents were in India.

With trepidation we approached the Dean of Women. We explained the circumstances to her, and she kindly gave Maynard a permission slip for meals and a place to stay in the men's dorm for five days. He attended classes with me, lunches and dinners, and he walked me back to my dorm in the evenings. We got caught up on the two-plus years we had not seen each other since graduation. He told me how tough the navy was for him, how he had made a mistake, how he was afraid to go back.

On the fourth evening we attended a basketball game, and the team I was cheering for won. In his exuberance, he flung his arms around me and hugged me.

Hugged me at a no-physical-contact-between-men-and-women university, in front of everyone I knew there.

We were summoned by the Dean of Women that very night.

I was given a stern lecture and put on social probation. No talking to boys for a month.

Then she turned to Maynard. She asked him more about his leave of absence from the navy; to my shock, he confessed that he had gone AWOL. He told her something of his childhood, of his experience as a frightened cadet. Something had snapped in his brain and the only thought he had was if he could reach a friend, maybe he would be able to get his bearings again.

The Dean of Women was silent for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was husky. "Young man, this school takes loyalty to our military very seriously. Your duty is to report back to your base and to bear your punishment like a man. You will need to leave here now. May God give you strength."

He threw his arms around me again and we clung together for a moment while she gazed at a painting on the wall.

And then he was gone into the night and I crept back to my room. Everyone was silent; but Michelle squeezed my hand.

I heard from him a few years later. He had indeed returned. He had been courtmartialled and thrown in the brig. What happened there was so awful for him that he spoke of it to me only once. And then he was dishonourably discharged.

He had spent time as a day labourer, picking up odd jobs. He had spent time on the streets. His arsenal of alcohol and drugs helped combat the pain. 

And so his story went. A couple of marriages, a pretty little kid. She had his eyes. 

Jail time.

Rehab.

Still searching to belong.

He checked in with me every so often. 

We saw each other for an afternoon in the late '80s when a friend and I were driving me back to Canada from the States. And he came to visit me once for a fortnight in Calgary in the mid '90s in the bleak midwinter. 

In 2005 I got the email from his brother. He had been found in a cheap motel room, the kind you pay for by the day. Apparent overdose.

Two days earlier he had called me and said he had completed the latest stint at rehab and had saved some money and was wondering if he could get on a Greyhound to Alberta for a visit. He was desperate to see a friend from a time when life was easier. 

I demurred. Things were tough right now. It wasn't a good time. Besides, he should go see his family, his little girl, his pregnant wife. They needed him. Maybe another time? 

"Maybe another time," he echoed, and his voice caught in his throat. 

"Always your friend, Tinhead."

https://youtu.be/tsX7Gv1GhTc