Trying to distract myself

 I had to drive through Edson today and I couldn't stop thinking about the guy who killed you. Lots of thoughts that are not fit to be cemented into being by giving them words. I did however look him up on facebook. And I messaged him. I guess we will see where that goes.  

The stories we don't tell

The photo

Within my British family many stories were told, but many more were absent. It was considered a point of pride to “suffer in silence.”

Stories that were shared were often funny, recalling some antics of a relative, or meaningful as to deliver a poignant lesson. The real stories, the ones steeped in trauma, lessons from the world wars for example, were withheld. While some of these stories were alluded to, the lessons my family felt important to pass down (i.e. never to trust Germany), were taught seemingly without context.

You could feel some of these stories, even though they were hidden, as if they were a family member in the shadows waiting to be seen. But they were never spoken of.

Before deciding to settle in Canada, my father served as a fireman for many years in the London Fire Brigade. Looking back now I can see my father suffered with the demons of trauma, although he only ever shared stories that were humourous (like pushing a cat out of a tree with a hose), or successful (like the time he had given a German shepherd mouth to mouth and revived him). He protected us from his pain.

Turns out though, the seemingly greatest story was the one that remained untold.

It wasn’t until years after my father passed away in 2004 that I became aware of the photo. My mother said it must be somewhere in his belongings and expressed that it was important that we find it. She did not disclose the story, or reveal any meaning, behind the photo, instead saying that it had won an award and pictured my father rescuing a small child from a fire.

Whatever my mother knew of the story she took to her grave.

It took a while to find the photo. When we did it was well glued into one of my father’s many scrapbooks. Unable to dislodge it from its page, I took a picture of it and uploaded it to instagram, hashtagging it #londonfirebrigade. Almost immediately someone from the Brigade commented on the picture, identifying my father, his unit, the date of the incident and the location. It seemed like a tiny miracle to have this information, a blossoming half story we’d likely never realize the fullness of. I related this discovery to my mother, who managed to look pleasantly surprised by my “new” information. The picture itself became well appreciated among family and friends, reproduced and admired, but it still guarded it’s secrets.

When my mother passed last year I faced the enormous task of going through two lifetimes of artifacts within a very short time. It was during this furious sorting that I found the newspaper article and my father's typed report of that day.

My father's report was a harrowing tale, he—now an officer—had arrived on the scene without the breathing equipment which it was policy to don when entering burning structures. However, when he heard the mother cry that her two babies were still in the house, my father’s instinct overtook him and he and a colleague rushed into the home. Desperately searching, on hands and knees, feeling along the walls to find doors because the smoke was so thick they could not see.

They did eventually find both of the children, curled up together under a blanket in a bedroom, no doubt trying to hide from the fire. Each grabbed a child and, as my father’s recount states, he raced to where he recalled the ambulance had been when he had arrived on scene. Sadly all efforts were in vain; the boy died 30 minutes later. My father’s report was professional, but it had an unmistakable undertone of sorrow and deep regret.

The news clipping my father had kept revealed more of the story. The little boy my father had carried out, so fervently willing him to live, was named Christopher.

This could seem like a trivial piece of information except that my brother, born twelve years later, had been named Christopher, and I had long wondered where the name had come from as it is not a traditional family name.

As we slowly weave this story back into our family narrative, reclaiming it as much as possible, we can never understand why it was kept secret as there is no one left who knows. The meaning we attribute to it will be our best interpretation of the story of courage, life, and hope, arising from the shared human experience of trauma.

* Submitted on 26 May 2020 as a personal essay for my ENGL 308 class and also posted here because of it's connection to Chris.