It was an incredible shock to hear of the passing of LIS PhD student, Chris Dixon, last summer. (In a freaky coincidence, this happened right in the middle of my posting the eulogies I've given for my grandparents over the years.) In my post about Chris' death, I wrote about how little I'd been exposed to the death of people close to me in my life, at least so far, but that I knew this would inevitably change as I grew older.
Then, last Sunday, my mother-in-law kept the weekend's paper specifically to show me the obituary of a woman who was a resident of my hometown of Indian Head. It turned out that I didn't know that woman but looking over the obituaries, a different name caught my eye. It took me a second to place her but it turns out it was the woman who wrote up our mortgage when we moved back to Regina from Calgary in 2004, dead at 49 of ovarian cancer.
As I frequently do, I began composing a blog post in my head based on this chain of events. I thought about how I would talk about the way that we pass in and out of other people's lives – sometimes having a large impact, sometimes leaving a small reminder, sometimes only as a passing acquaintance, meant for some singular purpose before carrying on down our own paths.
The core idea for that post shifted quite dramatically a couple hours later and not in a good way.
When we arrived back in Weyburn last Sunday, I had noticed a bunch of cars parked outside the neighbour's house. The neighbours were a young couple who had just moved here from Alberta last fall so this gathering seemed a bit out of the ordinary since they didn't really know many people yet as far as we knew. He was busy in the oil patch and she was a stay-at-home mom with a young boy who was a year and a half old.
When I arrived at my in-laws', I also couldn't help but notice that one person getting out of a vehicle appeared to be carrying in some food. It could be nothing but that's also a potentially ominous sign for people in rural Saskatchewan (does that happen elsewhere? When someone dies, the family is bombarded with visitors bearing food?)
I thought to myself, “oh, it must be a dinner party.” I mentioned it when I went inside and my in-laws had noticed the vehicles next door too – their theory was that the couple had joined a church and were being welcomed with a party. This explanation seemed as forced as mine was and reflecting now, I think we were all trying to avoid the most obvious explanation – something really bad had happened to one of the parents or worse, their son.
A few hours later, I was downstairs when the doorbell rang. I heard my mother-in-law say “Oh no, oh my God”. I raced upstairs to find the elderly lady that the couple were renting the house from had come to tell us that the father, Spencer, had been killed in an accident in the oil patch. His truck had been by an oil tanker that had failed to stop at a yield sign on a grid road.
I stood there in shock as a jumble of thoughts cascaded through my head.
Only in his mid-20's, he was so young…his wife alone now…their son without a father…the evil fucking stupidity of the oil patch…no family or friends nearby…how I'm complicit by owning oil stocks…Pace tugging at my leg, unaware of what's happened…how this young couple had moved here to create a life for their family…that all gone in an instant…the greed that makes men work 16 and 20 hour days every day for weeks on end…the warning I got from a branch librarian before coming home on the grid road right near where the accident happened…”Be careful at any crossroads – the oil trucks don't stop”…hearing last summer that Shea's uncle was calling in any semi-truck that whipped past his farm, sometimes even chasing them down…how I'm complicit because I hope that they find oil on Shea's parents farm only a few miles from that uncle (and maybe twenty miles from where the accident happened)…the controversy about our premier admitting that he lets his 14-year-old daughter drive on grid roads, something we've all done growing up in Saskatchewan but something I would never let Pace do on the grid roads in this area now.
I thought back regretfully on the fact that I'd only had a couple interactions with Spencer and his family. Soon after he moved in (he came out first to get settled before his wife and son joined him a few months later) I stopped by one day when he happened to be outside just as I was getting off work. We had a brief chat, talking about our respective backgrounds and how we came to be where we were. We compared notes on being new parents. At one point, I mentioned that I was a librarian and he asked where he could buy books in town (blowing all my “rig pig” stereotypes to hell in one brief sentence.) We went our separate ways promising to get together with our wives and sons for supper or drinks sometime.
Then, last Christmas, knowing they were going to be in Weyburn alone, my in-laws invited them over for Christmas Eve. They came over and we had another nice visit, comparing notes on living in Alberta v. Saskatchewan, holiday memories, tips on raising an active boy and the usual mundane chit-chat that happens as strangers get to know each other.
Shea and I could've and should've made more of an effort to spend time with them and now, of course, never having done so, is when we realise that. Getting wrapped up in your own lives, your own worries, your own lack of time to make that effort seems so petty and stupid in retrospect.
And so, as the reality that you're still here sinks in at a moment like this, you make the resolutions – I'm not going to do
that anymore. I'm going to make an effort to reach out to people. I'm going to spend more time with my own family. I'm going to live healthier, eat healthier, do more, be more. I'm going to live.
And you say all that with the knowledge that it's all smoke and that feeling will disappear in hours or days, like the feeling that you have when you leave a theatre after an inspiring movie like “Stand By Me” or “Dead Poet's Society” or whatever. Then you're back to worrying about the stupid shit like what mark you got on that assignment that's worth 5% of your final grade. Or some off-hand comment a co-worker made that you keep replaying in your head. Or that you didn't get a full eight hours of sleep because your son is teething.
So yeah, life goes on except when it doesn't and the single most brutal kicker for me in this whole situation is a line that Spencer said during our first conversation on his driveway. Pace was still small, maybe only a month or two old and his son was around the age that Pace is now.
He said, “You know what? I love being a dad and there's not a day that my little guy doesn't make me laugh.”
That's all a VERY long tangent to say that recent events have made it hit home *very* hard that no matter how long you live, life is very short.
The blog that Chris Dixon's wife has set-up is called “Carpe Diem Chris” and as I mentioned above, it depends on my daily cynicism level as to whether I believe I truly am seizing the day or not.
But no matter how I feel, I do believe that the memorial fund for Chris is the perfect way to celebrate the life of a great person and whether you knew him or not, I hope you decide to make a donation. Every dollar counts whether you give $5 or $50 or $500.
I'm going to make a donation and I don't want to take anything away from Chris but I'm going to think of at least part of it as being in memory of Spencer who during that first conversation asked me “Where do you go to get books in this town?” and laughed because he hadn't already thought of it when I replied, “How about the library?”
If you've read this blog long, you know that I like to see connections in everything and also to see things come full circle. While I was at FIMS, Chris gave me a couple of his old textbooks and, no matter how I pushed, would accept nothing more than a cup of coffee for them. He told me to pass the favour along to someone someday. I like to think that, indirectly, by helping make this scholarship a reality, someday a future FIMS graduate will be able to convince a rig worker or someone else you might not normally think of as a reader to visit the library for their own books. Mission accomplished.
Here's the announcement about Chris' Memorial Scholarship:
Faculty,
staff and students in FIMS were shocked and saddened by the sudden
death of LIS doctoral student Christopher M. Dixon on July 2, 2007. Now
a memorial scholarship has been established in the Faculty to honour
Chris' life by supporting future library and information science
students.The Christopher Mathew Dixon LIS Memorial
Scholarship will be awarded once annually to a Master's or Doctoral LIS
student who not only shows a passion for the field in which Chris
studied, but who also exemplifies a commitment to making his or her
community a better place through active volunteer work.Anyone who wishes to help support the Christopher Mathew Dixon LIS Memorial Scholarship at Western may donate online at http://www.westernconnect.ca/cdixonmemorial or by contacting Karen Boddy, FIMS Alumni and Development Officer, at 519-661-2111 ext. 87463 or kboddy@uwo.ca.
(I knew the scholarship was in the works but thanks to the Canuck Librarian for being the first to let me know it was officially a go!)
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