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| Dad in the Yukon |
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
There aren't too many poems that I have enjoyed memorizing, but this is one of my favourites. Call me morbid, but "The Cremation of Sam McGee" is my favourite poem by Robert Service.
My Dad spend three years in the Yukon in the fifties. He was single and there was money to be made up north. He left his parents on their Flatrock farm and headed north to the land of Robert Service. I wonder if he crossed paths with my favourite poet. Robert Service died in 1958, so it is very possible. I don't know. That was one story I never heard.
A few days after Dad's death, I sat at a table with my mother, my sister and the funeral director by the name of John. I first met John at a summer camp I attended when I was fourteen. He was one of the counsellors. It seemed odd to me that the long, blonde haired biker would end up in that line of work. John, the motorcycling mortician, was also one of my brother-in-law's best friends.
One of the standard practices given to grieving families at the funeral home is a body viewing. We all passed that up. Dad died of cancer and he already looked like death while he was still breathing his last breaths, so viewing a body wasn't necessary or even desired for us. But I had a request.
"John, can I see the crematorium?"
I wanted to see the process that would convert the remains of my father into something that would fit in a small homemade wooden box. I was curious. This is something Dad would do. I thought. He was always interested in how things were made and how they were done.
John took me to the back where they housed the equipment for cremation and showed me how everything was done. I got the full tour. It was enough to peak my interest, but I didn't think past it in that moment.
In a few days, I returned to the funeral home with the wooden urn that Mom's neighbour had made. I was to drop it off, and it would come with Dad's ashes in the hearse on the day of the funeral to the church.
I saw John, and something in me had to ask.
"Is he in there?"
"Yes."
Dad's body was scheduled to be cremated that morning, that is why I had to get the urn to them so they had it when they needed it.
"Do you want to come in?"
I was told that the body was already in the oven. There was no risk of me seeing anything other than the equipment I had already seen on my previous tour. John gave me the time and space to sit in a cold room. That's right. It was minus thirty degrees outside, and the oven room had a big hole in the back for ventilation. Dad was toasty warm, and I was freezing my backside on a cold concrete floor.
I listened to the furnace and imagined the fire dancing around what was left of my father. I took the papers down from the clipboard and looked at the name. I looked at every letter over and over again... processing. THAT name on THAT paper belonging to THAT body in THAT oven... was my Dad's name. It was the only evidence I had that he was gone.
Then I made a hike,
for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,
and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled
down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak
went streaking down the sky.
John had peaked in a couple of times to see how I was doing. I was grateful for his compassion. I stayed for a half an hour and went back out into the cold, much like Cap. But I left him there, unlike Cap, I didn't return.
I didn't need to see my dad in a casket without breath. I don't like that practice. There is no life there for me to connect with and I like to remember my people as they were... with breath. But that half hour in the crematorium helped me do something that day. It helped me say good-bye. I think Dad would have approved. So would Sam McGee.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,
in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile,
and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear
you'll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,
it's the first time I've been warm."
"When it is darkest, we can see the stars." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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