Tag Archives: loss

Giant of a Man

25 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in Discovery, Observations

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Growing up, did you ever watch kids’ shows? Cartoons? Live action? Did you have any favourites? When I was a kid, my mom wouldn’t bring a TV into our home. I had to live vicariously through the stories the other kids would tell about the TV shows they watched. If I was lucky, I would be at a friend’s house and I would catch a bit of a show. It wasn’t until I was seven that a TV was in the house. Do you realize how much catching up I had to do??

TV was a different place back then. No really, I’m not just reminiscing through a foggy memory that glorifies the olden days. I just found out that when Ronald Reagan was the US president, he deregulated a lot of business and one of those was TV. Right after that, kids’ TV programming when from sponsored by toy companies to half an hour toy commercials (with commercials). Come on, sing along with me:

“Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol,
We’ll be there on the double
Whenever there’s a problem…”

For a guy that apparently stood for family values, kind of odd that Reagan sold out kids to corporations.

Anyhow, even though we had TV, in Canada without cable there weren’t lots of programming choices. One kids’ show I would watch, out of sheer lack of choice, was “The Friendly Giant.”

The Friendly Giant was a 15 minute program on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Bob Homme, the friendly giant himself, created the show based on the premise that adults look like giants to children, and he wanted to show that “adults could be kind and warm and share a sense of wonderment.” Apparently, he could have been a millionaire if only he merchandized himself and his puppets. He felt doing so would be a betrayal of the children’s trust in him so he never sold out. Terry O’Reilly, Under the Influence.

 

Honestly, I thought “The Friendly Giant” was a bit corny by the time I watched it having already become a fan of “The Six Million Dollar Man.” How can a guy with some puppets and a recorder compete with bionic Steve Austin? And then came “Star Wars.” The show eventually ended in the early 1980’s but by then I was long past the target audience of the show and didn’t even know it was gone.

But here’s the thing. On May 2, 2000, I was living in the Vancouver, BC area and I was driving around to client meetings. While I sat in traffic at an intersection, a common Vancouver experience, the radio announced that Bob Homme, the friendly giant, had passed away. They did a short overview of his life, during which I grew in respect for the man, and then they played the ending to his show…

So there I sat in traffic, listening to the ending of that corny show, and I wept deeply for the loss.

 

The Cyclist

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Observations, recovery

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This is based on an article I wrote for EdgeYK Magazine in the spring of 2014. I’ve edited it slightly as it refers to an event in the past.

No one gets to where they want to go alone. That thought kept coming back to me as I prepared for YK2HR 2014 – an annual, 500 km, three day bicycle ride from Yellowknife to Hay River.

Years of family life and a stressful, sedentary, job meant my weight had been continuously climbing. My blood pressure was rising and my latest tests indicated other risks were looming. Then came 2012 – a perfect storm of loss and discouragement. The year started with my mom’s death. We knew it was coming but I was still devastated. Six weeks later, I had a huge crisis at work that left me reeling. So there I was: unhealthy, grieving, and wounded. I entered a dark cloud of discouragement and depression. It was at its worst in the quiet times – in the middle of the week – and the rest of the time it was a chore to drag myself around and be functional. One week turned into a month, then two months…

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It’s been said that everyone has a story that will make you cry and many people have stories that will bring you to your knees. As stories go, I know mine is on the lighter side. But what made all this really challenging for me is that I was the pastor of the Yellowknife Seventh-day Adventist Church. Getting knocked off my feet a couple days a week and having a persistent dark cloud does not a good pastor make; it just made things worse.

The First Step
Through my work, I can access a confidential and free care line. Getting the courage to call is another story. Thankfully, I got desperate enough to pick up the phone. It was September 2012. That call was my first step to recovery. After listening, the counsellor suggested I had serious depression and I should seek medical assistance. That was the proverbial straw. I had to make a change.

Break Away Fitness
I’m not opposed to medication for depression but I also know that exercise is very helpful. My first stop was the gym, Break Away Fitness in Yellowknife. It took time, but I lost nearly 40 pounds, dropped pant and shirt sizes, and all my health indicators are normal to better than normal. Setting goals, using tools like MyFitnessPal, and participating in challenges kept me motivated. The thing is, something more happened. I found community. The gym owners, Kelly and Carey, were a huge blessing to me and I made many new friends. Let me introduce you to them…

Alyssa!
One of the first friends I made was Alyssa Mosher, a CBC reporter. She interviewed me for a challenge I had organized. There’s nothing like making a public declaration of your goals to make you determined to achieve them. I just hope that when she gets super-famous she remembers the little people. You can find her on Twitter – @ammosher.

Andy!
I met Andy Wong, an avid cyclist and organizer of the YK2HR ride, and I started to pick his brain about buying a bike. He went one better and offered to sell me one of his used bikes, a Trek hybrid. I used to cycle in my youth so returning to riding was transformational. As the cycling season ended I planned to invest in a new bike over the winter; something lighter and fitted just for me.

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Ron!
Ron Ogilvie changed my plans. I told him about my new biking goal and he encouraged me to do YK2HR 2014. I was hesitant. I love to bike but I hate camping. (Personally I think camping is against God’s will – Jesus said he was going to prepare a room for us so we can dwell with him. A room – not a tent or a camp site.) Ron’s persistence wore me down. I committed to the ride.

Preparation is Half the Battle
After I committed, I realized how unprepared I was. A high quality road bike also meant cycling shoes and pedals, clothes for various kinds of weather and, most importantly, padded bike shorts! That last item has inspired my sister to call me a MAMIL (Middle-aged Man in Lycra).

As YK2HR got closer, I gave more attention to stretching and massages – hey, it’s harder than it sounds. To be ready for NWT roads I would regularly go up and down on a teeter-totter while my wife threw dust in my face.

When I started to exercise I realized there was more I needed to do to see the changes I wanted. I started to look closely at my diet – I became intentional about how much I ate and what I ate. The game changer was Vegucated, a documentary on iTunes and Netflix. It’s a low budget documentary where three people are invited to try a plant based diet for six weeks. It wasn’t new information – Seventh-day Adventists have been talking the plant-based diet since the early 1900s – but it was the right information at the right time.

By the end of the documentary, I made the decision to go with a plant based lifestyle. Keep in mind that I didn’t see this as a “diet.” I committed to it as a way of life. I will confess it’s not easy to be vegetarian in the NWT if you keep your mouth open when you ride a bike. The biggest challenge has been eliminating added sugar. I keep telling myself I’m sweet enough on my own…

As I look back on where I’ve been and forward to where I’m going, I believe the best is yet to come.  Check out my next post for what happened after YK2HR…

Broken Records

01 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by in Observations

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If you’re cool and unconventional, you know about the TV series, M*A*S*H. It’s been called the “fifth-best written TV series ever and… the eighth-greatest show of all time.”

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M*A*S*H was a dramatic comedy centred on a surgical unit during the Korean war. I watched the show mostly in re-runs during my teens. M*A*S*H would make me laugh out loud, challenge me, leave me weeping.

One of the regular characters on the show was Charles Emerson Winchester III. He was basically a snob who saw himself above most people but every so often the complexity of his character would be revealed in deeply moving situations.

In the series finale, some Chinese soldiers surrender to Winchester who discovers the soldiers are musicians who know how to play, somewhat poorly, one of his favourite musical recordings, Mozart, Clarinet Quintet in A, K. 581. Winchester takes them under his wing, teaches them, and they form a bond.

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As the finale concerns the end of the war, later in the episode, prisoners of war are exchanged and the musician soldiers are taken away. As the truck carrying them pulls away, the musicians play the Mozart piece for their new friend Charles Winchester. Shortly afterwards, the announcement comes that the war is over.

While everyone prepares to go home, new casualties arrive at the camp. Winchester is performing triage and discovers one of his musician friends among those who have been killed. He then learns that the truck the musicians  were in was attacked and there were no survivors.

In a effort to console himself, he returns to his tent and begins to play the record of the Mozart piece but after a few moments he removes it from the player and smashes it. The music that once inspired and comforted and bridged the gap between people has become a source of pain and sadness; all the hurt and grief of war.

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In no way would I compare my life to a literal war however, for the last several months, I journeyed with a young adult and it often felt like we were fighting a war. A war against her past, the trauma that she suffered, and its affects in the present. A war agains spiritual forces, a war against psychological abuse. Every new day, no matter how difficult, felt like a victory, a battle won. Along the way, she became a friend to my wife and I and then, like a daughter to us; we care for her like one of our own.

Music was a big part of the journey with our friend. We came to enjoy some new songs she introduced to us and we shared songs with her – if you can believe it, she didn’t know classics like “Lean On Me“! She grew up in a cultural wasteland but we loved and accepted her as she was. These shared songs became sources of inspiration, comfort, laughter and hope.

One particularly meaningful song was “Home” by Gabrielle Aplin. It was a favourite in my playlist. It gave me hope in the heat of the battle. As the three of us would drive down the road it would play and we would sing and there would be joy. Recently, our friend made the choice to cut us out of her life so she could return to the place she once described as toxic while saying, ‘How can I get better when I’m constantly being torn down?’ The reasons for her choice are complex and confusing. All we could say is that our hearts and prayers are with her; we hope that as she matures and becomes a real, independent, person, she will come to love herself and love others with the heart that God gives all of us.

On a long drive the other day, I put on my playlist and listened to “Home.” Like Winchester’s Mozart piece I realized it has become a source of pain instead of hope, grief instead of joy; a reminder of loss and our heartbreak for the struggle she is going through, a monument to the failure I feel on a daily basis. I had to delete it from my playlist; “Home” has become a broken record to me.

I still hope for a different tomorrow. Unlike a fictional show that was written and recorded long ago, the ending of this story is as yet, unwritten. I hope and pray our friend uses her tools, practices self-care, and cultivates resiliency and finds the healing she needs. I hope she allows God to love her into everything he created his beloved child to be. I hope one day she will be her own person and her dreams will come to pass. I hope that one day, when she has freedom, she will reconnect, and we will enjoy banana cream pudding, and laugh, and sing about Home once again.

Until that day, I’m leaving this broken record here.