Author: hamishmacdonald

It seems remiss to not mention that cartoonists whose diary comics inspired me to get back into drawing:

• Dan Berry
• Lucy Kniseley
• Dustin Harbin
• Boulet

I’m so grateful to these artists who showed me that life is enough and normal is fascinating.

I can’t pretend that I invented the genre of diary comics. In fact, discovering those is what lured me back into drawing again. There are two Canadians I particularly adore.

One is Guy Delisle, whose wife works with Medecins sans Frontières, so he’s written about being a house-husband and father while in these remote, usually oppressive places. His style is cute and simple, but he conveys so much information and feeling in those lines.

The other is Michel Rabagliati, whose “Paul à Québec” series is beautiful, particularly The Song of Roland, which is about his large French-Canadian family going through the process of losing his father-in-law.

They also made a lovely film of it called Paul of Quebec. (A good Canadian film!!)

Nearly all my favourite comics are in French; shame I can’t read them in the original language (despite growing up in Canada).

The guy who runs my comics club is awesome, and I really respect his talent and views on the art, but he’s not into “cute” stuff. I, on the other hand, think cute is my secret weapon: People will go much deeper with you when you’ve won them over, I feel, than if you’re being all ugly and angsty.

It’s theatre, really. Whenever I start to beat myself about all the years I tried to avoid drawing and do other things — and all the skill I might have gained in those years — I remember that I’ve learned a lot about human nature through theatre and writing, and those things make me a sane person and someone who’s able to connect with the reader (though the diary comics are completely self-absorbed).

If I’d just done comics, I might think that people were obliged to look at my edgy work just because I care about it (they’re not), and if I’d stayed in theatre, I’d be a crazy person for sure.

Anyway, I must go do some work-drawing. Tonight is Comics Club, and I’m thinking about the old Natalie Goldberg rule that “for every cosmic statement you have to provide ten concrete details”; I think this will serve me as I continue writing about all this heavy Dad-stuff.

I read a really good article by Robin Williams’s wife today about why he died:
The Terrorist Inside My Husband’s Brain

A post-mortem showed that Williams had Lewy Body Dementia, which is sometimes associated with Parkinson’s. (Williams had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.) He couldn’t not be depressed, and he was losing his memory, his focus… everything, really.

This article gave me another context for thinking about what my dad experienced — like he wasn’t just being a cranky old git, he was at the mercy of what was happening inside his brain. It’s not that he just wasn’t trying… he just couldn’t.

So while this is a helpful meme:

…Williams’s story is instructive on a more nuanced level: The effects of brain chemistry are indistinguishable from personality. If I’d been more conscious of why Dad was the way he was the past few years, maybe I would have cut him more slack.

But then, maybe it’s wrong to medicalize away who someone has become — particularly when there isn’t some other them you’re ever going to be able to access again. Who we demonstrate ourselves as — is that not who we really are, at least at that time?

It’s all theoretical at this point.

In somewhat-related news, I felt compelled to scan and post my sketchbooks from the past five years. They’re available from the Comics page.

It’s raw, unfiltered personal memory stuff, so I don’t know how palatable it is for others. But I’m happy to have all those memories trapped in ink.

After months of events unfolding in such a slow and twisting way, suddenly everything blasted forward in a quick straight line — making arrangements, then finding myself standing on Tuesday night in the funeral home, lined up with my family, greeting old neighbours along with countless people who knew Dad from Veterans Affairs, the bike shop he opened, Canadian Tire (where he worked casually after leaving the shop), the Masons, and the many, many charitable causes he was involved with.

Then yesterday we were back for the funeral itself. Darin, the minister from my mom’s church, led a beautiful service that really drew out the main theme of Dad’s life: social justice. Then his best friend, Rob, gave an incredible speech that was just magic. He conjured Dad for everyone and raised him up to his very best, without puffery or skipping over his difficult final years.

I laughed and cried, and felt such huge gratitude to this old friend for giving us Dad back. What we remember will now be the fulness of him, not his defeat.

Rob also shared a short message from his daughter, Kelley: I’ll miss his humor, his wisdom, and the way he cared about people who were unseen or misunderstood.

I’m crying again. That’s happening a lot.

I didn’t know what visitations and funerals were for, and dreaded going through this experience. Now I understand. It’s an experience for everyone left behind that gives a healing context beyond the emotions of the moment.

In latter years, Dad said he didn’t want to have a funeral because nobody would show up.

He was very wrong.

~

For a while now, I’ve been feeling stuck in my creative life. Every time I had an idea, the wind would go out of my sails and I’d think, “Why bother?”

After this funeral and all the things people said of Dad, I feel filled with purpose and inspired to follow his example.

Of course, in true Dad fashion, the last scene had to be a funny one: We took the small box with his ashes down to Beach Grove, a forest by the shore where he’d always walk his crazy dog, Winston.

We waded out into the muck of a low tide, took the box out of its blue velour bag (the “Crown Royal bag”, as we jokingly called it), only to discover that the box was screwed shut, and none of us had a screwdriver.

If you knew Dad, you’d know that he was always surrounded by a zillion little implements. “Always use the right tool for the job!” he said.

Craig and I dashed home for a screwdriver, then went back to Beach Grove. In so doing, we also felt like there was a better place to do this — in the forest and further down the shore.

So Dad had the last laugh, and as we walked back along the forest path with “magic hour” light streaming through gaps in the leaves, we knew the last piece had fallen perfectly into place.

~

I can’t help feeling that Dad is everywhere now. Whatever materialistic logic might say, in my heart I feel this is just so — that when we laid him in the forest, he became the swaying trees; when we put him in the water, he became the moving waves. When the pale orange moon rose last night, it was his face looking down at us.

Some might say this is psychological compensation, but that doesn’t touch what this feeling is. Anybody who says they know absolutely what causes this life or what does or doesn’t follow after it is talking out of their ass. We all live in a constructed interpretation of this existence, even if we don’t own the story we’re telling. So I consciously choose this feeling about Dad in my heart and mind as my own truth.

Looking through some pictures this morning, I saw this one and thought, “Oh, there’s me holding my nephew.”

It’s my Dad holding me.

Dad is dying.

It’s been a long road since April, when he fell at the nursing home and broke his tailbone. Things have gone downhill, and all signs tell us this is the end.

We stopped the IV and antibiotics this morning. But, being Dad, he’ll go when he’s damned good and ready.

My husband bought this from a flea market… unironically.

The aliens are here, among us, replacing our loved ones.

I saw Solo last night with a buddy from high school band and his family.

It was fun enough, but… pointless. Lifeless. It was nobody’s private vision; a fanboy grocery list fulfilled by a committee.

sigh

By contrast, I got a monthly wee comic zine from Liz Prince (Tomboy) in the post as a Patreon fulfillment thing. She makes them herself, and they’re simple, cute, raw, and real.

There’s room for both in life — the big, dumb fun commercial culture and the DIY personal work — but give me more of the latter.