Advance eulogy for my mother, who turned 89 on March 5

I recently read Beverley McLachlin’s autobiography. She was the first woman to serve as Chief Justice of Canada. In the book she talked about how her mother didn’t get to live the life she wanted because, to paraphrase Trudeau, it wasn’t 2015. 

My mother also didn’t get to live the life she wanted: to be a forest ranger. I’m sad she didn’t have the chance to live her dream—even if it might have turned into a nightmare, if the stories about mosquitoes exsanguinating a moose calf in 20 minutes are to be believed.

Although my mother’s sphere of influence may not have been as large as a Chief Justice’s, I hope she knows how many two-legged and four-legged lives she enriched. And even a three-legged one, after her cat Sydney got caught in a trap and had to have his leg amputated. How many Chief Justices can say they helped the three-legged denizens of this world? If the dozens of cats and dogs and one rabbit that my mother housed could have verbalized their feelings, I’m sure they would have said something similar to a friend’s response when I suggested we meet for lunch: Helen, are you bringing your mom I hope? I'm looking forward to seeing you of course but your mom is a really big draw. I love your mom.

Human relationships are often sprawling and complicated and it’s difficult to do justice to them without penning a sprawling and complicated novel. So I will have to make do with an anecdote that illustrates one quality I really appreciate about my mother: her stalwartness. This rather ugly-sounding word is the best one I could find that melds the wonderful and possibly under-appreciated traits of dependability, strength, and calmness. 

The incident in question took place on a road trip from Kingston to Thunder Bay in 2012. I was arranging our accommodation and asked my mother, who was 81 at the time, if she would be willing to camp the first night. My mother agreed, which I imagine not many 81 year olds would have, even if they happened to be Chief Justices. 

We arrived just before dusk. At the entrance to the campground there was a sign warning of bear activity in the area. I have a morbid fear of bears, but since it was getting dark, the campground was about 50 kilometers off the main highway, and there were no towns nearby, we had little choice but to continue with Plan A. 

It was dark by the time we had set up our tents and eaten dinner. I was getting ready to wash the dishes when my mother suggested we put them in the trunk of the car and deal with them in the morning. “If you think that’s OK,” I said. I was tired and eager to crawl into my sleeping bag.

At some point in the night I was wakened by loud noises. I unzipped the tent and peered out. One of the car doors was wide open and the noise was coming from inside the vehicle. Lots of noise. I screamed at my mother, “I told you we should have washed the dishes!” and scrambled out of the tent, yelling at my mother to get out of hers. “There’s a bear in the car!” I shouted by way of explanation. 

“What?” my mother said. “How did it get in there?” 

The noises from the car grew louder, together with my worry that the bear would soon have consumed all the food and might start looking for dessert in the surrounding area. I shouted at my mother again to get out of the tent. I remember reading about a bear that had dragged a couple out of their tent in Algonquin Park, and I thought we might have a better chance of surviving if we weren’t encased in a nylon coffin. 

“Keep your voice down, you’ll wake the neighbours,” my mother said. (This is another one of her good qualities: she is exceedingly considerate of others.)

“I want them to wake up!” I screamed hysterically. I wondered what was taking my mother so long. Was she combing her hair?

Finally, she emerged. She came over and stood by me and asked again, “How did it get into the car?” 

“I don’t know I don’t know what should we do what should we do?” I said, wringing my hands. My mother shone her flashlight—I had not thought to bring one—into the car. A raccoon, holding a cracker between its front paws, peered out at us. 

My mother and I looked at one other. Then we laughed. “How did it open the door?” she said. 

“I know, I mean, I know they have opposable thumbs [Brief aside: This is a myth. Unlike my mother, I have a tendency to spout fake facts] but, I mean, I’ve never heard of a raccoon breaking into a car,” I babbled in nervous relief. 

Only then did I remember that after I had gone to bed but before I had fallen asleep it had started to rain, and so I got up and went to the car to retrieve the tent’s fly. Because I inherited some of my mother’s consideration for others, I left the car door open; my hands were full and I didn’t want to kick the door shut, as I thought that would make a loud noise and wake her. So my plan was to return to the car and shut the door gently after the fly was on the tent. This would have been the perfect plan, except that it took me so long to put the fly on in the near blackout conditions that I forgot to go back and shut the car door. 

I confessed all this to my mother, who could have made me feel small and stupid for being such an idiot, but all she did was laugh again and say goodnight. (This is another quality of hers that I appreciate: she doesn’t belittle people, even when they’re ripe for belittlement.) 

As we started walking back to our tents, something growled in the bushes behind us. It was a big growl. A big, bear-sized growl. We turned and looked at one another, but this time we didn’t laugh. I dashed to the car, which the raccoon had considerately vacated by that point, scuttled in, and slammed the door. My mother walked calmly over to the passenger side, got in, and shut the door in a controlled manner. We stayed there for the rest of the night. In the morning we related the night’s happenings to the campers occupying the site next to ours. They had somehow managed to sleep through all the drama. 

“It was probably a raccoon you heard in those bushes,” they said. “They can sound pretty ferocious.” Maybe, but maybe it was a bear. Or a tiger. Or a lion. The point is that I panicked when I heard the wild beast and my mother did not. 

We resumed our drive to Thunder Bay, exhausted but exhilarated at having survived the ordeal. We laughed frequently that day. This is another quality I love about my mother: she has a good sense of humour that can withstand most anything, including sleep deprivation.

One of my great fears—other than encountering a lion or tiger or bear—is dying in a plane crash. If this were ever to happen, I would like my mother to be in the seat beside me. I know I would be able to depend on her to take my hand and to remain calm and strong, as she did for her sister when she was dying. And even if my mother isn’t physically in that seat beside me, and even if it’s not a plane crash, I hope that I can summon her calm and strong presence when I need it. And maybe share with her a final chuckle about that time the bear that wasn’t a bear broke into the car through an open door.