Elyse Levesque Instagram – “Keep the Faith”, he would say in the midst of an embrace, at the end of a phone call or simply with a text. Those three simple words became my father’s mantra. A talisman of hope he’d pull out, whenever we needed a reminder. I wonder how many times he’d repeated them over the years, if only to himself, willfully increasing their power with every repetition. I wonder how many times he’d doubted them.
So much of my father’s life, and ours’ by contiguity, revolved around his health. In 1978 he was diagnosed with kidney disease, thus beginning decades of visits in and out of hospitals. A steady diet of pills. Four hip replacements. Rejections. Eighteen years on dialysis. Two transplants. And a series of never ending complications. Yet, through it all, he remained ever the stalwart optimist. Positivity was his superpower. Proving time and again that the strength of his spirit was greater than the body that contained it.
No matter what difficulty he was facing, he always managed to hold space for others; offering his fellow dialysis friends a supportive shoulder to cry on. Doling out advice to the nurses who, after many years of treatment, had become like family. Fielding panicked phone calls from his (then) 19 year old daughter after she’d locked herself out of her apartment in Germany and expected him to do something about it. He was our “go to guy”, approaching life’s curveballs with a sense of humor and the knowledge that things are seldom as bad as they seem.
He loved racing cars and spoke often of his black ‘74 Dodge Challenger, as if it were a long lost love – the one that got away. Stories of trips to the racetrack near Saskatoon and the time he was hoping to drive my mom up in his red ‘75 Chevy Van (a plot to ask her out, of course), only to end up transporting her luggage while she hitched a ride with a girlfriend, were in heavy rotation over the years. He would retell these stories with the same endearing, childlike enthusiasm to anyone who would listen; as if he were telling them for the first time. As if he’d lived them only just yesterday.
(Con’t in comments…) | Posted on 05/May/2023 01:00:17
