By Jim Hagarty
2018
Some people are too sentimental. They spend time in their present lives missing moments, people, events and things from their past. And in extreme cases, they enjoy things more when they are gone than when they are here.
To a degree, that is Dave’s problem, though he will never admit it. He had been known to dread a visit from his Aunt Bernice from Timmins, be irritated with her bossiness the entire time she was on site, and then complain that he missed her when she finally left. In fact the eye rolling and sighing by Sam and Stephanie and even their mother Morley around the supper table would get pretty intense when Dave recounted the many wonders of his glorious aunt for days after her departure.
Maybe that is why Dave always liked the line from Jesse Winchester’s song, “For love’s just a matter of memories, and when I’m gone I’ll be glad to love you.” He never got the line just right but he loved it anyway. Once during his days as a roadie, Dave got lent to Winchester for two dates in Montreal and he always smiled when he heard the Tennessee songwriter sing that line. However the line went.
Because Dave really does love people better when they are gone.
For her part, Morley has always had a completely different approach. She appreciates life as it happens and doesn’t look back very much. She loves her time with other people and doesn’t miss them as much as Dave does when they leave. And if they pass from this dimension to the next, her response is always, “Well, we can be thankful we had her in our lives for all those years.” That’s what she said when Aunt Bernice passed on, though Dave never knew for sure how thankful she really was or if she was, what it was exactly she was thankful for.
The truth is, Morley has always been better at living than Dave who has always had trouble staying in the moment. Standing in the crowd at an outdoor music festival, Dave would inevitably lean over to whomever was next to him and complain, “Not as good as Woodstock.”
And so it was, when Morley dropped a copy of the Globe and Mail on the breakfast table in front of him that day that Dave felt an instant stab of remorse.
“Beloved Storyteller Stuart McLean Dies”, read the headline.
“Oh no,” cried Dave. “Stuart is gone.” The operative word was “gone”. He missed him instantly though he hadn’t seen him in years.
“Who was he?” Sam felt obliged to ask, as he looked up from his cornflakes. Sam didn’t really care that Stuart McLean was gone but he did care about Dave and absorbed his father’s sadness like a sponge. Stephanie always reacted differently in situations where characters unknown to her came up in conversation. She had sat through one too many half hour essays about people she didn’t know to poke the story bear.
“Stuart McLean was the guy who started the Vinyl Cafe,” remarked Dave. “In fact, when I came off the road and wanted to settle down, he was the one who talked me into going into business. Talked me into buying the Vinyl Cafe from him. He was a fast talker and a slow talker all at the same time,” added Dave, with a thin smile. “I always wondered about the deal we made for the shop. Stuart sure seemed to be in a hurry to get our money and run.”
“What did he do after that?” asked Sam, whose interest was genuinely beginning to stir.
“Stuart was a musician and a good one. And he loved to have little jam sessions with customers in his office in the back. One time, he sat down with John Lennon who was browsing out front. They carried on for half an hour. Several times he picked away with Gordon Lightfoot who dropped in regularly looking for old records by the early folksingers. Meeting people like this was a feature of the business he always loved.
“But Stuart McLean was a storyteller at heart and apparently a very good one,” said Dave. “He performed in concert halls and on radio and wrote books based on his stories. I never actually heard his act but they say it was a good one. He based all his stories on a family he had invented, a quirky Mom and Dad and a teenage son and daughter. That family really came to life for a lot of Canadians. I wish now I had listened to some of those stories.”
So Dave was kind of down in the dumps for most of that day, in spite of Morley’s attempts to cheer him up. He didn’t really feel like opening the record shop, though it was important. He and Morley were closing it for good on Saturday and it was busy with people trying to make their final visits worthwhile. Unlike Stuart McLean, they hadn’t been able to find anyone to sell it to. That left Dave with a niggling feeling that McLean was a better businessman than he had thought.
No matter, Dave’s admiration for Stuart McLean came from his recognition of how creative he was. He often said to Morley that in many ways, he felt as though Stuart had created him and his whole family, or at least the life they had been living these past many years. It was a strange feeling.
“Now you’re going too far,” said Morley, and Dave knew she was right. Dave always went too far. Too far was where Dave often lived. But this time, he did really miss this man who was gone and he couldn’t explain why. He didn’t know him that well.
So it came as a surprise to him, as he closed and locked the shop door for the last time that Saturday night, an antique door Stuart McLean had installed so long ago, when tears trickled down his cheeks as he and Morley walked away, carrying a few of the precious records they hadn’t been able to part with.
One of those records contained a collection of early Stuart McLean stories.
“Morley,” said Dave. “Tonight I want you and I and Sam and Stephanie to sit down and listen to this. Who knows? We might be in for some surprises.”
Morley looked to the heavens. Over her years with Dave, she had spent a lot of time looking to the heavens. Nevertheless, what she loved about him most right at that moment was his tears for Stuart McLean. Because she knew they were genuine Dave. The real, not imagined, Dave.
Stuart McLean would have liked that about him too.
