Lightness amid the dark

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This article was published 31/12/2015 (3869 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sean Jamieson was remembered as “the man. The myth. The legend.”

“Men wanted to be him and women wanted to be with him. Sean Christopher Jamieson packed his duffel bag and left us to go play hockey in a larger hockey rink that will always be filled to capacity.”

Those are the opening lines in the obituary published in the Winnipeg Free Press Jan. 17, detailing that 29-year-old Jamieson had died.

It wasn’t a stuffy obituary, and it wasn’t filled with sadness. Instead, it was filled with Jamieson’s personality. In a few lines you know he liked to laugh, liked to joke and would have been the life of any party.

I’ve spent more than a decade reading every single obituary published in the Free Press every year — along with a smattering of ones in rural newspapers I happen to see — to compile an end-of-the-year tribute to the most prominent and notable people who passed away during the year. It’s one of the most-read articles I write every year, and many families tell me it helps them through the first holiday season without their loved one.

Through that time I’ve seen three things changing: families are now mentioning what their relatives did on the Axis side during the Second World War, many women are listed now as being heads of companies or having been politicians — showing how gender attitudes in the decades past were changing as women from those generations die — and more people are using humour or humorous anecdotes in the crafting of obits.

Heather Barbour, Jamieson’s mother, said his dad, Scott, crafted the obituary. She said Jamieson had a chance to read it before he died from cancer Jan. 14.

“His father is very good at writing things like that,” Barbour said recently. “It was very much like who Sean was like as a person — very humorous, very generous, very comedic.

“There were 375 people at the funeral service, and everybody who read it said that’s him, and they wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

‘Were they quirky?’

Associate professor Kenneth MacKendrick of the University of Manitoba’s department of religion says obituaries such as this one are part of a trend away from having overt religious references in the write-up.

“Now it’s about the individual,” MacKendrick said.

“We want the obituaries to reflect not the religious, but the elements of their lives… we want to know who they are.

“It used to be, what does God want or the community. Now it’s, were they interesting? Were they quirky?”

MacKendrick said it’s also a sign we are more comfortable talking about death.

“We’re open and talking about death now,” he said.

“Death used to be hidden and invisible. There’s a huge desire now to talk about death and to think about it.

“Bringing humour into death is part of it.”

Humour in writing own obit

Janice Dryden, a funeral director at the Neil Bardal Funeral Centre, says there has always been some humour in peoples’ obits, but many times now it’s the deceased themselves putting it in during funeral preplanning.

“What they do is put in what they want to see in the paper because what I might want is different than what my kids would write,” Dryden said.

“A lot of people write things up when they are terminally ill. People don’t just want doom and gloom in there.”

Certainly, humour can have staying power. I can’t remember the names of the people I’ve read about in the obits through the years, but I can remember the funny bits.

There was the guy whose obit said he once struck a deer with his truck on a northern highway. A few years later he struck another deer with his truck. The guy would say from then on that he hunted better with his truck than with a rifle.

And there have been a few memorable ones in this year’s obits:

When Bill Blain, a father of four daughters, died his family noted “it was fitting that, in his high school yearbook, his interests were ‘girls, girls, girls’ because that is what he ended up with; even the family pets were female.”

When Elsie Williamson lived “in Manila… she created a group called the Asia Minors (steadfastly ignoring the fact that this name has nothing to do with the Philippines and actually refers to Turkey).”

Cecile Desroches’ family said “after her first child was born, and since she truly desired a daughter, she endured six more pregnancies resulting in seven more boys. Ultimately she decided to quit one short of a regulation baseball team.”

Living a full century, Bill Shell was remembered for his clothes sense because he was “well-known as arguably one of the best-dressed men in the city. He was featured in the Winnipeg Free Press Style section not once, but twice.”

And Norm Buckboro, who it was noted “married Kay Todd in 1952, after courting her parents for a number of months while she was dating other guys. Apparently this worked for him.”

Fittingly, I’ll let Sean Jamieson have the last word.

“When asked if he had any beliefs, Sean responded, ‘I don’t believe in reincarnation, and I didn’t believe it when I was a hamster.’ ”

Amusing memories from 2015

Jan. 1 — Charles Brydon: “He grew up on the family farm the youngest of four boys. When starting high school the principal said, ‘The more you Brydon boys come, the worse you get!’ Dad seemed quite proud of that statement! Willie completed three years of high school in two years.

Jan. 3 — J. Murray Arnott: “(Predeceased by his parents) he has now joined them on the eternal golf course where the sun always shines and there are no three-putts.”

Jan. 7 — Nicholas Pona: “Demonstrated the grit and prudence of a man who had known hard times. He’d walk anywhere to save a buck on parking and shovelled his own snow till he was 90, beating his sons to the job every time”

Feb. 19 — Mary Beehler: “From early on, wearing her Davy Crockett jacket, Mary loved everything western. Along with enjoying western movies and western singers, she always cheered loud and strong for the western teams — the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, the Winnipeg Jets and our baseball team the Winnipeg Goldeyes.”

Feb. 22 — Peter Brett: “At 15 years old he built a powerful receiver that picked up the attack on Pearl Harbor 4,000 miles away. He always claimed to be one of the first to know about it.”

Feb. 27 — Jim Butts: “In 1949 Tom and his cousin Bink went to Halifax to join the Armed Forces, (but) they were told that after they joined they would not be allowed to get a tattoo, so they went out and got tattoos first!”

March 2 — Stan Pachal: “We recently talked with him about funerals and obits. “No funeral,” he said. “And what about an obit?” “Just tell them I kicked the can.” After much laughter we said, “You mean the bucket?”

April 11 — Vern Smith: “He once had the dubious pleasure of being on board a runaway camel that travelled, for some unknown reason, the length of the Great Pyramid of Giza. This clearly marked the end of his camel-riding adventures.”

May 6 — Greg Audley: “Many thanks to Dr. Butler, who Greg threatened to take off of his Christmas list because he was always the bearer of bad news.”

July 1 — Jean Demetrioff: “She worked a variety of jobs and then worked at Kae and Larry’s garage. Not only did Mom pump gas into Dad’s gas tank, she showered him with gas also, and so a courtship began.”

July 9 — Ray Dwornick: “Ray’s first job after normal school was as a salesman for the T. Eaton Company, in the ladies department. Ray decided that ladies were not his career path and looked toward the automotive industry.”

Aug. 16 — Nick Krawec: “He was very proud of his Ukrainian heritage and would often say “to be Ukrainian you have to do Ukrainian things” usually with a drink in hand, while listening to Ukrainian polka music.”

Aug. 27 — Anna Webinger: “For many years, Anna worked slinging meat at Manitoba Sausage making her capable of defeating her grandsons at arm wrestling well into their teens.”

Sept. 11 — Ernest Roberts: “Roberts Jewellery (in Lynn Lake) was the only store where you could buy a diamond ring, fine bone china, a hot water tank, get your driver’s licence and have your washing machine repaired all on the same day.”

Sept. 12 — Cliff Maunder: “Passed away on Saturday… thankfully asleep during the two games of a doubleheader, which his beloved New York Yankees were losing to the Toronto Blue Jays.”

Oct. 18 — James Milligan: “He served our country for six years during the Second World War with PPCLI and travelled all through North Africa and Europe. He said it was a million-dollar experience that he wouldn’t pay a nickel to do again.”

Oct. 23 — Bonnie Cooper: “Here comes Bad Grandma, sliding sideways into the grave, with a smoke hanging out of her mouth, a dented halo, perfect hair, feathers out of place and wearing her fuzzy white slippers.”

Nov. 6 — David Henkelman: “His congregations appreciated his sermons (and not just because he installed a clock at the back of the sanctuary to ensure he never went overtime).”

Dec. 12 — Arthur Marlow: “They were married on Arthur’s birthday in 1950, his way of making sure he would never forget their anniversary.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca