Life, death, laughter, love… and my mom’s bong

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/11/2017 (3183 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I realize this is supposed to be a humour column, but today we’re going to spend some time talking about love and death.

We’ll start with death, because that topic has been occupying my mind since the day almost two weeks ago when my mother died on the West Coast.

My older brother called on the morning of Nov. 9 to say I needed to get out there as soon as possible. I booked a flight and started packing, but my brother called back an hour later to say it was too late; Mom had slipped away while he held her hand in the hospital.

I don’t recall exactly what I did next, but I must have called my buddy Bob, who also happens to be the publisher of this newspaper, because within half an hour Bob was knocking at my door.

Bob doesn’t make a big display of overt emotion, but when his friends need him the most, he’s there to lend his compassion and understanding.

While I was on Vancouver Island with my brother and sister, arranging my mom’s celebration of life, Bob decided he wanted to do something more to lift my family’s spirits, so he wrote a beautiful, heart-felt column about my relationship with my mom that appeared in the Free Press under this headline: “A lifelong boy is grieving his mother.”

The paper needed a photograph to go with the column, so my wife emailed Bob a photo she’d taken during her last visit to my mom’s home in Sidney by the Sea.

The photo made Bob furrow his brow. “Um, what exactly is Doug’s mom holding in this picture?” he asked my sad spouse.

My wife replied: “Oh, that’s just the special hearing aid she used in her final years.”

When my wife arrived in Vancouver for the celebration of my mom’s life, my family listened, weeping gently, as she read aloud the deeply moving words Bob had written.

Then my wife passed me a copy of the newspaper and I got my first look at the picture she’d selected to accompany the column. “That’s your mom holding her high-tech hearing aid,” my wife said between tears.

I started to giggle. “No, sweetheart,” I replied, “that’s my mom holding her bong.”

And it was. The huge photo that appeared in thousands of newspapers showed my smiling mother ready to take a huge puff from the electronic vaporizer she used to inhale the medical marijuana she was prescribed to treat chronic pain in her final years.

At first, my wife’s eyes grew to the size of manhole covers, but within seconds she was crying with laughter. “Ohmygawd!” she gasped. “Your mother would have thought that was hilarious.”

She was right. Other than friends and family and food, there’s nothing my mom loved more than laughing to the point where she almost wet the carpet in our living room.

When my wife shared her photographic faux pas at the service, the bong photo brought the house down. Nothing much embarrassed my mom — including being rescued by a team of handsome paramedics when she toppled over in the shower — and she would have loved that mix-up.

Which brings us to the part about love. It seems, while we were on the West Coast saying farewell to my mother, a surprise romance blossomed in our home back in Winnipeg.

As she always does when we’re away, my sister-in-law Donamae volunteered to move into our home to look after our three dogs. She also brought not only her two dogs, but a third hound that belongs to her dentist, who was also out of town.

For those of you who have forgotten Grade 5 math, this means my sister-in-law was attempting to survive under a single roof while looking after six small skittish dogs, all of whom slept in our king-sized bed together.

I will point out here that one of our dogs, Bogey (a.k.a. “Mr. X”), is not overly fond of strange mutts. But the moment he laid his moony little peepers on Poco, the little ball of fluff owned by my sister-in-law’s dentist, it was love at first sight, at least on Bogey’s part.

Amid the overwhelming grief of losing my mom, my wife thought this canine love connection was the greatest news imaginable. “Our little Bogey is in love,” she sighed, eyes misting over.

It made me smile to think our furry little bachelor had finally been struck by cupid’s arrow. And now, when I take a quiet moment, I can hear my mother’s laughter, too.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca