I See Dead People

   A week or two before this past Halloween, I came across a website (appearing before me, magically, likely either on Facebook or Twitter), which creeped me out. It could well be that it was only out there for public consumption due to the proximity of All  Hallows Eve or it may have been fairly random but it still creeped me out.

   It focused on the Victorian habit of having portraits taken of deceased family members. Quite often the family member in question would be arranged so as to appear as natural as possible, sometimes in a sleeping position or occasionally propped up by mechanical means in a pose. If you're wondering what I'm speaking about and want to perhaps take a look at the website then it is here for your perusal. I would offer the warning, though, that there is a very discomfiting feeling to some of the pictures you will see and you are not going to be able to unsee what you have viewed at the end of the experience.
   As much as these portraits made me eerily uneasy, at the same time I had to look at them, I almost couldn't stop myself.
   I don't know if there is a name for this affliction of mine, this desire to immerse myself in the macabre, but I have been this way for a long time. I remember in public school we had a series of people come to talk about different vocations there were out there and one of these people was an undertaker. He had brought along with him a couple of the tools of his trade and one of them was the tool they use to wire shut the jaws of corpses. It was a little like a staple gun, with wires, and he demonstrated their use on a piece of board he brought along with him. At the end of the presentation, I quite timidly approached him and asked if I could have the board he'd used. He said yes and I ended up taking the board home and eventually hung  it on my bedroom wall, as a piece of art, I guess. Not sure what my parents thought....
   Later on in life, every time I came across a picture of a dead person (think crime scenes and war photos and the ilk) I stopped and, for lack of a better word, soaked it in. It was almost as if I was attempting to come to grips with the whole mortality thing and the more time I spent contemplating death's aftermath, the less foreign (and scary) it might become.

   There is a museum just outside of London and in one section of it are housed large machines, tractors and threshers and....horse-drawn hearses. Hearses from the mid to late 19 century and I am drawn to them like flies to a carcass. They are eerie and ancient and those are two of the things I love about them. It is difficult not to look at them and think of the countless lifeless bodies they carried and all the personal histories which ended at that point in the journey.
   The first dead body I can remember seeing in person was when the father of my best friend in public school passed away unexpectedly. My dad took me to the funeral home and I can clearly remember walking up the aisle to where the open casket was. In my mind I was thinking please no, please no, please no and then I was there, staring down at him. I'm not sure what I had been expecting but the reality was much less terrifying than the expectation. No viewing since then has disturbed me nearly as much, having realized how antiseptic the experience could be.
   Obviously the Victorian days have passed and we no longer feel the need to gather around our loved ones who have passed, for photos. Instead, we are generally blessed with being able to view pictures of them in various stages of the lives they lived, as they were living them. To be clear, I am drawn even more to these portrayals of the fully alive then I am to portraits of the deceased. Occasionally, though, I see dead people. And I kind of like it.  

Gordie: Part Two

   If you should happen to do a Google Images search on old-time NHL player Lou Fontinato of the New York Rangers, the chances are the most prevalent and striking image you are going to see is that of a hockey player whose face is pointed south while his nose is most definitely pointed west. And bloody.
   Such was the damage inflicted on Fontinato in a fight with the Red Wings' Gordie Howe on Feb. 1, 1959 that it has lived on in hockey lore and was one of the recollections people spoke about recently as Howe was recovering from his stroke. It was said at the time that the other players nearby could hear something break with pretty well every one of Gordie's punches during this fight.

Fontinato--facing two directions at the same time

   Howe, during his long NHL career, was regarded as the toughest and meanest player in the league. His elbows were legendary and he was also not shy about "laying on the lumber", if the circumstances warranted it.
   A few short years later, though, Fontinato suffered a career-ending neck injury while playing for the Montreal Canadiens. He, in fact, was paralyzed for over a month before finally recovering. Howe was one of the first people to offer well-wishes.
   This then was the dichotomy Gordie represented---he was a mean s.o.b. on the ice but one of the nicest men you'd want to meet off of it.
   Long before Howe suffered this recent stroke (he has been plagued with smaller ones in the past little while) I already knew that I wanted to do a blog post about him. On top of the strokes, Gordie has also been suffering with Alzheimer's disease.
   I have, and always have had, an image in my mind of Gordie Howe. Some of that image is as a hockey player, albeit with streaks of grey around his temples. Much of it is as an older gentleman, surrounded by those who respected and/or idolized him. Any image I have of him is as a vital and strong person. To hear that he has been struggling with Alzheimer's and to hear how this has affected him is distressing.
   Recently, Gordie was viewing some Red Wing related coverage on the T.V. and afterwards commented that he really wanted to connect with his old friend and former teammate, Sid Abel. Sadly, Sid Abel has been dead for almost fifteen years. At some point, Gordie obviously knew this but had been robbed of this information by the Alzheimer's. I can only assume that he has both his good and his bad days coping with the disease but this is totally at odds with how I remember him to be.

Howe and Richard

   I am not so naive to believe that celebrities and sports heroes should be immune from all that ails us. I do find it interesting, though, how easily we fashion a place for them in our minds (and hearts) which finds them exempt from old age, illness and infirmity. I tried to imagine Gordie Howe struggling to speak, walk and remember and I found this almost impossible to do.
   A few years ago, another famous Number 9 in hockey, Maurice "Rocket" Richard, also found himself struggling with both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. I recall that, as journalists would quiz him about his playing career, he would reply that he couldn't comment on things he simply no longer remembered. At that point, we found ourselves remembering for him.
   

Gordie Howe lives on and may be with us for some time to come. Such is his place in some of our lives that it may not be  necessary to think of him as he is now but only to remember what it is he has meant to us over all these years. I do find myself occasionally at odds with the mortality of people who have been important in my life, whether they be people I know or whether they be people we all know and hold in some form of high esteem. I think there are those who we hold as constants in our lives. Sometimes they are friends and family, sometimes they are people who have the power to move us through music, art, written words or film. Occasionally they are sports heroes, those who have demonstrated physical skills and a type of determination we ourselves can only aspire to. Gordie Howe is that kind of constant in my life.   
   

Gordie: Part One

   All-time National Hockey League great, Gordie Howe, suffered a debilitating stroke recently. This unfortunate event brought on an outpouring of well-wishes and hopes for a speedy recovery, all directed Gordie's way.
   It also prompted those who remembered his playing days to share their fondest memories of a player who was simply known as "Mr. Hockey".

This about says it all!

   As someone who was born in the early fifties, the name "Gordie Howe" entered my consciousness before I was even really a hockey fan or understood clearly what hockey was all about or even how it was played.
   I am sure I can thank my father for this. I think he spoke about Gordie with a reverence normally reserved for saints and I think he did this constantly, in passing, and without even thinking about it. Because of this, Gordie Howe was the first hockey player I had ever heard of and, because of this again, "hockey" and "Howe" became synonymous for me.
   I think there was also something about the name "Gordie"---rather than the more formal "Gordon"--that helped reinforce his legend status. "Gordie" sounded more like the neighbourhood kid everyone knew, the kid everyone liked and remembered long after you'd moved away from that same neighbourhood. He was everybody's friend.
   By the time I was old enough to become an actual hockey fan, most of Gordie's best days were behind him. I never got to see him raise the Stanley Cup or win a scoring title. Thanks, though, to his utterly amazing longevity, I was able to see him play.
   

The man with the moves.

Gordie retired from the NHL in 1971 at the age of 43. Circuitously, after joining the newly-established World Hockey Association so that he might have the opportunity to play pro hockey with his sons and then having that league eventually merge with the NHL, Gordie found himself back in the NHL, now at the age of 51. At this time he was playing for the Hartford Whalers and I can clearly recollect watching the Whalers play the Leafs one Saturday night on Hockey Night in Canada. At one point in the game, Gordie had the puck in the Leafs zone and a hapless Leaf defender skated right up to him, intent on relieving him of the puck. Gordie simply shifted through him, appearing on the other side, still with the puck. I think my jaw kind of dropped and I had one of those wow moments, not so much because I had never seen a similar play but because I'd never seen a guy in his fifties do it to a guy in his twenties! This then, became my favourite Howe story and one I fondly recalled as others were doing the same, in the wake of Gordie's recent illness.

Mr. Howe

   At this point, it's difficult to say how much longer Gordie Howe will be with us. The initial fears, after the stroke, seem to have somewhat subsided. Howe was always known as one of the toughest men in hockey and there was a bit of a consensus that if anyone might survive and, hopefully, at least partially recover, it might be him. So far, so good!