Sorry, it's long. It's interesting...
My grandpa died, so the last four days, I was in Vancouver. We left on Wednesday to see the relatives we hadn’t seen for at least eight years, depending on the body. The beginning was strange...like reassociation.
If you didn’t know better, Nanny seemed like nothing had happened at all.
The memorial was on Thursday, and it was like being in the geriatric wing of a hospital. Three of his four kids spoke, one’s wife, and my brother in place of my dad. My brother actually cried, for what, I believe, was his first time since finding out the news. He acted fairly unaffected until then. Bernice (the youngest kid, our aunt) cornered Tyler, questioning him about our mum’s drinking and what we were doing about it. She said that no one had recognized when she arrived at Christmas. When she had left them then, Grandpa put his head down, shaking it, saying, “We’ve lost that one” and Nanny said that she’s a lost cause.
During the socializing part of the service, the cousins (Brooke, Cory, Rayden, Tyler, and me) planned to meet the next day for the BC Lions football game. We planned to pick up Cory and her boyfriend at their house to see it and then meet at Brooke’s for an hour or so, because it’s about ten minutes from the stadium. That night we went to a Greek restaurant, where I had the best lamb I've ever had.
But Rayden ended up picking us up at the hotel and took us to Cory’s house, where I saw the largest quantities of pot I've ever seen: filling a thirty gallon plastic bin. (It’s legal in BC; you’re allowed eight plants. It’s well-known enough that it’s called BC’s Best here.) They’d ordered a limo to pick us up there. Cory’s friend Twig and his girlfriend, Randy, showed up late, along with her boyfriend, Ryan. The limo was there at six and they weren’t ready yet. There began the wonderful limo ride.
The lady was strange immediately. The one rule was they couldn’t smoke, which they all do, as you could imagine. She said the sun roof had been bolted shut and the front window didn’t go up. The side container had rotten beer and mass amounts of fruit flies in it. These were all complaining points. We stopped at a liquor store (the age is 19) and everyone but Tyler and I got out to smoke and to buy. Then, because they had taken so long to get ready and get in the car, our hour was nearly up. It was a hundred dollars each way, and she tried to tell us that if we picked up Brooke and her boyfriend, Rory, that it would be another sixty dollars, rather than fifty. That didn’t go over so well. Once we had reached Vancouver, Rayden lit up…and she knew it. She threatened to kick us out. When we got to the pavilion, she said she wasn’t coming back. Ryan got $135 back (we originally paid $250) and we went in the game, dreading Cory, Ryan, Rayden, his girlfriend, Twig, and Randy joining us. In fact, Brooke, Rory, Tyler and I feared we’d be escorted out because they’d cause trouble. After the game, we went to a nearby bar. Rayden and his girlfriend left early, and Twig and Randy got in a fight where Randy ended up catching a cab herself. So Twig, Cory, Ryan and we goodfour were left. Brooke and Rory went home, because it was ten minutes away, but the other five of us had to try to catch a cab. The first one we found said eighty dollars to fit us in a normal size car. We attempted to get a van, which only took four. We ended up getting someone to do it for a hundred: seventy for the company, thirty dollars tip. We took them home from the hotel. Tyler and I walked in the hotel room at ten to three. My mum was up, making phone calls, getting her flight changed to the twenty-first. She hadn’t asked anyone, so the next morning when Nancy (my aunt by marriage) arrived at five-thirty to say goodbye to us, she was surprised to find out she had to take my mum back…to a family who was not prepared to have her for another week. She called Tyler and I as we arrived in Dallas, telling us she’d be home the next day.
The airport was yet another adventure that neither of us was prepared to face after two and a half hours of sleep. We arrived at the airport at seven-thirty and rushed through everything we could, thinking our flight was at eight o’clock. At security, I got chosen to be patted down. It got us through the line faster and she told us that the boarding was at eight o’clock. We got breakfast and jumped on the plane. We shared headphones and watched Ice Age 2 on the flight, which Tyler fell asleep at the very end. The both of us had really rough sleeps. We arrived in Dallas with two hours left, so we went to Friday’s and got wings and chips and dip. I passed out for a good hour on the Dallas-Chicago flight. Once at Chicago, we both checked one of our bags. But they weren’t at Claim 9, as they’d said they’d be. In fact, half of our flight’s bags didn’t make it there…or to Chicago at all. Nor did half the flight’s before us. Nor did some of Salt Lake City. So of course, the baggage claim was full of angry people, screaming at employees and bitching to each other. We’d arrived at six forty-five, twenty-five minutes early. We didn’t walk out of there until two hours later. Then we had to wait for the bus to take us to economy parking lot F. Then we had to buy toothbrushes and deodorant.
I came home with the responsibility my mum had agreed to previous to the trip. I had to take the neighbour’s two dogs out as well as ours. Now they’re at our house.
It was an interesting trip.
It makes me really sad that my grandpa died thinking knowing he had failed as a father with one of his five kids.

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