How to say "thank you."
PROLOGUE
Allan Murray Hill, known to many as "Big Al," passed away peacefully on June 4, 2023, wrapped in a quilt, surrounded by the care and compassion of the Central Okanagan Hospice House in Kelowna, BC. Despite life's challenges, he defied expectations, reaching the joyous age of 69, a remarkable feat for someone who spent almost two decades experiencing chronic homelessness.
Big Al is my father. While I could write pages and pages about everything he has taught me, I took the most important lessons he gifted to me and distilled them into something I read at his Celebration of Life, which took place on June 29, 2023 — what would have been his 70th birthday. My hope is to share his wisdom and light, and somehow, say thank you to the communities that kept a piece of my heart safe for all these years. I hope you find something beautiful in these memories.
You can watch Al’s Celebration of Life here.
REMEMBERING BIG AL // how to say “thank you.”
I can tell I don’t feel just one or two things about my dad.
Sometimes I am so sad I won’t hear the joke about the rabbits, or the story about the phD. And other times I am so angry for all the moments I wish we’d had together.
I had wished for a moment when my dad left me with some advice or some insight on what to do when he wasn’t here. As much as I tell myself I am an independent young woman, and as much as I said I accepted the situation as I saw it in front of me:
I knew I would miss my dad.
I wrote this as I reflected on some of the last moments I would have with Al:
“I drove to Kelowna today, to ensure that I can say goodbye to my dying father. Who I refuse to cry around. Because if I can tell you the truth, I don’t often think about the man he once was at his best. Except now when I hug him, his frail body and shrinking bones, fighting to stand, even though he should be able to rest comfortably in a big, cozy bed.”
*Side bar: he was eventually able to be in a cozy bed, surrounded by amazing care, thanks to the staff and volunteers at Kelowna Hospice House.
“For a moment, if I’m being honest, I do wish to wander into an alternate universe where he hugs me and tells me it’s okay and that he had a very nice life. Even if in that universe, he’s at the end too, I could just be a daughter and know that the person hugging me is my dad and he knew peacefulness as much as he had known strength.”
I might feel a lot of ways about Big Al, my dad. But I don’t think I misunderstood him.
I think he’s taught me how to understand myself, the vastness, possibility, and utter complexity of our humanity.
My therapist tells me the idea of getting “the perfect last words,” is a bit of a misnomer, a myth, and an even older trope. When I told her I just thought of making up Al’s last pieces of good advice, she didn’t think that idea would be half bad.
I started writing about my father in 2017.
I titled this piece today ‘How to say “thank you,” ‘ because so often we are left without words, and only feelings. And we don’t know how to express our vastness, our complex love and gratitude.
But, if we’re lucky, we get art and poetry.
So, here’s what I think Al would have wanted you, and me, to know and remember.
1. If you get people laughing, you’ll have helped.
“Find the laughter, Car,” he always tells me. You gotta find the light, and breathe life into it. Goofiness makes life sparkly. It makes other people loosen up, and forget their troubles, even if for a moment. Make someone laugh, and you give them a moment of respite. Give people the space to feel many things at once. Jokes can be silly, they can be dark, and if you don’t see it already, you will soon. Humor is creativity, it’s magic, and it’s the superpower I pass on to you. <Insert the rabbit joke here>
2. When in doubt, move it out.
Al never stopped moving — even when I gosh darn shouted at him to slow down, to rest. And yet, his stubbornness is now forever engrained in me. Don’t run from your body, run towards it. As my father’s doppleganger, Richard Simmons says “[Rule] Number one, like yourself. Number two, you have to eat healthy. And number three, you've got to squeeze your buns. That's my formula.”
I feel most connected to my father when I’m moving and when I’m teaching.
And when you move, you breathe. And your breath affects how you think and feel. Our respiratory system is one of those unique systems that is both autonomic and somatic. Meaning, you’ll automatically breathe without conscious effort. However, breathing can also be consciously controlled to some extent. We can voluntarily alter our breathing patterns, such as taking deep breaths or practicing gentle breath retention.
So, if you’ll join me in a couple deep breaths… you can come back to these any time you need. You start by emptying your lungs, feeling the emptiness. Then, you slowly breath in through your nose and fill your belly, your ribcage, and the back your body. Pause at the top, feel it all and then gently let it all go. Rinse and repeat.
3. Be of service, even when it’s complex.
Make a difference for people. Don’t leave others behind. Doing what’s right won’t always be what’s easy (or even entirely straightforward). Love people up close, it’s harder to hate them (as best said by Brené Brown). Understand people, and meet them the places that exist past the ideas of right and wrong. In the wonderful words of (yes, again) Richard Simmons: “everyone has a story that makes me stronger.” Al wanted me to know that everyone has an origin story. It’s that story that makes others become human to us, similar to us. And that’s where we find the capacity to love ourselves, and love each other.
4. Feelings are made for feeling.
Bear with me on this one, because I am not sure if Al necessarily mastered this during his time on earth. I picture my dad, his spirit, in this gentle space of wisdom and eternity. Or sometimes I just picture Al as a ghost, hilariously whispering his simple hauntings, which will forever be “feel your feelings.” Don’t smash them down. Don’t drink them away. Dance with them, write them down, make friends with them. If your heart is breaking, let it break.
Here is one of my favourite poems by one of my favourite authors, Mark Nepo, that perfectly encapsulates the severe beauty and dynamic range of our feelings.
ADRIFT
by Mark Nepo
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.
5. The good does grow.
My dad inspired a phrase that’s near and dear to my heart, and he did a mere five years ago on his 65 birthday. It was one of the first times I could hear him, truly listen to him, and his stories about the community he’d come to know, love, detest, the whole world of it. And though his stories were full of things that have a depth foreign to me — crime and substances, death and loss, desperate heartbreak and trauma — the ways his communities intertwine are not unlike my own.
Here’s what I wrote back then.
“My dad tells me to watch how things grow. Do as much good as one can right now, he says, knowing it will be a little seed planted among treacherous terrain. ‘But Carly,’ my dad says with a dramatic pause (and somehow after all these years his eyes still sparkle) ‘you must watch how things grow. There aren’t fairytale endings like people expect, but the good does grow.’
So oddly enough, on his 65th birthday, I do look at how we’ve grown—how the person I’ve grown to be is willing to learn about boundaries just as she is willing to learn more about love. How the things that make us scary to ourselves also make us human. Inside of our humanity, the biggest gift we give to ourselves and then to others is the gift of being seen.”
I saw then — and now I look around and I see all of you awesome humans — and I still see that: the good does grow.
It might just be a little sprout in a disheveled landscape, but it does grow. Not perfectly. Sometimes you just have to let the good grow wild. And do the best you can. Show up. Not necessarily as your perfect self, but simply as your best self.
***
In 2020, my father moved into his first home in over 18 years. Housing has been an important, and yet increasingly divisive, topic. I know many cities in our province are grappling with healthy housing, including the complexities involved with mental health, street entrenched populations and community safety.
Seeing my dad be able to access safe housing is something that I'd dreamed about since I was 12 years old. I understand that issues such as these can spark a lot of debate. Thank you considering the viewpoints of folks who’ve experienced or are experiencing housing insecurity.
Somewhere past these debates, there are real human stories of daughters who never stop rooting for their fathers, and inclusive communities that continue to grow. Thank you to everyone who helped my father access a space in this Stephen Village. Thank you to all the people who work there: your impact is felt over here, forever and always.
Special thanks to:
Inn from the Cold
That’s just a bit of what Al has taught me, and his lessons are with me from now until my own end. I’m grateful I get to write them down. I’m grateful I got to write to you, whoever you are out there reading this.
Thank you for having been there. Thank you for being here.