Tribute

Michael Wilkshire died on 22 September 2024, a little over a month after an unexpected diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. His obituary is here.

There has been no better father, no kinder, gentler man. A man of limitless patience and infinite jest, and when I say infinite jest, I mean his jokes could take a long time to run their course. They weren’t jokes so much as stories. Not stories so much as improbable novels delivered out loud, with corny punchlines. He’d save them up for family dinners and roll them out; he’d say: Tim, I’ve got a joke for you…

Dad was always up for another round of hide-and-seek in the basement with small children, although at six foot two he faced a competitive disadvantage, compared to a six-year-old and a toddler: he’d try to compact himself behind piles of flattened cardboard boxes and be given away by his giant feet poking out. One Christmas, he and Mum had prepared the dinner, as they did every year, for all of us, and the second he eased into his chair in the living room afterwards, ready for a quiet coffee after many hours of chopping and roasting and carving and serving, a little voice piped up: Hey Grampy, can we play hide and seek? I said No! No, he’s going to sit down now and relax, but he said Oh, that’s all right. And off they went to the basement, and there were shrieks and giggles.

Dad loved his family, but he also loved his allotment at the community garden, working on his plot, chatting with the other gardeners. A few years ago, he was having some heart trouble. He’d had a test and then gone to the allotment. Mum phoned me and said, The hospital called about that test; they read the results and they want him back in there now. But she didn’t have a way to reach him. I tore up there, slammed the car in park, shaded my eyes and scanned the area. I wasn’t sure where his beds were, but I thought I saw a figure in the distance. I sprinted along the grassy path, wondering if at any moment I was going to see a heart attack victim keeled over in the vegetation. There he was, standing at the end of a long row of evenly spaced holes, each one with a plant laid out on the ground beside it, ready to be dug in.

I said, Hey Dad, I’m really sorry, but you need to go back to the hospital, there’s something about those tests. He thought for a long minute, looking down the row of holes. The plants had been in pots, but now they were out and the roots were exposed; they’d dry out if he left them.

He said, slowly: Bugger it.

He said, That’s nothing. I’ve had that before.

I said Well, OK, but the hospital has called and they want you to go back in. He surveyed the line of plants again.

I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, but in the spirit of moving things along I said, OK, I’ll help you, but we need to get these in quickly. So I went along the row with him, shoving the plants in the holes with some soil and a bit of water, hoping he wasn’t going to pass out, and I thought OK, we’re done here, and I turned my back for one second, and the next thing I saw him over by wheelbarrow; he was shovelling a thigh-high mound of compost or something, and I said Dad, this is a potential heart event? For god’s sake don’t be shovelling, OK??? And he said It’s not a very big pile.

Back in the late 70s/early 80s, he was one of the first runners in St. John’s. He’d go on to run a few marathons, but running was a new, weird, thing then; there were about eight runners in this town and you knew what each of them looked like. I remember going to the old Breezeway bar at MUN one afternoon. It was my first term and I was 16 or 17, my first, very exciting, illicit trip to the university bar, possibly to any bar, a dingy place of low ceilings and dark wood, and who should roll in but Dad and his buddy Dave Kirby, sweaty and laughing; they’d just been for a run.

I froze.

He bought me a beer.

Dad loved photography, loved his camera clubs. He liked nothing more than heading to the King George V pitch to shoot a game. He’d post the photos later in a facebook group for the players and their families. I went to one with him in the late summer. By then we knew he was dying. I carried the gear. At the ticket booth the woman waved us in. He was always so happy to be let in free – it wasn’t about the money; it was the photographer status that pleased him. The teenagers in their soccer gear were respectful as they walked along the sidelines; they’d stop to make sure he wasn’t shooting before they crossed in front of the camera. He was in his element there, set up on the bleachers with his tripod.

I can remember Dad getting angry with me once in my entire life. I’ve done plenty of stupid and inconsiderate things and I’m sure I was often a pain in the ass: maybe he was angry lots of other times, but he never showed it. He was always a safe, non-judgmental space to go to. I knew that whatever I confessed, whatever I felt bad about, he would understand; he wouldn’t hold it against me. He would love me.

When my daughter was in daycare, I arrived one afternoon for pickup and the kids were outside playing; when Sal saw me, her face lit up; she ran across the play area towards me and I thought: never forget this. The look on her face. I was the absolute most wonderful person in her world in that moment. I thought: she will grow up and you will never be loved unconditionally like this again, and that’s fine, that’s the way it goes, but remember this moment forever. And I have.

But I was wrong. Dad loved us unconditionally too.

In 2017 Dad had a heart attack. He had to spend about six weeks in hospital, not well enough to go home but not sick enough, week after week, to be at the top of the list for surgery. Eventually, he had a bypass operation. Mum and I walked beside the gurney as far as we were allowed, and when we came to point where he was wheeled away from us through the double doors, he gave us a giant smile and a thumbs-up. I thought, My God, is he so medicated that he doesn’t know how dangerous this surgery is? Or so desperate after all those weeks in hospital that he just doesn’t care anymore and wants to get the operation over with?

He told me later that the doctor had come to see him the night before and explained all the risks, all the very many things that could go catastrophically wrong, and he’d signed a consent form. He rarely used language like this with me, but he said, I was scared shitless. And then I realized the cheery grin and the thumbs-up weren’t about him: they were for Mum and me.

Dad was lucky to have my mother looking after him so well, to be cared for in his own bed at home until the end. My brother, Nick, came back, and the four of us were at the condo most of the time. Dad was tired, sleeping a lot, and he didn’t have his hearing aids in, so you never knew when he’d heard what you said. Once, I thought he was asleep and I kissed his forehead; a few seconds later, I heard a quiet kiss back. One day I said, quietly, not expecting an answer: I love you Dad, you’re the best.

Good idea, he said.

He never had a bad word to say about anyone. He was better at that than I am, but sometimes I’m about to open my mouth and I think of him and I keep it shut and smile instead. I wear his socks. Small ways of carrying him forward into the world.

Thank you, Trevor Wragg, for taking these photos.