Tunesday : Into the Ocean

Into the Ocean

(Furstenfeld, J) Performed by Blue October

I'm just a normal boy
That sank when I fell overboard
My ship would leave the country
But I'd rather swim ashore
Without a life that's sadly stuck again
Wish I was much more masculine
Maybe then I could learn to swim
Like (fourteen miles away)

Now floating up and down
I spin, colliding into sound
Like whales beneath me diving down
I'm sinking to the bottom of my
Everything that freaks me out
The lighthouse beam has just run out
I'm cold as cold as cold can be
Be

I want to swim away but don't know how
Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
Let the waves up and take me down
Let the hurricane set in motion
Let the rain of what I feel right now come down
Let the rain come down

Where is the coast guard?
I keep looking each direction
For a spotlight give me something
I need something for protection
Maybe flotsam junk will do just fine
The jets; I'm sunk; I'm left behind
I'm treading for my life, believe me
(How can I keep up this breathing?)

Not knowing how to think
I scream aloud, begin to sink
My legs and arms are broken down
With envy for the solid ground
I'm reaching for the life within me
How can one man stop his ending?
I thought of just your face
Relaxed, and floated into space

I want to swim away but don't know how
Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
Let the waves up and take me down
Let the hurricane set in motion
Let the rain of what I feel right now come down
Let the rain come down

Now waking to the sun
I calculate what I had done
Like jumping from the bow, yeah
Just to prove that I knew how, yeah
It's midnight's late reminder of
The loss of her, the one I love
My will to quickly end it all
So thought no end my need to fall

Into the ocean, end it all
Into the ocean, end it all
Into the ocean, end it all
Into the ocean, end it all

Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)

I want to swim away but don't know how
Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
Let the waves up and take me down
Let the hurricane set in motion
Let the rain of what I feel right now come down
Let the rain come down

Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
(Into space)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
(I thought of just your face)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)
Into the ocean (goodbye), end it all (goodbye)

I let Kennedy select her playlist as we were driving down to see my parents in Nova Scotia, and when Into the Ocean came on I was totally blown away: How could I have forgotten this tune? There was a time that I loved this song and I made a mental note to remember it for a Tunesday post - we were heading for the ocean after all - but what I wasn't considering was just how perfectly the tone and words would capture the melancholy feeling of being near those unhappy old people once again. This story is the same story as every other time we have gone down to see Nan and Pop in the past few years, but I'll tell it once again.

Ken had warned me that our mother has essentially atrophied all of her muscles by sitting on the couch with her iPad for the past two years, so when I saw her, I was mostly just relieved that Ma didn't look as bad as I had been led to believe: bad, but not bad. And, if anything, Dad was looking a bit more spry. Still: he wanted to talk about his hopelessness.

The first morning that we were up just the two of us, I asked Dad if there was anything I could do for him while I was down. His cryptic answer: Just keep your eyes open. A couple of days later, he really wanted to talk about things. He complained of Mum's disinterest in doing anything - not cooking or cleaning, not meeting up with friends, not going over to PEI to visit with her aging family - and with her wasting muscles, he believes that she has passed the point of no return with "use it or lose it". Dad says that she roams the house in the middle of the night and that he has had to put carpet runners down on their open-plan staircases because she has had several bad falls in the dark (and as he said to Ken, he wants us to know this is going on in case she falls and breaks her neck some day and we suspect him somehow. Yeesh.) After noting that Mum doesn't look healthy and also refuses to see a doctor, Dad shared about his money concerns, too.

Dad was fortunate enough to get a gold-plated pension when he retired at 55, but not only has his old company recently cancelled their retirees' health care plan, but it has been announced that their pension plan is underfunded. Dad reckons that the weasel who bought out the company is trying to find a way to stop paying the few of them who got the most generous plans, and as Dad says, while he is still taking in plenty of money, he needs all of it to keep living in a big house in the woods like they are. Complicating things: while Nova Scotia does have generous social programs for seniors, Mum and Dad are worth too much to qualify for any of them; they don't get their medications paid for (as my inlaws do in Ontario), they don't qualify for home care services (which my inlaws receive five times/week), and if they ever needed to go into a nursing home, they'd have to pay for it themselves (unlike the inlaws). I understand that it's hard to feel sorry for the poor little rich folks, but as people who have paid more in taxes than many people will gross in their whole lives, it's a bit perverse that nothing they have paid in will ever be returned to them. Dad's great worry is that Mum will have a stroke or something and they will need to fritter away everything they have on homecare until, at last owning nothing at all, they can be put into state care. Naturally, this isn't what he wants. And naturally, Dad blames Mum for where they find themselves: If only they had sold their big house in the woods a few years ago when they were thinking of it; if they were in a modest bungalow in town they would have no money or social problems. But, according to Dad, Mum refuses to sell, she would be of no help if the house was on the market, and she would insist on a fairytale price to block any interested parties. His biggest fear, apparently, is that he'll die first, and as the executor, he wanted me to promise that if he did, I'd be on the next flight down, enforcing my power of attorney and forcing Mum out of her home and into town. Awkward. This story was all so hopeless, Dad so helpless, what could I do but nod and say that I understand?

It was the next day that Mum - as she has many times before - started talking about how hard it is on Dad to do all of the major work around their property; talking about how he had proposed before that they should just sell and move into town. She assures me that she is on board with whatever Dad needs to do, but since he hasn't brought it up again in the past couple of years, she reckons that he has changed his mind; that he's happy in the woods where he can make lots of noise in his shop without disturbing any neighbours. Mum sounded so sane and sober, so the opposite of the portrait painted by my Dad, that all I could do was nod and say I understand. If they don't talk to each other about all this, who am I to suggest that they talk to each other about all of this? I'm such a weasel; I want to swim away but don't know how.

Slightly related: We were driving into Lunenburg one day and Zach made the comment that he thought my Dad (whom he had only met, briefly, once before) seemed like "a happy lad". Kennedy looked surprised and said, "Oh no, he's a grumpy Gus". Ella offered, "You just haven't seen an outburst yet". I said that Pop was probably just trying to be polite in front of Zach, and with Dave about to join us, he probably wouldn't see an "outburst" because Pop tended to be polite in front of his only son-in-law, too. To which Ella said, "Yeah. Pop likes the boys better than the girls anyway." And Kennedy said, "You got that right." Now, my first instinct was to speak up for Pop, and especially in front of a relative outsider like Zach, but I kept silent: If my father's granddaughters want to talk about how he prefers boys to girls, it won't be his only daughter who comes to his defense.

Dad seemed to perk up a bit once Dave showed up, and he took us on some nice long boat rides (while Mum took up her perch on the couch with her iPad), but for the last two days we were there, Dad spent most of his time sitting on a chair on the back porch (shown in the picture above), staring blackly into the middle distance. There were no "outbursts", but as always, I didn't get enough attention from my parents to really justify driving 2000+ km to get to them. And yet: As we were leaving, I gave Dad a hug and said that it had been good to see him. To which he replied, "You have no idea how good. So good." And what do I do with that?

I want to swim away but don't know how

Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean

Let the waves up and take me down

Let the hurricane set in motion

Let the rain of what I feel right now come down

Let the rain come down