My first personal development workshop was a Sensitivity Camp organized through the Friendship Centre in Port Alberni. It was held at Pachena Bay, just a few kilometers outside of my childhood home of Bamfield, and I was fifteen years old. We camped on the beach and did Gestalt Therapy exercises. I remember coming home afterward saying, “I’m sorry, Mum, but I have to do what I have to do.” What that looked like, six months later, was quitting high school shortly after my sixteenth birthday.

I got a job in the laundry department of the local hospital. It was a union position and paid well, so I thought I was all set. But that came to an abrupt end when I let a guy I’d fallen for stay overnight in my basement apartment and Mum found him. Full of shame and regret I left home the next day and went to stay with my sister Abby in Vancouver.

Within weeks, my father was diagnosed with advanced kidney disease. He had been ill for some time but refused to acknowledge it, see a doctor, or let Mum tell anyone until we were all launched and looking after ourselves. I was the last to go. Dad survived the surgery and lived through the summer, but died later that year on November 5, 1971. For reasons I can’t quite remember, I didn’t attend his funeral.  Instead, I stayed home with Abby awaiting the crowd of people who came to raise a glass to Dad.

During that tumultuous year, something got frozen in me. There were too many endings—some chosen and some not—and I didn’t know how to process them all. I lost confidence in my decision-making ability and became tight and dutiful. I also believed that my father had never loved me, based largely on his quiet nature. With work and responsibilities beyond my years, there was no opportunity or wherewithal to mourn him or grieve his death.

I was thinking about Dad last night, holding him and my brave and stalwart sixteen-year-old in my consciousness. Dr. Gary Chapman describes the different ways we demonstrate our love to one another as the 5 Love Languages: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch.

I did the quiz on Dr. Chapman’s website this morning and my top two love languages are Acts of Service and Quality Time. No real surprise there, but identifying them helped me begin to see my father’s love language in a new way. The endless trips to school and back in his Datsun truck and ‘the ton of girls’ (my friends) he picked up along the way; Dad and I down at the Lady Rose dock in Port Alberni, eating crab together and chucking the shells into the water; the solid work ethic he instilled in all of us, and his unshakeable love of truth.

Dad was an enigma, to be sure, but I’ve got a smile on my face as I write about him. My fondest memories are of his “Cup of Coffee, Cup of Tea” stories that he told Nancy and me on special mornings. Dad had a whole cast of characters that included the Cup of Coffee, the Cup of Tea, the Pterodactyl, the Onky-donky, the Glass of ENO (no doubt thought up during a hangover), and others I’ve long forgotten. They all lived at Pachena Bay and were forever getting into incredible mischief. They LOVED explosives and often got the Pterodactyl to fly them up the Alberni Canal so they could break into Alberni Marine to steal some more. All the stories ended in a big “KABOOM!”, then Mum knew it was time to put breakfast on the table.

When I camped at Pachena Bay this last September, I didn’t remember that I’d been doing gestalt therapy on that same spot nearly fifty years before, but it seems that what got started then is now coming round full circle for completion. The turmoil I experienced in my life at sixteen, and Dad’s subsequent illness and death, meant that for decades I never fully accepted the love he felt and expressed in his own way.

Thank you, Dad, for instilling such a deep love of nature in my heart, and for all the care you took of us over the years. May our relationship continue to deepen.

What are your top two Love Languages?  Let me know, I’d love to hear!