Losing a Superhero

I have not written here in a long time. Life gets busy. Life changes. New priorities come and go. It makes me feel guilty that I have not written here in so long. About once a week, I think of an article I want to write, but then many things get in the way and it drops in priority.

Then something happened that changed everything, and I feel like I need to get it out. I am not sure if I am sharing too much here, or if any of this is too personal. This article may feel erratic, but these are the things I need to write. But, maybe it is therapeutic just to write about what is going on inside of me.

As many of you know, I lost my father over the Christmas holidays.

I lost my superhero. You only really get one superhero in life. I feel extremely grateful that, if I am lucky enough to have a long life, I was able to have my father for at least half of mine. That is very lucky, as he was fairly old to be a father when I came along.

Dad was a pretty famous man in the community where I grew up. In fact, he was quite famous in the entire southern half of the province where we came from. Between his charismatic personality and his musical talent, he was well known. I used to tell people that if my car broke down anywhere within about 100 miles of where we live in Big Beaver, Saskatchewan, and I walked to a farm for help and said I was the son of Milson Harris, the people at the house would say, “Oh, the music man from Big Beaver!”

I have never known anyone more hilarious. And while I know nearly everyone feels this way about their father, I truly feel like I got the cream of the crop. He was just a wonderful soul. When I was a teenager, he was cooler than me. When I was in my 20s and 30s, doing really interesting things with my life, he was still cooler than me. I used to love it when I would be at a cattle branding near home, and I would hear the other cowboys there talking about my dad, and they would be saying how awesome they thought he was. They were not saying that for me to overhear: they were saying that for themselves and comparing notes with stories they were telling about him. I remember talking with one of my best friends about my dad a few years ago, and he said, “Nobody is cooler than Milson Harris.” He set a high bar, not by trying to set it, but just by being a gentle, considerate, and charming ranching farmer musician with a one-liner that could almost floor you every time he added something to a conversation. He always had a very entertaining twist.

I got the news that I had lost my father while I was driving home to meet him on Boxing Day. And, it was a huge surprise how I received that information. As I have established, he was my hero, and at some point about 10 years ago, we became less father and son as our relationship began to change so that we became great friends. Of course, even as we evolved, he still remained the person I went to any time I needed advice. He was 89. He knew things. There is a time in your late teens when you do not think your father knows anything, but by the time you get into your mid-20s, you realize that he actually knew everything.

I have had three big losses in my life. At the time when I lost my mother some years ago, I was wishing for her to pass. She had deteriorated into a shell, and it was hard to watch her mind completely disappear. Her body was fine, but her mind was gone, and you do not want to watch that happen in a parent. Then, a few years later, I lost Beaner, one of my best friends. I got that news while I was driving down the lane of the farm, on my way to town to get a new driver’s license photo ID. I had permed hair and a crazy mustache to make the photo ID as ridiculous as possible, but that phone call about who I had lost was the very person I was most excited to show the ID to once I had the photo taken. I turned around and went back to the farm. My mind was so confused, and I did not know how to handle what I had just learned. I walked around the farm, wailing out loud. And, of course, due to my father’s age, I had thought about the scenario of losing him many times. So, when I was driving towards home to meet him on Boxing Day and my middle brother called me to tell me the news, I was shocked at how I was able to handle it. There was no wailing or uncontrollable crying. After my brother told me what had happened, he said, “If you need to pull over and breathe or if you need to pull over and stop for a moment…” But I did not. News had just come that I had lost the most important person in my life, and I just kept on driving. My eyes watered, and I choked up, but I just kept on driving towards home. My reaction did not feel characteristic of me at all, and somehow I was able to handle pure devastation better than I ever imagined I could. Maybe it was the shock of it all.

I drove all the way home through a terrible blizzard near Crane Valley, probably the worst driving conditions I have ever experienced. But I had to keep on going. My eyes watered, and I laughed out loud at things my dad has said that have made me giggle. I was incredibly sad, and I was very thoughtful. I listened to a playlist called “The Roadrunners” on Spotify that I made some years ago, which was the music from our family band. I heard plenty of songs that I know better with my father’s and mother’s voices than I know in their original versions.

It seems that this post is kind of going to be all over the place. That is a reflection of how my mind is at the moment. This is a very hard thing to deal with.

Before any of this happened at Christmas time, as I was leaving the apartment where I am staying in Edmonton to start making my way towards home, I had a really strange feeling that something would be different when I returned. I had hauled everything out to my car, and I was gathering the last things to take from my apartment. I was heading out the door. But, when I closed the door of the apartment, and I was out in the hallway, that feeling of a returning change overcame me, which was so profound that I unlocked my apartment and re-entered it to see if I could figure out what I was feeling. I made another entire circle of the entire apartment before I left. That is just such a strange thing. My father was likely gone at that moment. I am not sure if that is what I was feeling, or maybe I have this feeling all of the time when I leave somewhere. But, as I was driving after the news, I was analyzing that feeling in retrospect. Maybe I always do this and always have these feelings, but I do not have a reason to be conscious of them. I am not sure. All I know is that it was extremely profound at that moment, and I found that very strange after I received the news.

If I go back a few days before that, it makes me feel really bad. I am not crazy about Christmas, as I come from a broken home, and as a result, it is one of my least favorite times of the year. And my dad has never been wild about Christmas either. So, as we were trying to make plans for the holidays, he mentioned that he had spoken to my oldest brother, who had invited him there for Christmas Eve and Day. I gave that some thought and realized that it would probably be a much better Christmas for dad to go and spend it with my oldest brother and his family. My thought was that it would be better for him to be around family than it would be with him and me sitting around together for those days, neither of us really enjoying Christmas. So, I wondered if maybe it would be better if I headed home on Boxing Day. I called dad back to ask him to call my oldest brother and to see if those Christmas plans with him and dad would work out. My dad was kind of nonchalant about it, saying that he would wait to see if my oldest brother would call again and invite him. My plans were hinging on my dad’s plans, so I had to pressure him to call my brother so that I knew what dad was going to do and I could make my plans from what he decided. I told Dad, “You need to make a decision. There are two options here. Option A is that I am going to come to your place on the 23rd and spend the 24th and 25th with you. Option B is that you are going to my brother’s house, and I will come to meet you on the 26th. You have to choose one or the other.” I had to get kind of tough with him, something that I never ever do with him. Dad was laughing at me as I was pushing him to make a choice. He called my brother and called me the following morning to say that was where he was going to head for Christmas.

I made alternative plans to meet Dad on the 26th. You never know what is going to happen, and in hindsight, I should have headed home on the 23rd as I probably would have caught my father and had an evening with him before we lost him. And of course, a person should not get caught up in a “what if” game, but it is hard not to fall into that trap.

I have learned that the passing of someone beloved is difficult for many reasons. Everyone in the family wants to feel like they are a part of everything, so it requires a great deal of compromise. I had to remind myself that I was not the only one grieving, and that requires a lot of patience when things are already very difficult. But everyone is just trying to do the best they can because no one really knows how to do anything. No one can ever prepare you for any of this. It has been fortunate in a way because my oldest brother in the family has taken the leading role in the proceedings. And that is probably how it has played out for millennia in these exact same situations.

After New Year’s, I headed back to Edmonton, as I will be flying again to finish off my pilot’s licensing on the first Monday after the new year. And, it scares me to think about the emptiness I am going to feel without my father calling me every two days to ask me, “How’s the flyin’ going?” I am going to be lying in the same place on the same couch while I study, and that phone call will never come again. That is hard to think about.

When I was home, I went to the funeral home to see my father. That is one of the hardest things I have done. It just felt like I needed to do so as I needed some closure with it all. I needed to look at him one last time. He was on a table in the chapel, with a blanket pulled up to his shoulders. He looked really peaceful, but everything except peace was flowing out of my emotions at that moment. The funeral home lady took me to him and told me she would leave me with him. It was such a strange thing. I bawled my eyes out. I told him how much I love him, and I am not sure what I am going to do with all of that extra love now. When I was through with crying, I told him a lot of fun stories about him and I and the things we have done, so that I could share them with him one last time as if I was reminding him of those stories again. In that moment, you do not really know why you do the things you do, but you just do them. You are not really in control. I cried a lot, and I laughed a lot in that hour with him. And, I can say that the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life is when I felt it was time to go, as I was walking away, I was looking over my shoulder at my father, knowing I would never look at him with my eyes again. In that moment, you do not know when to stop looking, and so you find an angle that seems to leave him in the best image in your mind, and you break the visual contact at that point. But it is really difficult. Really, really difficult.

My father was an extraordinary man. I am sure everyone feels the same way about their fathers. I was so lucky with mine. He has been in perfect health until the last couple of years, but even until his passing, he was still in great shape for his age. He loved to say that, “The doctors say that I am in pretty good health…for my age…” It was important to him that he emphasized that last part. Dad was working on the farm and feeding cattle until last year. At 88, he was still a farmer and rancher.

There is never a good time for any of this to happen, and of course, I would have liked to have had my father in my life for more time. But, in a way, it is lucky because we never had to watch him deteriorate in a senior’s home. His mind was sound, and his wit, charm, and hilarity never slipped a bit. He was razor sharp the whole time, at 89 years of age. He made me howl with laughter only a few days ago. And the last conversation I had with him was about a jam session we were going to have when I got home.

Everything is still so fresh, and I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt whenever I experience any happiness in day to day life. Anytime I smile, something in me feels guilty. Anytime I hear myself laugh, it makes me feel guilty. It feels like I should not be able to feel any of that right now. I am a mess. My eyes constantly burn because I have cried so much. My emotions are everywhere. It has been really hard.

But, something really beautiful that has come out of this is the words of kindness that people have sent me about him. And a lot of friends who have lost a parent have really made an effort to reach out. They have a stronger understanding, and sometimes that makes me very emotional with how many of my friends have reacted. As I mentioned earlier, my father was famous in our area, but over the past few years, I have shared a lot of him on my social media. So, a lot of my friends from home who knew him, and a lot of friends from overseas who have never met my father, have felt like they have known him as well. And I have had messages from people from all over the world telling me how much they have enjoyed my videos of him and all that I have shared of him over the years. People from the other sides of oceans have been writing to me and referring to my father as a ‘legend,’ and these are people who never had the pleasure of physically meeting him. Strangers to him have been telling me that they felt like they knew him. People from home have been telling me how much he meant to them. It is sad, but it has been an incredible feeling to receive messages like that.

The day after everything happened, I ran into a really good friend in the grocery store at home. My friend knew my father, but not really well. When my friend saw me, and we made eye contact, he choked up. That was something to experience. My friend was not crying for my father: he was crying because of me and how I was feeling. That is telling of true friendship.

I am not sure where to stop, but maybe this is as good a place as any, and I will leave this with a bit of my father’s personality. One of my favorite things he ever said was one day when I came home from a long trip a few years ago, and his lady had just bought groceries. There was food to be put away on the table, and there was food on the counter. Dad looked at the fruit on the counter and said to her, “At my age, I don’t want you to be buying green bananas anymore…”

Milson Eugene Harris (Oct. 1936 – Dec. 2025). Milson was a farmer and rancher from the Big Beaver area. He was well known across the province for his music, his charisma, his zest for life, and his humor. He spent 80 years playing music and making people dance as one of his favorite lines was, “Music is the soul of life.” Milson was a hard worker who had a natural talent for making anything work, and he enjoyed helping his neighbours. He was the third generation of a family farm still running strong today, and only fully retired from farming in the past year. He was well known for always being fun and being a rambler. Milson was a people person and was liked everywhere he went. If there was an event taking place in the area, he was likely a part of it. His quick wit and his charm will be missed by everyone who had the fortune of getting to know him.

That was my father. He was my superhero. I love him. And, I will miss him tremendously.

rbt