11/04/2018
REFLECTION BY CATHERINE REYTO ON WILLIAM LAURIE (WILL) McILVRIDE
(Son-in-law of Jack & Peggy Seed)
OCTOBER 13, 2018
The first memory I have about Will, in the very early days, was that he could draw. In a family fierce with Jays and Leafs fans, it was exciting for me, being the one that could talk shop with our aunt Julia’s new guy. Sure, art already had a big place in the family – our grandma Peggy’s beautiful watercolour landscapes and her own mother’s oils surrounded us, – but Will was an illustrator. He was, like me, a ‘drawer’. He was part of that secret world of adults I knew must be out there, that could actually paint cartoons. So when I was first taken to meet him, this was what I was thinking in the car. I was going to meet an illustrator, one of my own. This meeting of minds just happened to be taking place at Julia’s house. And on his end, Will had probably been prepped for this: “Get your drawings out, my niece will want to see them”, and so had a portfolio of samples waiting at the side of his armchair. For once, in meeting a new grown-up, I could forget about feeling shy or awkward or struggling for conversation topics. Will was showing me his work and introducing me to acrylic ink, and I was in my element.
I’m so grateful to say, he very quickly became so much more than that in our family. He won his way in so well with each of us that he became everyone’s favourite family member. That may have happened before he was even officially part of the family. He was the welcome wisecracker in a room full of bickering. The much-needed grin that evaporated tension. I loved watching Julia’s face, when in an argument, transform from flustered and frustrated, to ear-to-ear giggles as he muttered something to her under his breath. I always tried to sit across from him at the table, and a little to the side, because it was the best angle for watching his expressions as the dinner dramas played out.
At our family’s farm, Will quickly became legend among us for being the only one to still be able to catch fish at the pond. We grandkids had grown up fishing those rainbow trout, readily stocked by our grandpa Jack every few years. Like my brother and cousins, I could hook a worm and gut and clean a fish by the time I was six, and had spent summers lazing in the grass with a rod in one hand, Archie comic in the other. When they’d started getting too smart for us, we built rafts so we could bait them out from their more vulnerable spots. But pretty soon, it became too common an empty-handed return of defeat for us to bother anymore. That is, unless we knew Will was going. I think in all those years, it was the only time any of us set an alarm, or were woken up by anything other than the clinging of pots and pans and the smell of bacon. When Will was up, with his amazing fly-fishing rod, it was an event.
The day he and Julia were married, I’ll always remember as one of the happiest days our family had. The wedding reception took place so fittingly there at the farm. Will, in his kilt, his big grin, with Julia on his arm, her face filled with joy, and Jennifer running around in her dress, bounding with confidence and shrieking laughter, it was a union everyone felt grateful for. There was an ease about the day in general, a naturalness, a day when you could sit back and count your blessings. In especially great form on his wedding day, there was the staple humour Will always carried with him. He had me in stitches. Years later, I would come across a box full of old VHS tapes of family gatherings, and this one, of their wedding day with all of us laughing together, is the one I would watch again.
As Jennifer’s older cousin and with three older boy cousins, we were very close when she was little. She looked up to me and I watched out for her. She was a stubborn kid, strong-minded and a force to be reckoned with, especially when she didn’t get her way. But she was also a very sweet and sensitive soul, who loved art. The difference in her when Will came in to her life, was so heartwarming. He had no qualms with putting her in her place when no one else dared, and amazingly, she rarely contested. Like her mom, a calm would come over her, and tensions would dissolve into laughter in an instant that passed so quickly it seemed ordinary. And pretty soon, it was exactly that, a casual humour, an outwitting, a no-nonsense retort that trumped and stifled and eased any upset back on course. We grew accustomed to it, and took it for granted, in the best way. It was nice for us to feel like Will had been with us all along, but we’ll always remember the difference he made. It may have seemed subtle, because he had a way of blending in while keeping his own, all at once. But the difference was extraordinary.
For me, the illustrator in the family became the buddy. At awkward gatherings with guests at luncheons at our grandparents house, I would seek out Will and his mother Edith, and take moments of air and wise crack with them on the sidelines of all the small-talk. In recent years, since our grandparents passed and some of us scattered in different towns and countries, these gatherings have happened far less than we’d like. I haven’t had the pleasure of cracking a beer with Will in a long time. But I did get to see him again recently, and I am so glad for that.
At the hospital, his health wearing physically thin in his face, the doctor came in to check on him during my visit. As the doctor ran through a list of medications, he paused to gently reprimand Will for needing to be more outspoken. Will listened with tired eyes mostly closed. The doctor’s friendly but firm lecture eventually turned to a question, and he waited expectantly for Will to acknowledge that he hadn’t been speaking up enough.
Will remained quiet, his expression unmoving, and the moment strained with a somber tension. That is, until his left hand slowly raised from where it lay on the sheet, and with a faint but quick flip of the wrist, slapped his right hand. The doctor, Julia and I all laughed, the tension instantly diffused, the severity of the moment magically transfused into a lovely memory, and for me, my lasting one.
As I biked home from the hospital that day, I realized I’d learned something from Will, other than that grownups could be good at drawing. It was that life was valuable, and the cost of living it was paid back in these moments. The moments you could steal for yourself, no matter how tense or grim, convert into your own currency, and then share with those that love you. I want to thank him for that lesson, it’s one that changed how I'd like to look at life ahead of me. But I want to thank him more, for loving Julia and Jennifer with a lifetime of those moments, for raising my baby cousin with them. And for giving them to my family, starting at a time when we badly needed them, and allowing us the luxury of taking these moments for granted.
Thank you.
