Thank you V Haden. I will read Johnson’s book. I have copy of The Red Book, a gift from an English class. Amazing read.

And wonderful ‘spot on as in brilliant statement’ with your words: “as in quantum physics, Parsifal only needed to know the right question, not the answer.”

I started teaching the Fisher King myth after my former English 101 prof, Gordon Elliott, and I watched Terry Gilliam’s movie of the same name in 1991, and talked long into the night about it. He said that it would be important for my students.

Gordon was right, my students ate it up.

In 2006, after a particularly grueling exam session, I decided to tell my Grade 11 students that this unit was not going to be for marks.

It was going to be for us. We were going to report back to each other…just like a seminar in university.

So I divided them up into groups, some to cover the piebald knight, the chalice, the bleeding lance, the round table, the red castle, chess, major and minor arcana of the tarot, the wounds, the feminine, Christian allusions, the Wasteland…well, you get the picture.

Now, as fate would have it, the man who insisted that I teach The Fisher King Myth, that giant of a man, Gordon was dying.

As well, one of the largest storms in Vancouver’s history was brewing just off shore, some of its fierce outer arms for days coming ashore to fall trees and cut off power.

So on the Tuesday, Dec. 12, half the class delivered their reports with joy.

“Sir, the ‘fishes and the loaves’…you know, the sermon. If you feed the people, the land like the King will not be sick and neither will the people.

“My partner thinks they’re yin and yang, sir.”

“No fair, sir, we think yin and yang looking down is the human brain’s hemispheres. Our minds are the red castle.”

“We’re all piebald knights. 12 of us of course!”

“No we’re not, we’re all the Fool…Major Arcana!”

“Wrong! The Hanging Man.”

“We think Jesus wasn’t pierced in the side by the bleeding lance, we think he was wounded just like the Fisher King.”

“The Grail’s the ultimate feminine sir. It’s a womb symbol. So’s the round table.”

And on it went. 16–17 year old young men in a circle. Only 3/4 of the class finished, they had that much to eagerly share.

“That’s okay,” I said, “We’ll finish up next class…fitting because it’s the last class before winter break…nice present to give to ourselves.”

The storm was building. So ominously that it was was questionable whether school would open on the Thursday, but it did.

Gordon was not doing well but we had had a visit on the Tuesday.

So on the Thursday, just as I am heading off to my class, I got the call from the care home. ‘He’s not doing well. May not last the day.”

A colleague saw me take the call. Knew about Gordon.

“I’ll cover the class, Daryl.”

I hesitated.

“No, he’d want me to teach the class, he was all about education. Besides, the kids are excited and it’s a shortened day, it’d be anti-climatic to wait three weeks to deliver their reports.”

“Thanks, though, it’s a half class, so I’ll get to his bedside right after.”

And off I went.

It was a repeat of the longer class. Magic. More and more connections.

At the end of the class, I said this to them:

“This myth. This very important myth? The man who taught me its importance is dying and I must rush off to be at his side.”

“But, never forget this class. You honoured the myth, you honoured each other and you honoured the man.”

I rushed off to my truck with my guitar in hand. Branches were being catapulted into the air, some were chasing each other down the street.

As I drove swerving past them through the deserted streets, I was chanting to myself, ‘Hold on Gordon, I’m coming. Please.”

I got there with the sound of the automatic generator kicking in with lights blinking and humming while I rushed to his bedside.

The shallow breathing. His eyes closed tight. I had to make sure I was in the same room as I had never seen him that way.

Even though Gordon was born in Williams Lake, a village in the Cariboo, he loved Vancouver and so I strummed the guitar, and talked him home from there with a D-DM-D7 to C-G chord progression.

Down the city streets to the Trans Canada, past the Fraser Valley, with Mt. Baker in the distance, up the Fraser Canyon with the cold dank green smell of that mighty river rising up to greet him.

Up to Lytton, where the clear blue of the Thompson meets the muddy brown of the Fraser to finally reach the Cariboo, where the dark tall green grass listens to the sound of the silver dollar leaves of the poplar: all dancing as the wind chases its shadow by.

And there, past 100 Mile House, finally there’s Williams Lake, I said, “Your mother and father, your grandparents and aunts and uncles, and the elders of the Sugarcane Reserve, all are there, their arms open, waiting to embrace you and welcome you home.”

His breathing was getting slower and slower.

A phone call broke the spell.

The storm outside abated. I put the guitar down and strode away to pick up my cell. It was Margaret, his surrogate daughter.

“How is he?”

“Not good. Better get over her now Margaret, I don’t think he’ll last the day.”

She hung up.

Just as I was about to walk back, he breathed his last…a long sigh really.

The air in the room was stilled.

Don’t remember walking up to him, but I remember holding his head and thanking him, through my tears, telling him what a beautiful man he was.

I sat down and held onto his ankle. He never was a hugger. But I thought he’d understand.

I told him about the class that would not have happened if not for him.

I thanked him for waiting and I said this:

“I used to think that I was stupid. And so I was wounded and alone in the forest and I howled out in pain, and you heard me and you came.”

“There won’t be a single day that I won’t think of you when I teach my classes.”

The storm was waiting, for when the funeral parlour driver finally came, and we walked Gordon out to the hearse, black plastic shrouded and zippered on the gurney, the very air felt like as if, after a giant inhalation of breath, a slow motion punch was about to be furiously unleashed.

Just as the hearse back door was opened, I asked the driver what his name was.

“Philip.”

“Philip, lover of horses. That’s appropriate.”

“This man here, Gordon Elliott, he wanted to be cowboy, but his plane’s crash landing put an end to that dream. You see, he was sickened by the war and what humanity had become during those violent years. He just wanted to be on a horse and far from the madding crowd.”

“But because of his wounds, he instead became a Professor of English, Canadian Literature to be precise. He was a great man.”

“So Philip, please take care of him on this last part of his journey.”

I pulled out the only cash I had in my pocket, a Twenty, and handed it to him, “One should always pay the ferryman.”

And as he nodded, he pocketed the Twenty and pushed Gordon onto the back rollers, the wind helping to slam close the back hatch door.

Philip turned and quickly shuffled away.

Before opening his driver’s side door, he looked up to the trees and saw them deeply swaying.

“It’s gonna really hit soon,” he shivered.

He pulled up his collar and sat in, started up and drove into the street, branches and paper following his red tail lights as he drove Gordon away.

When the storm finally unleashed its true devastating power, with gusts up to 120 kph, I had just made it home, the wind sounding just like the Furies themselves, marking the passing of a mighty King.

Thanks for reminding me of Gordon, I miss him something fierce and often wonder what he would have thought of these troubled times, times which clearly need to heed the wisdom of The Fisher King myth.