“Mr. Peters, we’d like to see you for an interview,” the hiring manager said on the phone. He arrived for his interview and checked in with the receptionist, who asked him to have a seat in the waiting room. The hiring manager appeared and said, “Mr. Peters?” There was no one else in the waiting room. Dad got up and replied, “I’m Mr. Peters.” The man looked confused. “I’ll be right back,” he said, then asked my dad to have a seat and wait another minute. The man returned a few moments later and said to Dad, “The position’s been filled.” As far as my dad was concerned, it was a lie. He knew that his colour was the real reason he was being denied an interview. He never rebounded from this humiliation.
Remember that at this time, when you turned on the TV, all you saw was a sea of white faces. It was a different world from the one we now live in, where we see news reporters of every shade and colour—brown faces, black faces and Asian faces. Of course, there are still some weird exceptions in the media, even today. Just look at how long it took for ER to cast an Indian doctor. And Grey’s Anatomy still doesn’t have one. When was the last time you went into a hospital and didn’t see an Indian doctor?
In my dad’s mind, the message he got from the media was “We don’t see you” and “You don’t belong here.” There was no one out there I could point to and say, “Look, Dad. That guy looks just like us, and look what he did!” The closest comparisons we had were black entertainers like Redd Foxx, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, Flip Wilson and Ben Vereen.
Because of Dad’s disappointment at not being able to achieve his dream of becoming a journalist and at having to do blue-collar work with a white-collar mindset, he never wanted my brother or me to feel that disappointment. He found strength in the union that he worked for. “Son, you should get a union job. There’s the Chrysler plant, there’s Dominion Glass, there are the airlines, Canada Customs. These companies pay very well and the union will protect you.” These were the same kinds of jobs that Anglo-Indians had enjoyed back in India, and Dad saw them as the best options for his sons. There was always the sense that Dad wanted to keep the bar low for my brother and me, to protect us from unfairness.
After seeing one of my early TV specials, I remember asking Dad, “So, did you like it?” He was quiet for a bit and then said, “You seem to only do jokes about a few things.”
“I only do jokes about what I know, Dad.”
Then he said, “You should expand your repertoire like the other comics, do the same topics they do.” So I responded by saying that I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing.
“Well,” he said, “maybe you should start reading Reader’s Digest. They have good jokes in there, things you can talk about.”
Dad died exactly one month and one day after my infamous Comedy Now! special on TV. I remember my parents watching it for the first time in the family room. Mom was laughing her head off, and Dad was watching her with this funny look on his face. Then he said, “You’re really a fan of this guy. You really find him funny, don’t you?” Mom said, “Of course I do. He’s my son.” And even though Dad was being a bit of a smart-ass, I could see then that his mindset about my work was starting to change. In his own way, he was proud of me.
Immediately after Dad had passed, my world began to change radically and my career really took off. I don’t want to get all weird and superstitious, but I honestly felt that my dad had a hand in those changes. I believe that my father—his spirit—is a guardian angel that helped me make it to where I am today. I believe my dad has been beside me in spirit during all of the pivotal moments in the last five years of my life.
I’ll let you in on a secret: I have a little ritual I perform every night before I go onstage. I talk to my dad. Backstage, when others think I’m blabbing to myself or reviewing the set, what I’m actually doing is talking to him. When I get goose bumps, that’s Dad responding—that’s when I know he’s there with me. And if I don’t get goose bumps, I start to panic. Sometimes, I’ll start talking to him and at first I’ll feel nothing, and then I’ll think, Where are you? I start to wonder if he’s abandoned me and I’m out there all alone. It’s not a good feeling to have just before you’re about to perform in front of a sold-out house of cheering fans. I always get the goose bumps back, though, and then I can relax. Every time, I think to myself, Thank God he’s back. And knowing he’s there with me, knowing I’ll be okay out in front of the crowd, that means I’m ready to take the stage.
I believe my father—his spirit—is a guardian angel that helped me make it to where I am today.
I’m not religious at all. Technically, I’m Catholic, but the older I get, the less I see the point of organized religions. I see myself as more of a spiritual guy, and I really feel that people know what’s right and what’s wrong in this world—they should know what to do and what not to do to people. I’m not saying that I always do what’s right or that I’ve always been good to people. I haven’t. And believe me: if there’s anything Catholic about me, it would be the guilt that I feel for the things that I have done wrong in my life. For me, Dad’s my guardian angel, and I feel like all my successes are his responsibility. He’s caused all of these good things from the other side. I can almost hear him negotiating with St. Peter up in heaven: “Here, St. Peter … Let’s just make sure that the Air Canada Centre shows are bloody well sold out. Make sure you look after my son!”
After Dad died, for a while I stepped back from using a lot of the stories about him. They were hitting a little too close to home for me, but I’m finding that as time passes, I can bring him back into my act as a celebration of who he was and what he meant to me—what he still means to me. In the fall of 2005, during my first solo national tour of Canada, we did a show at the North York Centre for the Performing Arts on October 23, my dad’s birthday. This was the first time I was headlining my own tour and it was a big deal for me. The show was great and I was relieved that it had gone well in front of the hometown crowd. I ended the show with my “Somebody Gonna Get a-Hurt Real Bad” routine and the audience was on its feet. I looked skyward and then said into the mike, “Happy Birthday, Dad!” I knew he was right there with me that night.
I still have communion with my dad, even when I’m not going onstage. When I’m driving, sometimes I’ll play the Platters or the Ink Spots and have a talk with Dad. A couple of Christmases before Dad died, my brother gave him a CD of Paul Robeson, the baritone concert singer and union movement activist. Dad was a big fan of his, not only because of his voice but because he was such a strong civil rights activist and had spoken up against racial segregation and fascism all through his life. Dad put on the CD, and soon after, he excused himself from Christmas-morning breakfast and retreated upstairs. We soon realized it was because he was crying. When he came back down, my brother said, “Dad, I got you the CD because I thought you’d like it.” Dad was really quiet, and Brother asked him, “What’s wrong, Dad?”
“It just reminds me of my father …” he said quietly. Thirty-five years since his own father had passed, and he still missed him to the point of tears.
Sometimes I think about the things Dad used to tell me, and they mean more to me now than they ever did when he was alive. My father had one big regret when he was dying. “I have nothing to leave you guys and I’m sorry,” he’d say. And I’d try to tell him that he had never let us down, never. I used to say, “You got hustled, Dad. It’s not like you gambled with your money. It’s not like you weren’t trying to save up for us. You did your best.”
Around the late ’80s and early ’90s, Dad was duped in a real estate scheme along with a whole bunch of other family members, including my cousins, my aunts and friends. They’d invested in a strip plaza near Ottawa and were making collective payments toward the mortgage. They had signed personal guarantees for this “great real estate investment.” Everything seemed to be fine, until the bank contacted the investors and advised them that they were in default on the mortgage payments. Dad later learned that what were s
upposed to be mortgage payments had actually been used to pay management fees. The group had been swindled and Dad ended up losing $250,000, his entire life’s savings. We even had to sell our house on Epsom Downs Drive to pay for his portion of the debt.
My dad wept as he locked the door of that house for the last time. I can see him now with our cat, Billy, in his arms. He looked doddering and confused. He said he was an utter failure to the family, and there was nothing we could do or say to convince him otherwise. We became renters again for the first time in two decades, moving from owners of a house in the E-section of Bramalea down to renters in the N-section of town. (Bramalea neighbourhoods are grouped alphabetically. The streets in each neighbourhood start with the same letter. In the E-section, we lived on Epsom Downs; in the N-section, we lived on Newbridge.) Twenty years of my parents’ hard work had evaporated right before their eyes. What hurt my dad the most was that he’d been scammed, not by an anonymous huckster or an institution, but by a friend—the best man at his wedding and my very own godfather.
At the age of sixty-six, after spending only one year in retirement, my dad had to go back to work. It was a really bad time for the whole family, and it broke my heart to see Dad waking up early in the morning and going to his shitty job as a federal meat inspector in a stinking processing plant. My father was proud and practical, and he never backed away from doing whatever work he had to in order to keep a roof over our heads. Within two years, he’d saved enough to buy another house.
When Dad was sick, there came a point when we knew it was coming to the end of the road. We spent all of our time trying to keep everything around him peaceful, to make sure there was no drama—which wasn’t always easy. He could be pretty cranky some days after going through the indignity of full-body radiation. We did whatever we could to make him comfortable—good booze, good dinners at home, good restaurants—and that’s why I have no regrets. Some people who’ve been through this might wish their loved one had lived longer or would wish their dad could be seeing what they’re seeing, experiencing what they’re experiencing. But I feel lucky for what I got, for having my father as long as I did and for feeling such a strong connection with him even after he’s gone.
I also feel like I had the best closure with him out of everyone in my family. The weekend he died, I was doing a gig at Yuk Yuk’s in Ottawa. My mom and my brother had spent most of Friday and Saturday with Dad at the hospital. Family and friends had dropped by to see him as well. He had even asked Mom to make him some mince curry, daal and rice, which he ate. My mom and brother spent all of Sunday afternoon and evening with Dad. He was tired but seemed stable when they left to go for dinner at Red Lobster on Queen Street in Brampton. Brother got back to our place in Woodbridge at around ten-thirty that night. An hour later, Mom called him and said that she got a call from the hospital telling her to come back. They were all back to the hospital by eleven-thirty. Dad’s condition had completely changed. He now wore an oxygen mask and was unintelligible.
I was already on my way back home from Ottawa after the show, at around two-thirty in the morning, when my brother called on my cell. His voice was quiet and calm.
“Brother,” he said, “instead of heading home, just drive straight to the hospital, okay?” My stomach dropped. I knew what that meant.
“Okay,” I said.
“And Brother?” he added. “Don’t speed.”
Of course, my brother had waited until after my show to call. He knew that the show would have ended at around eleven, and by the time I’d left the club, it would be midnight. He’d then calculated exactly when to reach me so that I wouldn’t start speeding the second I got on the highway. At this point, I was on Highway 401 near Port Hope, Ontario. My girlfriend, Shivani, was with me. I hung up the phone and didn’t say a word. All I could think of was that I needed to get to the hospital right away. I had my suspicions, but in my head, my dad was indestructible. I told myself that he might have taken a turn for the worse, but it wasn’t really going to be the end.
Brampton was about two hours away, but I made it to the hospital in fifty minutes. I was doing about 180 kilometres per hour the whole way. These days, they would take my car away and throw me in jail for that. But at the time, I didn’t care. I needed to see my dad.
When I arrived at the hospital, Mom and Brother were there. They told me Dad had been in and out of consciousness. Mom said that in between my father’s drifting, he would open his eyes, look up at her and say, “Where’s Russell?”
“He’s on his way,” she told him.
He pulled his mask away and managed to say, “Tell Russell not to speed. Tell him not to drive fast.” He just kept saying that to her as I was on my way there, as if he knew exactly what I was doing, as if he’d already been travelling in and out of body.
I went into Dad’s room, and the moment I saw him there, lying still on the bed, I started bawling. He looked terrible. He was wheezing and could hardly breathe. Every now and then he’d sit up and try to take his oxygen mask off. I’d never seen him like that before. I knew this was it. For a while, he kept saying, “Arthur, Arthur, no. No, Arthur.” He was talking to his older brother who had passed away years earlier.
After some time passed, Dad’s condition started to improve slightly and he looked a little better. At around six in the morning, because Dad was doing okay, we told my brother to go home and get some rest. And so, we sent him on his way, thinking there was still time. My mom and Shivani were hungry, so they went to McDonald’s to get some breakfast.
It was very close to dawn, and I sat alone with my dad. Now, bear in mind that he hadn’t said a word to me at all. He was barely aware that anybody was even there with him. He was out cold. I sat down beside him and grabbed his hand in the quiet, and as soon as everybody was gone, out of nowhere, his voice came out clear, confident, strong.
“How were your shows?” he asked.
I was shocked, but I answered, “They were good, Dad. The audience asked about you.”
“How’s the weather out there today?” he went on, as though it were just an ordinary morning between the two of us.
“It’s shitty outside, Dad. You’re better off in here.”
And then we fell asleep together like that, still holding hands. My mom came in later and we both woke up. I told her that I had talked to him, that we’d had a perfectly lucid and crystal-clear conversation.
At 7 A.M., the nurses changed shifts and one of them gave my dad a pill or something, and I remember he couldn’t even chew. The staff said they were going to transfer him from Brampton to Hamilton for his scheduled radiation. I was like, “What the fuck?”
The family all got out of the way, and we stood outside the door. I just stood there, watching from the doorway, as the nurse tried to move my dad. I went in to help, and he was standing now and he wet himself; he couldn’t help it. He looked right at me then, with a look that said, “I’m not living like this.” All of a sudden, I saw his eyes change colour; they were turning yellow. Something was wrong. Then, just before he closed his eyes, there was a very clear moment when he said goodbye. It was all there in his eyes: “I love you, bye.” And then one of the nurses started yelling, “Code blue! Code blue!” Everybody ran in and it was complete chaos. More nurses, more staff were pushing past, furious and frantic. But that was the end. He died right then and there.
My mom had been just outside the door, just a few feet away. She could have had that last moment with him, but it happened with me, kind of a last hurrah that he saved for his baby. It was a horrible day, and it’s still hard to relive the memory. It’s not like I play this over in my head a lot, but sometimes when I watch a movie or something and there’s a father-and-son scene, I get really emotional—even by the weirdest, most ridiculous thing, like the movie Click with Adam Sandler. It’s about this guy who has a remote control for his life so he can fast-forward and rewind to all of the good parts. Sandler fast-forwards so far that he misses his father’s death. Suddenl
y he realizes this and asks himself, “When was the last time I saw my dad?” Christopher Walken’s character, who’s kind of his guide with this remote control, rewinds Sandler back to the last time he was with his dad. In the scene, Sandler just brushes his dad off … and then never sees him again. I started bawling in the theatre at that scene.
As I’m writing this, I’m finding it hard to talk about Dad in the past tense, because my feelings for him are as alive as they’ve always been, and even though he’s gone, there’s a part of him that’s always with me. I really love my dad.
After Dad’s passing, I used to dream about him—a lot, almost every night. I would be standing outside an old hospital, the kind with frosted-glass windows through which you could see shapes and figures moving. Then I’d be inside, standing at the door of a room in the hospital, and I would hear my mom crying. I’d walk in, and my dad would be lying there, and the minute I arrived he would sit up and he’d say, “It’s okay. I’m fine.” When I woke up from these dreams, I’d be freaking out, and of course I’d miss him even more.
Then, about four or five months later, I had a different dream about him. My dad really liked the restaurant Tucker’s Marketplace because it was a buffet and you could eat everything there—roast beef, piles of shrimp and seafood, a hundred different desserts. In my dream, my dad is at Tucker’s, and he says to me, “Look at where I am! I’m in the best place I’ve ever been. I have the best food … Look, all my friends are here.” I see his pal Uncle Edgy, who passed suddenly a few years earlier. “We’re all having a great time,” Dad says. “I’m in paradise.” He kept repeating that in the dream: “I’m in paradise.” Great, I’m thinking to myself in the dream, Dad’s died … and become a Muslim. “Don’t worry about me anymore, son,” Dad says. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.” And then I wake up.
Call Me Russell Page 5
