Being Nils Ling

I was named after my grandfather. He came to Canada from Sweden, opened a bakery in Saskatoon, raised a family there, and died of the wounds he suffered at Vimy Ridge.

At least, that's what I was told when I was growing up.

I hated my name - it doesn't take much to imagine the teasing I endured in various schoolyards. Think you've got an original variation, a cute or clever pun, a riotous joke based on my name? Puh-leese. I've heard 'em all.

There were times, when I was very young, that I tried to change my name. They never took, either because I couldn't remember to answer to the new tag or because the teacher (kindly, as it turns out) refused to enroll me as "Fury" Ling (after my favourite TV character) (a horse).

My dislike of my name caused my Grandmother great distress. One day she took me aside and explained more about my Grandad, who I never met. The life he lived, and his heroic death from the wounds he suffered at Vimy Ridge. I imagined him limping bravely towards the enemy machine-gunners, bleeding, hurling his final grenade before collapsing and being dragged back into the trenches and onto a hospital ship bound for Canada. I developed a grudging respect that blossomed into a fierce pride in my name.

Then, a few years back, my cousin Thom came to visit. We were talking about family, and Granny and Grandad, and I talked about how proud I was to bear the name of a hero who died so nobly.

Thom chuckled. "Is that what she told you? I guess she left out the part where he got drunk, slipped on some icy stairs, and cracked his head open. That's how he died."

I was shattered.

A few months later, I was visiting my Mom and Dad in Gimli, Manitoba. Whenever I visit them now, I try to carry a notepad, to jot down family stories or details that come out in the conversation. I couldn't wait to challenge my Dad on the whole name thing. How could he let me go on believing this heroic myth, when in fact the old guy was a drunk who died from falling down stairs?

My Dad's a pretty quiet guy, not given to great shows of emotion. He looked at me across the table and I was shocked to see him well up.

"Let me tell you about your Grandfather," he began.

"He was already in the bakery business when the war started, but he walked away from it to join up. He went overseas as an infantryman, and came back with his legs filled with shrapnel from a shell. The doctors didn't want to take most of it out, afraid they'd disturb a piece and it would go up to his heart and kill him."

"So he came back to his bakery and every morning at 3:45 AM he'd get up and your Granny would wrap his legs in bandages. And he'd go downstairs - we lived in an apartment above the bakery - and start baking the bread for the day, then work down there for the whole day, on his feet the whole time. At the end of the day he'd limp back upstairs and I'd watch her unwrap the bandages, now soaked with blood. And she'd give him a half a glass of vodka to take the edge off the pain - no Tylenol or Advil back then."

"After supper, he'd read for a while, but around 8 o'clock he'd get up, down another half a glass of vodka, and go down to make sure the ovens were off and everything was ready for the next day. Then he'd come back and say the same thing to me every night: "Well, we didn't get much done today, but we'll give 'er Hell tomorrow." And he'd be off to bed."

"One night, he didn't come back up from checking the ovens. Your aunt found him at the bottom of the stairs, unconscious. He died in hospital a couple of days later."

Dad looked at me solemnly across the table, his eyes glistening and his voice shaking. "I don't know if he was tired. I know he didn't handle stairs well. And yeah, maybe he was a little tipsy. Probably was. I'd have been, if I lived in that kind of pain and vodka was all I had. But don't you dare sit across this table from me and tell me your Grandfather didn't die of the wounds he suffered at Vimy Ridge."

On Remembrance Day, I think about that other Nils Ling. I'm grateful to him for interrupting his life and going overseas to fight for all those things we now dismiss as our due. I'm grateful that he raised a family and instilled values in them that carry down through the generations.

And I'm grateful - and humbled beyond measure - to share his name.

Comments

[Cyn]

On the topic of names...
I love your intro you have for me on your list.

[robert paterson]

Nils
Wouls anyone live like your grandfather now? Put up with what he did? I have no doubt that our grandfathers were tougher than we are by far. Why do you think we have become so wimpy?

[news-]

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