Love & Courage

by Jagmeet Singh

  Arrangements were made and there was an opening at Homewood Centre, a rehabilitation centre in Guelph, Ontario. It was the same rehab centre my dad had successfully attended in the past, so my dad took the first available admission.

  He was accepted for the following weekend. The plan was that when I visited then, I would take him to Guelph on Sunday and then head back to school in London. We left Sunday morning for Homewood. My dad sat in the passenger seat, sluggish but surprisingly wide-eyed and optimistic.

  “I’ll be back on my feet right away,” he said. “My son, my boy, don’t you worry. This is just a slip-up.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” I said. “It’s Mom.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be back to work next month.”

  “No, you’re not listening,” I said. “Mom has been really patient with you, but she’s breaking down.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s happening regularly now.”

  “I know.”

  “You need to be better to her.”

  “I will.”

  “And a better dad to Manjot and Gurratan.”

  “I promise.”

  I don’t know when we got comfortable with this role reversal, but every now and then I would catch my parental tone and think, This isn’t normal. He should be the one reprimanding me for not calling home enough, for spending too much money, or for clubbing too much and not studying enough. I still loved my dad, but somewhere along the way, he’d lost his role as a parent.

  The role reversal became even clearer when we arrived at Homewood. The place felt a bit like a university. The bedrooms resembled a cross between a dorm room and a hotel room, and there were classrooms for programming, and meeting rooms, and a gym. As we began to unpack the car, I was reminded of parents dropping their kids off at university during frosh week. Except, in my case, the kid was my dad, and university was a rehab centre.

  Still, I couldn’t help but feel a small flicker of hope as I helped him carry the last of his boxes of clothes and books into the residence. We hugged each other like brothers, punctuated with a couple of hearty pats on the shoulders. I turned back onto the highway, drove west to London, and returned to my dorm.

  Nobody on campus knew about my personal issues. Mike, as always, filled me in on his weekend and everything I’d missed: the rumours of student residence drama, the latest pranks, who was dating who. It was carefree teen stuff from a different universe.

  “How’s your family?” Mike finally asked.

  “Great,” I said. “It was a chill weekend.”

  Within a few months of being discharged from rehab, my dad returned to work. He made it without issue until my second year at university. By that point, I’d moved into Essex Hall residence. I lived in a four-bedroom suite with three of my friends and one freshman we didn’t know. A couple of months into that year, my dad failed another screening test. He had one more chance to get sober, stay sober, and continue practising.

  Rather than try Homewood for a third time, my dad decided to try a different rehab facility. Homewood had worked before, but he felt he needed something new. He didn’t want to leave any option untried. He asked around for advice and received a recommendation for an elite centre in Atlanta, Georgia. After confirming that his insurance would cover it, he started making plans to get admitted. My mom and I wanted him to stay in Canada so he could be closer to home, but when it came down to it, I didn’t care where he went. I just wanted him to get better.

  He stayed in Atlanta for almost two months. Then he came home and began to work again a few months later. The morning screening tests continued. He kept passing, aided by prescribed anti-alcohol pills that made him gag and vomit at the first sip.

  My dad felt the pressure. He understood that his job, reputation, and his family’s well-being were on the line. But he also begrudged the pills and check-ins. He seemed offended that he couldn’t be trusted anymore, or maybe he was offended by his own self, knowing he’d lost all credibility. The first time he’d gotten sober, he’d turned into a lighthearted jokester, a delight to be around. This time, he became an even more miserable presence.

  I’m ashamed of what this brought out in me. One weekend when I was back home, my mom told me she thought my dad was only pretending to take his pills. I stormed into the bathroom, grabbed the medicine bottle, and crushed up a pill and stirred it in a glass of water. I brought it to him in the living room and slammed it on the coffee table.

  “Drink,” I said, glaring at him the way I used to stare down someone in a street fight, right before the first fist was thrown.

  He swallowed the lump in his throat, took a sip, and put the glass back on the table.

  “All of it,” I said.

  He closed his eyes, shook his head, and chugged the whole thing, his eyes never leaving mine. He exhaled triumphantly, and then coughed into his hands uncontrollably. He started gagging and hurried to the toilet. I sighed as he fled the room, wondering how much longer this could go on.

  People are bonded by trauma. It syncs them in such a way that they can read the minds of others with just a glance. While my dad was trying to find his path again, I did what I could to make sure my family had what they needed. Manjot was incredible about watching out for Gurratan during the week. The two of them had bonded while I was away, and I wanted to make sure I was helping by paying my own knowledge forward every chance I got.

  So, one weekend visit, I came home and handed two sets of black cloth to Gurratan, who was watching TV in the living room.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It’s time you started tying a turban,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “A turban would look much better on you. And besides, your beard is starting to grow in a little,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “It’s time, bro.”

  He patted his head curiously, anxious about the change. The patkas he wore as a kid were fast and easy to do, with little room for error. Tying a turban, well, that was going to take some practice.

  “Relax. It’s not a big deal,” I said. “Once you start tying a turban, you’re going to notice it’s more comfortable, and it will suit your face a lot better. Trust me, okay?”

  He hesitated. “Okay,” he said finally.

  “Cool, let’s find a mirror.”

  We went to the bathroom. “Hold it lengthwise,” I said, pinching the sides of one cloth and guiding his arms away from his body.

  I coached him as he wrapped the cloth clockwise, smoothing the edges just like my dad had taught me in better times, slowly building up the fabric into a stylized dome.

  We practised until Gurratan got the hang of it. It wasn’t perfect—but he had a knack for tying it and it was more grown-up than the patkas he wore.

  “Good enough,” I said.

  “You think this looks cool?” he asked.

  “It looks really good, actually,” I said.

  “Thanks, bro.”

  “When are you going to start tying it?”

  “On the weekends. I think I’ll ease into it.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  He wore his turban the rest of that weekend, practising again each morning and retying it whenever it fell apart. On Monday, when I was back in London, I got a panicked call from him at 7:30 in the morning.

  “What’d you do with my patkas?” Gurratan asked.

  “I threw them away,” I said. “You don’t need them anymore.”

  “What? I’m not ready to wear a turban to school, man. It’s going to make me late! It might fall apart!”

  “Just tie the turban, Gurratan. You know what to do, and you’ll be fine. Talk to you later,” I said.

  Was I a bit hard on him? Maybe. But the next weekend, when I went home, my little brother was carrying himself a little taller with a beautiful turban I could tell he was proud of.

  As my second year of university wrapped up, I struggled to study for my finals. No matter how
hard I tried to focus on the notes and texts before me, my mind zipped west across the 401 highway to my family. Manjot was wrapping up twelfth grade, and she had already been admitted to Western and registered for a dorm. I was excited to have a sibling near me in London, but I feared for Gurratan alone in Windsor without either of us to take care of him. The three of us had always felt like a team in the struggle against my dad’s worst tendencies. Now the youngest member would be left to fend for himself.

  I had reason to be worried. My brother called me one evening, and as soon as I heard his voice, my stomach sank.

  “Dad just called the cops on me,” Gurratan said, voice laced with adrenaline. He spoke so fast I asked him to repeat himself. “Dad. Called. The. Cops.” he said.

  I jumped to my feet. The notebook on my lap went flying, startling my roommate, Shoab, who looked at me concerned. “Everything okay?” he mouthed.

  I flashed him a thumbs-up and took the phone to my bedroom. “What happened?” I asked my brother.

  Gurratan had been reading in the living room, an area sectioned off from the rest of the house by a glass door, when he heard my dad moaning and yelling. That wasn’t unusual—the sounds my dad made when he was inebriated often made him sound like a man possessed. Gurratan thought he was safe because the sounds were coming from the bedroom upstairs. But a few minutes later, my dad emerged from his bedroom in a stupor and stumbled toward the living room.

  Having seen my dad in that state countless times, I understood why my brother then slammed the door on him. “Go back to your room,” Gurratan said as he returned to the couch.

  My dad freaked out and tried to force open the door. Gurratan used his body to keep it shut, while my dad pounded on the glass and screamed at him.

  My dad wouldn’t give up, so Gurratan, in a panic, grabbed an ornamental spear off the wall, shaking it at my dad on the other side of the glass door.

  “Stay away,” Gurratan yelled. “I said leave me alone!”

  More confused than anything, my dad returned upstairs without another word. Gurratan slumped onto the couch. His heart pounding, he kept the spear across his lap in case my dad returned. Minutes passed. Just as Gurratan thought the event had simmered down, he looked out the window to see a police cruiser turning onto our driveway.

  Gurratan sprinted upstairs to the meditation room directly above the front entrance. He watched two cops exit the car and walk up the stoop. The doorbell rang. As my dad descended the stairs and walked to the door, Gurratan cranked open the window.

  “Tell us what happened, Dr. Dhaliwal,” an officer said. Many officers in Windsor knew my dad; there weren’t many psychiatrists in the city. They might admit someone in custody to the hospital while he was on call, or subpoena him to testify in court. They’d developed a chummy relationship with him over the years, but they’d never seen him like this.

  “My son tried to attack me,” my dad said, slurring and holding himself up by the door handle.

  “How?”

  “He tried to attack me,” my dad repeated.

  Gurratan called out the window: “It’s because he’s drunk.”

  The officers’ heads shot up, trying to make out the voice coming from upstairs.

  “He’s going to hurt me,” my dad said.

  “I told you to leave me alone,” Gurratan said.

  “Son,” said an officer, “can you come down? We want to talk to you.”

  “No way, I’m not going near him.”

  My mom, who up until then had been nervously trying to keep to herself in the living room, came to the door and tried to calm the situation. “There is no problem here, officers, everything is fine.” Somehow, my mom convinced them it was all a big misunderstanding.

  “Just be careful, okay?” one of the officers called up to my brother. They didn’t know what to make of the situation. “Don’t scare your dad.” Before the cops returned to the cruiser, my dad quietly asked them not to make a report. “I’m afraid we can’t do that, Dr. Dhaliwal,” one responded. “We have to report this—it’s an official call.”

  As my brother recounted the story to me over the phone, I felt a mix of anger at both my parents and the cops. It’s hard to know what police should do in domestic situations with three conflicting stories, but I felt they could’ve done better than to solely lay the blame on my brother. “That’s not cool,” I told him over the phone. “Put Mom on.”

  My brother called out to her to pick up the landline in another room. I heard a click and before she could say hello, I started yelling. “This isn’t right. Dad called the police on a little kid—that’s traumatic. What if they charged Gurratan with something? What if Dad lied and said, ‘He hit me’?”

  My mom tried to speak, but her voice cracked, and she dissolved into tears. I immediately felt regretful. “I’m sorry for lashing out,” I said. “It’s not your fault, I know you can’t control him. But this is messed up. There’s no way we can leave Gurratan at home with Dad. That isn’t going to end well for anyone.”

  “What can we do?” asked my mom.

  “Let me think about it,” I said.

  I had an idea, but I wanted to talk it over with Manjot first.

  “I don’t think it’s safe for Gurratan to stay in Windsor with both of us gone,” she said when we sat down to talk about it.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Mom has her hands full with Dad. With you at university, Gurratan will be on his own.”

  So, on my next trip back home, I took my mom aside and levelled with her.

  “Gurratan needs to live with me,” I said. “He can’t stay in Windsor; it’s not safe, and he’s not going to be able to succeed in this environment if he’s scared all the time. He needs somewhere where he can just be a regular high school student.”

  My mom didn’t speak. I knew how terrible what I’d said must have sounded to her, but I had to say it. Gurratan was my mom’s baby, and the thought that she couldn’t protect him made her feel like a failed mother. Still, she didn’t protest the idea.

  With my mom and Manjot on board, I sat Gurratan down and outlined the plan.

  “Gurratan, you’re going to live with me in London,” I said. “We’ll find you an awesome school, and we’ll have a nice place. Manjot will be there, too, and she and I will be able to take care of you. You won’t have to worry about Dad.”

  I could see the immediate relief on my brother’s face. He hadn’t said anything, but it was clear that he must have been dreading the thought of being alone at home.

  But then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, the happiness left his face.

  “What about Jugnu?” he asked.

  Nobody could predict the condition of our dad on any given day. But one thing we could always count on was that Jugnu would want to go for runs, play catch, or slobber our faces with kisses. Jugnu was a source of stability and comfort for all of us, but Gurratan most of all. “We’ll bring him with us,” I said. “We’ll find a place that allows dogs.”

  As the words left my mouth, a flicker of doubt entered my mind. What am I getting myself into? I thought. But the look of relief Gurratan gave me said it all, and I knew we were making the right decision.

  My mom and I had been toying with the idea of buying a condo in London for me and my sister, but when Manjot made it clear she wanted her independence, we put the idea aside. I told my mom that I’d find an affordable two-bedroom condo near the university and a decent high school for Gurratan to attend. Thinking back, it was pretty incredible what I was able to buy for a very affordable price in London.

  I was twenty years old, had not even finished my second year of university, and I’d just made the decision to take in my kid brother. Feed him, care for him, enroll him in school—all of which was more than a little daunting. What did I know about being a parent? Not much. Like anything else that challenged me in life, I’d just have to find my confidence and learn on the fly.

  Part Three

  Chapter Eleven

 
; BOND BETWEEN BROTHERS

  Gurratan and I must have made quite the pair when we went to register him for his new high school. We rolled up in one car, a black Mercedes. I had a goatee, and I was steadily adopting an early 2000s hip hop–inspired style, complete with Dead Prez blaring out of my car speakers, slightly baggy track pants, and a fitted grey T-shirt. Gurratan was coming into his own identity, developing a style probably inspired by me, but he was a lot more confident with it than I was at his age. But the age gap between us probably didn’t make a lot of sense to anyone paying attention. We stepped out of the car. I walked toward the steel-blue doors trying to project confidence.

  Gurratan looked over at me skeptically. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “How hard can it be to register someone in school?” I said.

  We climbed the stairs, walked down hallways decorated with bubble letters that spelled out school-spirit chants. We came to an open door under an OFFICE sign. I looked over at my brother and saw how at ease and excited he was—he was clearly looking forward to a fresh start—and I smiled at the thought of him thriving.

  “Jagmeet Singh Dhaliwal,” I said, introducing myself to the administrator. “This is my brother, Gurratan.”

  The office administrator looked at me, then him, then back to me. “Nice to meet you both,” she said. “Are you former students, Goo . . . I’m sorry, your names again?”

  “Gur-ruh-tun,” he said.

  “And Jagmeet. It’s pronounced Jug-meet,” I said. “Gurratan is fifteen, just moved here from Windsor. I would like to register him for eleventh grade this September.”

  She printed out a form and stuck it to a clipboard for me to fill out with Gurratan’s name, social insurance number, and the rest of it. To my brother’s surprise, I had actually come prepared. I signed my name on the line above GUARDIAN.

  As we drove back to the apartment, I went over our arrangement.

  “We’ve got you in school,” I said. “That’s one thing off the to-do list.”

  “What else is on that list?”