Douglas Coupland - Hey Nostradamus!

Just don't screw your life up the way I did, but you're young, and because you're young, you won't listen to anybody, anyway, so what's the point of advice? This whole letter is a pointless exercise.

Wait - here's a biggie: you're prone to blacking out when you drink. Using something else along with the booze gives you longer blackouts more quickly, and a blacked-out experience can never be retrieved. At least, I have yet to retrieve one, and I've tried, thank you. I even went to a hypnotist a few years ago, one I know was a medically trained hypnotist, not some quack, and . . . nada.

What else? What else? It's better to eat lots of meals throughout the day instead of just three. Also, if you want to get close to somebody, you have to tell him or her something intimate about yourself. They'll tell you something intimate in return, and if you keep this going, maybe you'll end up in love.

You probably won't be very talkative, but your mind ought to be pretty alive most of the time. Find a puppet and make it do the talking for you.

Finally: You will be able to sing. You will have a lovely voice. Find something valuable to sing, and go out and sing it. It's what I ought to have done.

The hospital just phoned. My father slipped on his kitchen floor and cracked some ribs and possibly did some cardiac bruising. Could I please go to his place and gather some basic items for him?

"He gave you my phone number? I'm unlisted."

"He did."

"But he's never even phoned me."

"He knew it by heart."

The nurse said she'd leave a list of items and a key in an envelope down by reception. "I have a hunch you two don't get along and he needs a few days without incident. You don't have to see him."

"Right."

Dad's apartment is somewhere in North Vancouver - off Lonsdale, not even that far from Mom's condo. I could simply not go, but I have to admit, I'm tempted.

Dad lives on the eighteenth floor; God must like elevators. The apartment is a generic unit built in maybe 1982, about ten minutes before the entire city went crazy on teal green, a color I'm forced to endure at least a few times a week as a subcontractor. Dad's place is dark yellow with plastic mock-Tiffany lampshades, and brown-and-orange freckled indoor-outdoor carpeting. My job in the renovation business has turned me into a fixtures snob: the hardware-store cupboard door fronts are all stained like burnt coffee; the Dijon-colored walls have remained unmodified since the the rollers were put away in 1982. The windows face the mountains - the apartment receives no direct sunlight except for maybe two minutes at sunset on the longest day of the year. This is not an apartment in which fresh vegetables are consumed. It smells like a dead spice rack.

The August heat brought out the full aroma of the furniture - homely crappy stuff Reg kept, nay, demanded to keep, after he and Mom split: a brown plaid recliner aimed at a TV inside an oak console like they used to give away on game shows. On a cheap colonial kitchen table was a box of insurance documents; a half-eaten can of Beef-a-Roni and a spoon lay on the floor where I guess he fell. Jesus, how depressing.

The bedroom is where the good stuff ought to have been, at least that's what I'd hoped. Again, dark furniture left over from his split-up with Mom, and all of it too big for the room. On his dresser top was a blue runner, on which stood framed photos, yellowed and bleached, of him, Mom, Kent and me. I remember when each photo was taken - the sittings were torture; it was simply weird that he had photos of Mom and me there. Kent sure, but me? And Mom?

His bed was queen-sized. If he'd had a twin bed, it would have been so bleak I'd have had to flee. I went and sat down on his preferred side, which smelled of pipe tobacco, smoke and dust. There was an olive rotary phone, a can of no-name tonic water and an aspirin bottle. What would be in the two drawers beneath it - girlie mags? A salad bowl filled with condoms? No. He had Bibles, Reader's Digest Condensed Books and clipped newspaper articles. Oh, to find something human like an escort service card or a gin bottle to go with the tonic, but no. Just this garage sale jumble, all of it so blank, so totally anti-1999 as to evoke thoughts of time travel back to, say, North Platte, Nebraska, circa 1952. The thought of my silent, sour-faced father walking from room to room - rooms in which phones never ring, where other voices never enter -it almost broke my heart, but then I realized, Wait a second, this is Reg, not some monk. Also, before I take too much pity on him, I ought to note how much his place is like my place.

I fetched the items on the list: pajamas, T-shirts, underwear, socks, and so on. The contents of his dresser were all folded and color-coded as if waiting for inspection by some cosmic drill sergeant on Judgment Day.

I grabbed his bottles of old people's medications, a toothbrush and contact lens gear and headed for the front door where, passing a little side table, I came close to missing a photo of my father with a woman - an ample and cheery woman - in a pink floral dress. His arms were around her shoulders, and, alert the media, there was a smile on his face.

The heart of a man is like deep water.

I've been writing these last bits in a coffee shop. I'm now officially one of those people you see writing dream diaries and screenplays in every Starbucks, except if you saw me writing, you'd maybe guess I was faking some quickie journal entries to hand my anger management counselor. So be it.

Around three I went to the hospital with the white plastic Save-On shopping bag full of Reg's personal needs. In the building's lobby I had the choice of dumping it at the desk or asking what room my father was in. What came over me? It was nearly eleven years since I'd last spoken with him, me shouting curses while he lay on the blue rug at the old house with his shattered knee. We hadn't spoken at Kent's wedding, the funeral or yesterday's memorial. I figured he must have learned something between then and now.

The hospital's central cooling system was malfunctioning, and guys in uniforms with tool kits were in the elevator with me. When I got off on the sixth floor, I was invisible to the staff, while the air-conditioning guys were treated like saviors.

I found Reg's room. The odor outside it reminded me of luggage coming onto the airport carousels from China and Taiwan - mothballs, but not quite. I had a short moment of disbelief when I was outside the door and technically only a spit away from him. Yes? No? Yes? No? Why not? I went in — a shared room, a snoring young guy with his leg in a cast near the door. On the other side of a flimsy veil lay my father.

"Dad."

"Jason."

He looked awful - bloodless, white and unshaven - but certainly alert. "Here's your stuff . . . the hospital asked me to get it."

"Thank you."

Silence.

He asked, "Did you have trouble finding anything?"

"No. Not at all. Your place is pretty orderly."

"I try and run a tight ship."

I shivered when I thought of his hot dusty lightless hallway, his mummified TV set, his kitchen cupboards laden with tins and packets and boxes of rationlike food, and his cheapskate lifestyle, in which not tipping some poor waitress is viewed more as a way of honoring God than of being a miser with one foot in the grave. I held out the bag. "Here you go."

"Put it on the window ledge."

I did this. "What did the doctor say?"

"Two cracked ribs and bruising like all get-out. Maybe some cardio trauma, which is why they're keeping me here."

"You feel okay?"

"It hurts to breathe."

Silence.

I said, "Well, I ought to go, then."

"No. Don't. Sit on the chair there."

The guy in the other bed was snoring. I wondered what on earth to say after a decade of silence. "It was a nice memorial. Barb sure gets excited."