I’ve missed you. A lot has happened in the years since you left us. When you last saw me I was a small boy in elementary school. Now I am a little older, not yet an old man, no longer a young man.
I should have written to you sooner, I understand if you’re somewhat angry or disappointed that I haven’t. I will try and do better. You were never quick to anger, but anger is a natural emotion that you seemed to have managed so well.
I’m not sure how you measure time in Heaven, or if you do at all. Time here on earth can be a complicated thing, either too much of it or not enough. Life is short, that is a constant.
Any time I’m talking to the cousins, you always come up in the conversation. We all love(d) you. They knew you longer than I did, but I’m not jealous, they share their memories of you as I share mine. To me you were 10 feet tall and bulletproof, and their stories seem to support that notion.
One of my favourite days of all time was when you let me drive your truck, my first time driving! You had such patience. It was such a beautiful crisp fall day. Late in the afternoon after school, the sun a golden glow on the western horizon, the crops off the field, and no real agenda other than to hang out I guess.
You were our protector also. Your horse training skills were put to the test managing a particularly mean pony that kept trying to kill 8 year old me. Maybe I’m being a little dramatic for the sake of a good story, but I’m sure you remember the hoof prints all over me as well as I do!
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The jobs you had as a young man in the years between World Wars would be the stuff of legends now: breaking wild horses and plowing virgin sod for cash in the summers, riding the rails hobo style to the coal fields to work through the winter, working on threshing crews during harvest. These are the things that live on only in museums and history books now, and the memory of people like me who got to hear these stories straight from the source. How fortunate that I have this connection to history as I do! Truly it was the wild west.
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Hardships happened too often to you as well. Losing your first born in his infancy, as a boy I would imagine what kind of man Uncle Lorne would have been. I visit his grave when I visit you, grandma and mom.
Losing all you and grandma had worked for in the ‘dirty thirties’. Then relying on the charity of the relief cars, made no easier by the shame heaped upon each morsel by those administering the program.
Seeing your daughter in a bad marriage was very difficult. That one day in September 1974 stands out as a particularly bad day, it still knocks the wind out of me and makes my head spin when I think about it. You put the run to a bully much bigger, stronger and younger than you.
You had a few bouts of depression from what I have heard. Serious enough to require hospitalization on a couple of occasions. I was well into my adult years before I knew anything about it, not sure why it took so long to be told. Doesn’t change how I feel about you. In fact, it makes you a larger figure in my reality.
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We really needed your love for a few more years as our family really went through some dark times when you died. I was never mad that you left us, just confused and lonely. Your love, kindness and life lessons would surely have made all of our lives so much better. But it is never up to any of us when it is time to leave, and your death brought your suffering to its end, for that I should be thankful. The reality is we had you with us for the time we had, it has to be good enough. Your love lives on in us who remember you, and keeps us strong, and for that we are all thankful.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
