Grandpa

For those who haven't spoken with me since, I made it home safely after a long but enjoyable trip.

Unfortunately, as of November 4th, I find myself in Ottawa again, but under less than happy circumstances. After a battle with pneumonia and the long goodbye of alzheimers, I've lost my maternal grandpa.

I was here for his 85th birthday back at the beginning of October. He was struggling with fluid on the lungs and an ever detiorating short-term memory and the talk amongst the family, though I so desired it not to be true, was that he was not long for this world. Unfortunately, their predictions were true and less than two weeks later he was in hospital for the last time, finally passing away on October 30th.

I've just returned to my Aunt and Uncle's house from the wake. I could paint the day as one of sadness and mourning but that would be untrue. It was wonderful to spend time with my family and their friends, talking about everything that my grandpa had been to them.

He was an amazing man.

He fought in Burma, flying in C-47 Dakotas that would weave their way through valleys between mountains to resupply troups behind the Japanese lines. He told me stories about sitting at the cargo door, calling out distances to the pilot, letting him know how many feet he had between the wingtip and the valley wall. He told me stories of almost falling to his death as a load shifted, knocking him out of the cargo door, leaving him to hang by a cargo strap as the Dak made its knife-edge turn at the end of a valley. And, most recently, he's told me stories about his job during the Cold War, working on the DEW line for NORAD. These stories are most recent simply because they were classified until many years later.

But he's not just one of those "war stories" grandpas. He was a father to three, a grandpa to give, and a great grandfather, as of October 3rd, to one, my little cousin Parker. He loved us all dearly, as he did his wife of 64 years (who he teased endlessly, but always with the deepest look of love in his eyes). Us grandchildren remember the man who would faithfully clean and maintain a backyard pool for us, the man who would let us crawl all over him and use him as a play structure, and the man who would tell us stories, sing us songs, and spoil us rotten (I'm told that, after finishing an ice cream cone that certainly wouldn't have been purchased my the responsible parents, I pull him over to me and said "You're a good guy, Grandpa"). He was as sharp as a tack up until the last few years, introducing me to writers like C.S. Lewis and Tolkien while engaging me in long debates and lessons about all things theological and moral.

Needless to say, he is dearly missed.

These are two of my favourite photos of him. I don't know the timing or details of the first, but it gives an excellent glimpse in to his character. The latter is a photo that I took when I was out here in October, possibly one of the last photos taken of him, showing him with his new great-grandchild. He loved that little baby.



I can't see well through the tears at the moment so I'll end it here.
If you were at all interested, this slideshow that my cousin Christopher and I put together for today's wake and tomorrow's.