Lest We Forget

The movie post will be tomorrow, given that the 11th is Remembrance Day here in Canada.

*****

It has been a long time since World War II.  Longer again since The Great War.  I will be reminded of that when I watch the final few World War II vets at our local Cenotaph, some still walking in the parade, most now bussed there and seated in special chairs brought in for the occasion or in their own wheelchairs.

When I was young, these were men in their 40s and 50s; young and robust, they marched quickly to the Cenotaph in our small town, retiring to the local Legion immediately thereafter for a hearty lunch and more than a few rums and an afternoon of kinship and reminiscing.

My own grandfather enlisted in the army when he was 39 years old.  He was patriotic, but mainly, he needed to support his family because the small town they lived in here in New Brunswick was particularly hard hit from the Depression.  He needed a regular paycheck.

So off he went, ending up in England, in charge of supplies for his base and for kitting up the bombers that left for their nightly sorties.  He was so much older than the young men and women with whom he worked that he went by the moniker "Dad".  And I do not know, but I have to believe, that it must have been hard to be "Dad" to so many who did not come back.

At home he left my dad, my grandmother and my Aunt Betty.  Betty was already mostly grown up as she was 16; my dad was only 8 when his father left and he and his mother moved in with his maternal grandparents who lived in a massive old house in another town nearby.  He was lonely and sad and he missed his father acutely.  And his father missed him.  When we cleaned out my dad's room in the nursing home last year after he died I found a packet of letters that my grandfather had written him during the war.  The letters would make you weep; my grandfather missed my dad so much.

Whenever I am feeling whiny about something, I think of my grandfather and my father.  I think of the men who died in places far away from home.  I think of the men who came back and were never quite the same.  I think of what they did for us, and I am very proud.

My grandfather lived to be 80 years old.  He was beloved by all who knew him.  He was a good time at a party, and though he was quiet man, he was always surrounded by people who wanted to hear his stories.

I never knew him as a young man, but as the man below, smoking his pipe, grateful for the life he had and likely contemplating, now and then, those whom 'Dad' sent off and never saw again.

There is of course a segue to other memories, other remembrances.

Today it has been 12 years since my mother passed away on November 11th.  Only a few hours shy of the same day, my dad passed away on the 12th of November a year ago.

I recently chatted with an acquaintance who'd just lost her mother.  We talked about how losing one's last parent gives one the jarring feeling of suddenly being an orphan. 

The people who brought you to the party have left.

Your parents may drive you crazy.  You may drive them crazy.  They may be good parents or bad parents or indifferent parents, but they are your parents.  And most parents love their children in ways that defy reason and common sense.

Now that mine are both gone I have no one to ask "when did I do this?" or  "what happened that time?"  Those opportunities are lost forever - what I can't remember I make up or I try and jog my sister or brother's memories to see if they recall.

Now when I see pictures and the odd video and recall a time when they were young and I was young, I wish there was a way to go visit that land, if only for a day.

Last week I happened to drive down the street where my parents lived in a flat in an old house when I was a baby and my sister was two years old.  All of the pictures in that house are happy ones; there are no life and career disappointments for the young couple who live there - they are happy and in love and they have good neighbours who help them with the children and they are content and excited about the future.

The entire street was teeming with ghosts as I drove along.  I could see old neighbours, long dead, the house that Barry and I rented when we were 24 years old that was just three door down from where I lived as a baby, the awful dump Barry lived in at University across the street.

I could see me pushing my daughter in a stroller on that street, walking by that same small flat, thinking of my parents.    I blinked again and I swear, for a moment I could see my mother and father walking too, in a different time in the exact same place, her pushing a stroller, him carrying my sister. They were laughing.

As I drove by, they looked at me, and smiled.