So, now that I've started...

I wrote a few months ago about how busy we had been. For a while there we had not updated our blog for quite a while, and we claimed to being so occupied with our lives. It has been a strange time for us.

As we told you before, we had to make a whirlwind trip to Southern British Columbia to have my wife and son officially "enter" the country, and that we had time to visit my family there at that time. We celebrated an early Christmas with them, then went back to Yellowknife. I said it was timely; it certainly was.

I knew that my father had cancer, but we didn't find out until that December trip just how extensive it was. It turned out that it had spread beyond the area where it was first found, and had settled in other areas of his body, including a tumour in his brain. It was a difficult trip, because when we were there, Dad had to be rushed to the hospital, due to over-medication. For a son, especially a youngest son, it's difficult to take the opposite role from the one you are used to. My father has always been larger than life for me; sort of indomitable. But supporting my father as he sat semiconcious in a chair was awful. He was very weak, and hard as it obviously was for my father and family to see him that way, it was especially hard on me, I think. The huge hands that he used to tie a fly, or chop wood, or manhandle a rototiller were still there, but I was holding them, comforting him, trying to keep him awake enough to be able to get him on a stretcher. Fortunately, they were able to get his meds straightened out, and we were able to enjoy a visit, and an early Christmas. The last one with him, as it turned out. The rest of my family were able to enjoy one last Christmas with him too.

My father passed away on January 23, 2008.

Another whirlwind trip for me down to Southern BC, just long enough to help put together a memorial service, and a power point presentation for my father. It was awful, but it was also very nice. It was gratifying to see how many people your parents touch over the years. The small hall in the town were I grew up was jampacked with friends and family.

The time after has been strange. I have yet to weep, unlike my family, who do so daily. Perhaps this will come once we place his remains. It's a wonderful place not far from the first house we grew up in. Most of his ashes will go there, some at Cathedral Lakes Park, which he loved. The view from the graveyard features a scene not unlike the one below.

I miss my father, and think of him every day. A fine man, and though I never told him, a good father.