WE HAVE BEEN OVERWHELMED BY KIND MESSAGES FOR TED SR.
Since the middle of December, when my father Ted Sr., suffered a stroke, we have been overwhelmed by the support of friends, his former lumber trade customers, and family, who visited him while in the hospital, and thought enough to send us cards with best wishes. As his health deteriorated over the next month, leading to his eventual passing on the 20th of January, we couldn’t travel very far in our region, without bumping into someone, so many kindly souls, who asked about his health.....and when he’d be coming home. Following his passing, we had many calls and cards from people we didn’t know, many who had been Ted’s customers at Shier’s Lumber, Building Trades Centre, of Bracebridge, and Northland Building Centre, of Parry Sound. I had a pleasant visit just the other day, while shopping here in Gravenhurst, with his former barber, who expressed his condolences. My dad loved a barber shop chat, and so did the barber apparently.
It has been a particularly difficult time because we were forced to close-out his apartment in Bracebridge, and haul, for the time being, all my parent’s curios and furniture to our already crowded Gravenhurst bungalow. We had been forced to do this shortly after he was admitted to hospital, as it was apparent he would not ever live unassisted, even if he had recovered his ability to walk. It was a painful time because we knew it would break his heart, to be forced to leave the little apartment, he had shared with Merle, near the scenic rapids near the Muskoka River’s Bass Rock. The only advantage we had in this case, was that Ed was suffering from a cognitive disorder, and never knew what we had been forced to contend with at his apartment. On our last day in that apartment, there wasn’t a dry eye, as we stood a few moments after the final skirl of the vacuum, to look at what had, only a short while before, been a modest but comfortable paradise on earth for those final years. I had planned to bring our dog Bosko one last time.....Ed just adored our dog, and always had biscuits and water ready for our coffee time visits.....but I just couldn’t do that in conscience......he might be a silly old mutt but one with a pretty good memory, and it would have been sad to watch him look for his buddy Ed......and the chair that he faithfully slept by, so Ed could warm his toes.
Putting that key on the kitchen counter, was harder than holding Ed’s hand for those last moments of a long life. He was so sick, I wanted the suffering to cease. When he let go, I let go, and peace filled the hospital room. The key to the apartment, as silly as this might read, represented a severance to a safe haven, a caring place I’d retreat to weekly, just to rekindle and restore family values; and with my wife and sons, enjoy holiday feasts. I remember standing there and not wanting to take my hand away.....as if this key was the last symbolic tie to decades of my family’s history. This was closure on both Merle, who died in 2008, and Ed, and the simple retirement they enjoyed feeding the hummingbirds, raising some balcony tomato plants, having good food that Ed so enthusiastically prepared, a good size television and stereo for entertainment, and did I mention, a car in the driveway for their daily trips around the region. In this one action, of leaving these keys behind, it was the closing words of a chapter I never thought would end. I turned and bid both of them a fond farewell......our family was never big on emotional beginnings or sobbing conclusions, but in that last little illumination of a winter afternoon, so bright and cheerful coming through the patio door, I felt at ease with the memory of two fine people, who had been married over 60 years, and who had stuck by each other through so many trials and misfortunes;....... to finish here in this spiritual aura of goodwill and contentment. I confess that it was impossible to look back after this, because it’s always on that occasion for those in mourning, when we ask why this had to happen.....and illogically judge reality, the truth of this cycle of life, to be ruthless and unfair. Instead we all left with a sad but resolved comfort that they had crossed to some place even more interesting, more inspiring and restorative. And that we should cease to mourn, and carry on with fond memories till we meet again.
Thank you all so much for sending messages of sympathy and for sharing many wonderful anecdotes about time spent with Ted Sr., whether having an after-work ale, a counterside discussion about two by fours and kitchen cabinets, or having a sports debate at a local coffee shop......where he loved to critique the Leafs. Even though he grew up in Cabbagetown, only a few blocks from Maple Leaf Gardens, he was a lifelong Montreal fan.......Merle and I never, ever gave up on the Leafs. It always made for an interesting Hockey Night in Canada when the Leafs and the Habs were playing.
Good times.