Here in Canada, we recognize Remembrance Day on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, at the eleventh hour. For our family, it’s a day we think about our war hero, my grandfather.
My granddad passed away just days shy of his 99th birthday. I am forever grateful that I was able to enjoy his wisdom, his deep-rooted love, and especially the stories of his life’s adventures into my forties.
I am also fortuitous to have been able to record hours of him talking about his life including his time overseas and among those microcassettes locked in a fire safe, rests one of his war journals.
Within this journal, you see a man’s unwavering affection for his darling Winnie – my maternal grandmother. He wrote to her every day. He sent many things home with those letters including fancy materials to make clothing for his baby girl.
My grandmother died in a tragic car accident when I was six months old, but although he remarried and loved his second wife, it broke my heart when at my first wedding – after a few too many bar shots that tasted like candy – I overheard him saying he was coming home soon. His love and devotion to her was forever.
I miss our long drives and trying to stay awake in their boiling hot sixteenth floor apartment while he retold those stories to a point where they were ingrained in my memory. He was a true story teller like Hans Christian Anderson who – he would often remind me – was from the same town as him.
I was in my early thirties when my grandfather broke down one day and for the first time, started to talk about the war. Their sacrifices are a lifetime full of imagery that can not be erased.
