My father is gone. Even with the fair bit of grieving we’ve done, and though I’d lost contact with him, this is still hard to process.
Eugene, Gene to his friends and family, grew up in Cornwall, attended Ryerson in Toronto, and met my mother on a ski trip. They were married in 1961, and I came along the next year. I remember living near Cornwall as a toddler, just barely, but we soon moved to Trenton, when my dad got a job at Erie Electronics. The family moved again, near Ottawa and Uncle Roger, for another job in electronics.
Happy memories abound: rock collecting excursions, physics homework that he helped me with just by listening, heading to the beach with the whole family after he was back from work, his after-work ritual of reading in a recliner, much like the one I now cherish myself. .
I moved away to school, and then work, and then out West, and keeping in touch was trickier. As the kids drifted away, my dad met someone and resettled near the shores of Lake Huron, near her family. I did manage a visit on an extended Ontario road trip, where he got to meet our new son, Bruce.
Though we didn’t have much contact, I know he was happy with his new partner and her extended family, who took good care of him. Much like Dave’s dad, we have been using this very site as a way to keep him up to date, and the thought that a generation is leaving us so quickly is very sad.