He’s ninety-six now, living in a residential care facility in B.C. I can’t call him on the phone anymore. He hears very little and struggles with dementia. My sister tells me that until she mentions me, he doesn’t speak of me. Then our father remembers the daughter two provinces away. …
The surgeon waved my comments aside. “Your eyes are perfect. You could legally fly a plane.” “No, sir,” I responded. “I couldn’t.” I had tried to explain, during that post-op appointment following my cataract surgeries (both peepers, two weeks apart), that I was NOT happy with my new eyes. I’d …
Dad, ninety five now and in a nursing home, receives some surprising company. “Dave comes to visit me,” he’s told me and my siblings often. “He sits beside the bed and reads me the Bible.” Dad’s twin brother Dave, my favourite uncle, died two years ago. That doesn’t bother my …
Journal entry. March 20th. First day of spring. Lower mainland, B.C. Good day, diary. Good day, Lord. And good day, Spring. After our record-breaking cold Canadian winter, you’re more welcome than usual, even though you’re late to your own party. I travelled two provinces in order to catch your entry …
On March 13, 2019, my mother would have turned a hundred. After her death at age ninety-five, I lost her voice for almost four years. It neither echoed in my ears nor whispered in the corridors of memory. That grieved me. Then came the dream that placed life precisely as …
God knows I’m grateful for all his blessings. For Jesus and home and country. Faith and family and friends. But this Thanksgiving column has somehow gotten paw prints all over it. It’s done. The months of searching. Praying. Wondering if we could, if we should, if God and GraceCat and …
The Preacher and I travelled a thousand summer miles between Dad’s home and ours recently. We took a bed and breakfast a mile or so down the road from his care facility and visited daily between naps and meals. We played checkers for an hour one afternoon, he and I. …
Today’s itinerary stretches between our son’s place in B.C.’s Kootenay region and my father’s residential care facility in Abbotsford. We set out on Highway #95, the two-lane road connecting Invermere and Golden, B.C. – one of my favourite sections of that route. Under blue sky and dumpling clouds, we motor through vast …
My 93 year-old father says he visits with his twin brother,, Dave, regularly in the woodshop. I picture them there, alike as two halves of a walnut. Surrounded by their projects, chatting and laughing over the buzz of saws, breathing in the sweet fragrance of sawdust and stopping often to clean …
I’ll call my ninety-three year old dad on Father’s Day. He’ll call me “Sweetheart” and tell me how much he loves me. And once again, he’ll cry and thank me for making the time. “I love talking to you, Dad,” I say. And I do. I try to call every …
