Jeannette

This woman is my mother, and I assume that dark little urchin in the crib is me. My grandmother always said my parents were snappy dressers, and I can see from her jewelry, her dress and right down to the obvious Playtex bra, she liked to dress.

She had one brother, Romeo, that I met a few years back, a very nice man, retired RCMP, who spoke with great concern for the life that his sister led, that she was strong willed and pretty much did what she wanted.

She didn't speak much English when she moved to Souris, but somehow in her relationships she mastered the language, and for as long as I knew her, spoke with a sing-song voice in a very pretty French accent. Momma said that among other things, she sang beautifully, including being able to sing the Mass in Latin, which no one else they knew could do.

I don't have a lot of memories of her, but the ones I do have are strong.

I remember her holding my hand, and hers were so soft. She held me on her knee to brush my hair in ringlets in a very warm and steamy bathroom and I remember looking up at the light and thinking how far up it seemed.

In my mind she was so tall, but in later years of course, I realize to a four-year-old, everyone seems tall. It turns out she wasn't tall at all but that impression became my memory.

And until a couple of years ago, I didn't know if she was still alive. My brother Darrell stumbled across her obituary on the Internet, and we discovered that she had remained for the rest of her life at Goose Bay Air Force Base where my father had died, she kept his name, but had other relationships and children after that. Absolutely no mention was made of me and my brothers, so she effectively buried that part of her past, as was her intent. I'm sure no one in her life in Labrador ever knew about us, including her next husband.

This is a terrible picture, but it's the only one I have of their wedding. That's old Father Keefe at the table, I remember him too, he used to teach me Cathechism.

As close as I can figure, my father was about 30 and my mother was about 24. I'd love to know more about their courtship and how they met, but I'm done making up romantic stories in my mind.

They were married a couple of years before I was born and about two years later my brother Butch was born. There's nothing new about going to another province to work; my mother had done it and so had my father. About this time it was looking like North to Labrador was where the money was, so I guess a plan was hatched. Since my father was a WW2 vet, it was no trouble to find jobs on an air force base. Before they went, the plan was to leave Butch and me with Momma, my father's mother for the winter while my parents worked. His father Henry, Momma's husband had died that spring and I suppose there was a great need for money. Nothing new about that, and Butch and I were only little and wouldn't really know the difference.

A story goes that as they were leaving, my father asked Momma if he could have a little slice of her dark fruit cake before he went away. I am assuming it was before Christmas and Momma would have her fruit cakes made. They were coveted, and like today, no doubt expensive to make, and a couple always got shipped to the States to her daughters. But I think my father was the rock she leaned on, especially since his father had just passed away and she'd ultimately be alone.

Well, nothing doing, she wrapped up a whole cake for him to take with him, and there would be no way for them to know that it would be his last request. He died in a tragic fire about a week later, on the Base, on New Years Day. Two bodies were found, one at the window, one at the door. They could not be identified, and being 1962, there wasn't much technology available. And it was the Holidays, it was a bitter time of year in Labrador, it must have been an awfully trying and confusing event. But my father's wrist watch and his dental records enabled the authorities to mercifully send his body home so that he could be buried beside his father. There is no way to even begin to imagine the trauma. I do remember clearly my grandmother taking the phone call that changed her life. Screaming cannot describe the sounds we heard as she crawled back up the stairs to her bed. And those who knew her know that she never really left it again. Her grief was all encompassing as she tried not to imagine the horror of his death.

I was four years old and I have one memory of his funeral. At least I think it was, it may have been a gathering at the house after a funeral. There were so many references that he was now "up" in heaven and so many cars in the yard, that I assumed that all the cars piled up one on top of the other, so he could get up there. Funny, if it wasn't so sad.

There was no real help in those days, no one qualified to talk about grief. Unless you were bleeding or had a bone sticking out, you didn't go to a doctor. Certainly not for a broken heart. I have clear and warm memories of Pat Burke (MacNeill) who came to stay with Momma to run the house and look after us little ones during this time. In later years Pat shared a story with me of watching Momma, standing at the door looking out, as she slowly pulled her hair out by the handfuls. After her husband dying just 6 months previously, her pain was complete. And she had no tools to deal with it. She never spoke my father's name again, without saying "poor Billie" and crying uselessly. Heavy stuff for us kids.

After the funeral, my mother went back to Goose Bay, against protests from my father's family. She left Butch and me again, with Momma.

But in death, there's life. Exactly 34 weeks after my father died, my mother delivered another baby boy, my brother Darrell. My father would have died not ever knowing that he had another son on the way. Strange the things that make us who we are, as Darrell can truly say the he never knew his father. Because he didn't, he never met him. Poor Billie is the stuff of our family legends.

This is all I have strength for right now, I'll write more next week.