As April draws to a close

The days in April are quickly disappearing. Slowly I accomplish the tasks that I need to do to take me to the end of the first tunnel. Life can be a bit of a maze sometimes as we cannot see around the corner. I have things that I need to do and a time when I would like to be finished. 

Years ago when I learned to drive I acquired confidence after taking a course in Defensive Driving. The line that stuck with me and continues to do so is that every trip is from A to B. The thing you must accomplish is getting from A to B and doing everything in your power to do that in spite of all the distractions and problems along the way. Work on each distraction and each problem as you reach it. 

Looking out the window the grass is all awake and glowing back green. No dandelions yet and will meet those when they arrive. The spring cleanup will start 1st of May as always. With Ed's guidance last fall, spring cleanup will be small. He liked it that way so that he could enjoy the spring.  It was perhaps his favourite season although he never said so. He liked all the seasons. He loved living and he did it to the fullest of his imagination. Even when disease crippled him, he continued to enjoy a smaller space. He watered his plants and looked after them until he could not and then he had us do it for him. 

The contented look on his face on returning home was enough for us always. This was his kingdom; his place where he felt confident and relaxed all at once. 

His greatest joy was in his daughters. He loved singing in the Church Choir at Orleans United Church and being Treasurer while the Church was being built. He loved helping to build the Church physically and being part of that. But it grew so very large and he felt less at home there. Although Dominion Chalmers was much larger the minister there was a Early Old Testament Scholar and a chance mention of a lecture in the Church Bulletin at OUC brought us to Dominion Chalmers back in the 90s. I think it rekindled his spirit at a time when his brother was very ill and his mother was in her 90s. We were soon attending every week choosing anonymity (my preferred state) to Church in our community. He found the sermons/lectures (for they truly were) to be uplifting at a time when he needed that kind of direction. When that minister retired we went to Christ Church Cathedral (my Anglican Church) and have been there ever since. We were mostly anonymous singing and praying on our own and he enjoying the wonderful choirs there. 

But genealogy started to dominate his life and the Ottawa Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society was quickly garnering up his attention. He went to his first meeting with his cousin Gordon Riddle way back in the early 1980s. They shared a common interest in their family history. Gradually genealogy consumed him and occupied all of his time from the day he retired to the end of his life. But the journey was magnificent for him and he enjoyed every step of the way on the path to his ancestors. The distances traveled were huge and the number of repositories visited still stun me as we moved from place to place moving backwards in time to the 1620s and 1630s when his people came to the American Colonies.