End of May and 7 degrees celsius

Edward was always saying that spring is definitely changing these days. We almost always have frost warnings at the end of May and into early June. I need to buy the bedding plants today and get that started. We have the glass table out now that we set the plants on until we can safely plant them.  

Managed to get cherry tomatoes (7 plants) and 8 green pepper plants. Worked up the two beds that they are going into and soaked them well. I will plant them this evening likely. Since I am selling this house in a couple of months I decided to do a little planting. Mostly I have just maintained what Ed had in his garden these last ten years. He did add in new plants especially as the Black Walnut Tree dominated the yard and what he had planted under that tree could not survive. 

I still need to get some flowers for the main garden. It is too overshadowed by the Black Walnut to really grow anything. I have a row of gladiolus bulb to put in. I will buy perhaps another couple of sets of flowers along with sunflower seeds if I ever find any. One sunflower plant has come up from last year and it is a bushy sunflower so will take up a good portion of the space that it is occupying behind the house where I am also planting the cherry tomato plants. Good sun there and not dominated yet by the Black Walnut. If it is shade that a person is looking for this yard has an abundance of it now with the large maple at the back and the cedar hedge which pretty much cuts out any noise of traffic. Along with the large section of raspberries (which are very edible and tasty) it is quite quiet at the top of the yard. The elderberry bushes also absorb a lot of traffic noise I suspect. 

Where the garden is would make a good spot for a large pool. This yard is enormous. You would have good sun in the morning and then shade during the warm afternoon so quite pleasant out there. I am not an outdoors person in terms of a backyard so it is pretty wasted on me for sure. I do enjoy the outdoors for all sorts of things like bird watching, boating, swimming but just to sit in the backyard not really my thing. 

Edward was disappointed when the Black Walnut emerged out of what was an entanglement of flowers and weeds next door. He mentioned to the then owner that it wasn't a very friendly tree for a garden but the neighbour didn't care. I suggested we think about moving way back then into a smaller place but Ed really enjoyed this house. His office was huge and full of all of his books plus he had books everywhere else! There was a time when the route to his desk was pretty narrow but gradually he moved it into other places including the closet of the room where I work which is stacked high with more of his notes, binders and such. 

As the boxing up of the books continues apace and I can see the end of all of that with boxes disappearing and huge bookcases going, I can now see that I could think about selling. Before there was just too much in the house to even think about that beyond knowing that I could not manage all of this. 

There is still so much to do and that does keep my mind off of grieving Edward these days. I have arranged plants around his urn in a special spot and can visit with him during the day whenever I want. I still do not know exactly what I will do in terms of internment. He liked Beechwood and I have looked into that. But if I move away from Ottawa (which is going to happen) then how would I visit him. How does one choose really? He was meant to outlive me in my mind so there is confusion in all of that for me. I grew up in southwestern Ontario although do not intend to live there either. His choice was Beechwood and we had investigated that a few years back before he knew that he was unwell. After he was not well he did not wish to talk about it. Although I didn't actually raise the topic at all. I was just going on what he had worked on with the Funeral/Burial people at Beechwood. I really did not have an opinion at the time and took very little part in the discussion. He choose a spot for the burial and then at the last moment decided not to do that. When I think about it I prefer a columbarium burial so would do that. I bought the wrong kind of urn so would have to buy a double urn to go into the columbarium. But I am not likely to be living in Ottawa unless I live to this ancient age when my children decide to retire here because Ottawa is their home. They love it here and actually I like Ottawa as well but not enough to live here where I am on my own. I also do not want to live in a retirement home particularly although would have moved to one with Ed as he was looking into that. The problem was he required too much care to live in a retirement home so he would have had to have long term care but I am still quite able to manage on my own if I want and would not move to a Retirement home on my own. The walking about the grounds might be interesting but I would be in a strange neighbourhood probably and my eyesight limits my ability and that will become more so in the next few years as my cataracts are developing. 

It is a conundrum that I am facing as I try to figure everything out.

Church today and it is a bright beautiful day

Church today on You-Tube and I look forward to that as always. Last week the service suddenly disconnected but I had my bulletin so just finished it myself. Not quite as meaningful as worshiping with my service but still worshiping which is important. 

The end of May and still no rain. Perhaps in early June we will get a good rain so I can cultivate the gardens. I always wonder what would Ed say. To water or not to water. Usually he didn't water until you had to do that; just spot watering when plants were lying flat on the ground. 

One set all packed up

One set of Ed's books are all packed up now - 8 boxes for the Maniwaki Reserve. He had already given them the bulk of his National Geographic books but this is the remainder including a number of large atlases which give a nice history over time of how the world looked. 

On to the next set - OGS - to complete and it is going to be 40+ boxes. We are getting towards the last five bookcases. We are also packing up his United Empire Loyalist books not yet boxed up and given away and noted that they are these books plus books for the Friends of the Archives of the City of Ottawa. Ed loved to read novels and there are boxes of them for their sale. 

He would be pleased to see his books used once again for their intent - family research. He would also like to see his novels enjoyed by others. The three of us, my daughters and I, tend not to read many novels. I seldom read fiction myself.

Daily Bible Reading - Psalm 86

David's prayers are beautiful and Psalm 86 is an exceptional one.

Psalm 86

 Please listen, Lord,
and answer my prayer!
   I am poor and helpless.
Protect me and save me
   because you are my God.
I am your faithful servant,
   and I trust you.
Be kind to me!
   I pray to you all day.
Make my heart glad!
I serve you,
   and my prayer is sincere.
You willingly forgive,
and your love is always there
   for those who pray to you.
Please listen, Lord!
   Answer my prayer for help.
When I am in trouble, I pray,
   knowing you will listen.

 

 

Ottawa Race Weekend

My daughters and I usually take part in the Ottawa Race Weekend. This year is no exception except we are all running in our own space and recording our time. There is an app that you can use but I can record it all with my Fit Bit so will just use their second choice. We have started our timing though and will run for five days and use our best time. This is a treat for a runner actually to be able to choose the time that you want to stand for the year! So far my best time for the 5K is 35 minutes and I think I can bring that down just a little. Not too bad for a 75 year old nearly 76 year old. Running has been in my blood as long as I can remember. I love to run and feel the wind through my hair. One of my favourite movies is "I run for my maker." There is something wonderful about doing things because of God and for God. God is always with us through all the trials and tribulations of life and in the joyful times. I try to make sure that I remember him whether I am sad or happy. 

Approaching June and I feel that by the end of June that all the books will be sorted, listed and passed on. The huge bookcases which have housed some of this collection will be donated or given away and also not in the house. They are huge (7.5 feet tall) and literally I felt surrounded by so many bookcases. We counted and still have 42 bookcases in this house and some of them are already gone so there were actually more. I have lost count through the years. Books kept coming in and being housed! When the large bookcases go we will be down to around 15 bookcases and I will eliminate more of them before we actually move. I grew up in a house dominated by books everywhere and there was always something to read on a rainy day if I hadn't been to the library and acquired even more books to read! But the hard cover book takes up a lot of space and so much is online now a days although there is a pleasant feeling to curling up in a comfortable chair with a solid book and whiling away an hour or two. 

Gradually things are coming together but still more to do. Listing the house eventually and then selling it, finishing the packing up and moving. Then buying another small house with emphasis on the small. I am looking forward to that change and the rest that will come with it. Still busy in physical activities but the mind will have a chance to recuperate. My nervous disorder is still dominating my health and wearing me down. Will be glad to have things in order once again and meditate myself back into a more peaceful existence.

I feel as if I have been asleep for 25 years

There are moments when I feel as if I have been asleep for 25 years. I went to work outside the home in 1994 after having proofread/copyedited for private printers for about 10 years and before that for the NRC Research Journals for a couple of years (we were laid off by the then Conservative Government). Working at home was marvelous. I loved every minute of it actually. Go into work; pick up my work and then work at home with my then toddler daughter. She loved to sit beside me and work. We had this wonderful work/ play arrangement that made our days a lot of fun and a lot of accomplishment. For the most part we were undisturbed except when we had to stand in line at the bank for Church needs as my husband was treasurer or go into the Church on some business or another. Occasionally I got a call to babysit from my husband's cousin and that threw our day off of course but I felt it was my duty to help out since he was my husband's cousin. 

But back to the idea of being asleep. When I went to work at the Medical School and later the Ottawa Hospital I stopped doing everything outside of that pretty much. I just worked and then came home and cleaned. That was my life and I actually really enjoyed it. We started going to Dominion Chalmers Church and I loved those sermons from the old Testament Scholar and then when he retired we moved on to Christ Church Cathedral eventually. We had been going to Orleans United for about twenty years before that where Ed had very much enjoyed singing in the Choir and Treasurer for about ten of those years. Ed pretty much took over seeing the girls off to school every day and he was home before me as the larger part of my time was spent at the Civic Campus on the other side of Ottawa. It was blissful and exactly what my psychiatrist had mentioned to me all those years ago. Live a life that is fairly quiet; I was doing that for the most part in as much as I was able those days. 

So I continued and Ed decided to retire in 2004 and that actually worked really well and I retired in late 2007. Then home quietly slipping into this quaint new field of DNA genealogy that I had embarked on. Ed had pretty much taken over meal planning, grocery buying and he had always managed his own finances and I had managed mine. The years slipped by until he took ill in 2011 and acquired a pacemaker. That was a bit of a warning for me but I did not particularly heed it. Edward loved managing and so he continued to do so and I lived in my little cocoon of my own making (and which he really encouraged to be honest; he liked a quiet wife at home) from which I did not really start to emerge until 2017 when he took on Treasurer of OGS Conference 2017. It was a lot of work and I did help him with that by doing the actual book keeping portion of it. Still in my cocoon though not really interacting with anyone unless I absolutely needed to do so. His health though had been a concern but he was managing very well and we were still traveling about although mostly in Canada after 2016. 

Then COVID-19 struck and suddenly Ed was needing more care and I just managed as he needed more and more help and 2020 passed by the end of which he was a full time invalid and I had become a full time driver and 100% helper to him. 

Today when I woke up I thought about all that has happened in the last six months since Ed had cellulitis and was in the Montfort for five days in early December. He recovered but in retrospect I can see the steady decline which I couldn't see at the time as I was too close to him. Now I am sorting things out and it is a very slow process and an expensive process for sure. At 75 one does need help to manage all of this for sure. Living in a cocoon for twenty five years may have been good for my mental health but coming out is a shock. I will be glad to slip back into it when everything is sorted. 

Church on You-Tube at Christ Church Cathedral Sunday mornings helps to steady me for the week. The Daily Bible Reading in my inbox every morning starts out my day with the word of God helping me to see my path. I still try to live in that cocoon but life does reach in on occasion.

Rewriting Will

I needed to rewrite my will and that task was completed yesterday. It is good to have it done. We wrote our wills in 1998 so they were pretty ancient in terms of our lives spent by 2021. Now just my burial preparations and Eds actual internment to do. I have given myself another month to work on that. He had his thoughts and we had investigated a few years ago but did not follow through on it. But that was good as I know his wishes although they did change over the last couple of years. I will try to do a lot of them but at the end of it all he had not made any final decisions so that will be up to me. 

Rain today hopefully. We had a little yesterday but need more than that so that I can cultivate the flower beds. I do not like to bring the wet earth up to the top since it is still nourishing the plants from the winter snows.

Will it rain today?

 Definitely needing that rain and hopefully it will rain today. Picking up bedding plants hopefully cherry tomatoes, green peppers, romaine lettuce, cucumbers and dutch onion sets, sunflower seeds. Will plant the tomatoes as that bed is ready. Will wait a few days to do the peppers as we must set up a fence around them or the rabbits will eat the tiny plants! Ed would tell me that and having done a lot of the planting for the last ten years it is embedded in my memory. Perhaps the last garden that I will plant; we will see whether I grow a garden at the next house or whether there will be gardening room. I am not a gardener for sure but my daughter enjoys it. Actually both of my daughters enjoy gardening. They are like their Dad. Both of them look like his family more than mine although I get the occasional glimpse that reminds me of my family.

Support Fences around large plants

Today I put together the fence panels that support the large plants. It is nice to do that but I would never have thought of doing that to be honest. Ed loved gardening and he was really good at it. Our place always looked beautiful. Flowering plants and vegetables from late March to late October of one kind or another. Before the pacemaker he mostly did it himself except I helped with anything heavy like moving earth or working up small patches which the rotatiller was not practical to run in. I had forgotten that actually but in my trip through memory lane I came across pictures of me doing that way back in 2005 and on. After he took ill at the end of 2010 I did all the gardening for a bit with his instructions. Then in 2013 after the pacemaker was inserted he started to do some of the gardening again. By 2015 I would say that we worked equally together with me still moving most of the earth that we bought and cultivating the gardens with hand cultivators. I do not run rotatillers - I am not strong enough for that although my daughter did do that when she came to spend time with us in the summer while she was doing her research. 

I have finally reached a point where I do not cry so much and rather celebrate that I am able to make the place look a little like he did which he can smile down on and enjoy. I will never be a gardener though and when I move and buy a new place it will have a lot of grass for sure.  Mostly I will live with my daughters but for one daughter that is just part of the year when she is here doing her research and we will have the house for those times and if I happen to want to do some quiet research sometimes or work on newsletters then I can go and spend some time working away at that. 

Hopefully it will pour with rain one of these days. Definitely we could use rain; everything is getting dried up. I haven't cultivated the flower beds yet as I do not want to draw the moist soil below the dry earth up and dry it up faster. 

I probably published the last memory pictures of Edward. I have thousands and thousands of pictures from our 54 and a half years together actually but I was wanting to produce a set of memory blogs to put together in a file and at the moment I have completed it.

Pentecost Sunday

Pentecost Sunday Bible Reading from Acts 2 - The coming of the Holy Spirit

One of my most favourite Sundays in the Church Year is Pentecost.

 When the last days come,
I will give my Spirit
   to everyone.
Your sons and daughters
   will prophesy.
Your young men
   will see visions,
and your old men
   will have dreams.
In those days I will give
   my Spirit to my servants,
both men and women,
   and they will prophesy.

To Edward from his family; we love you for ever. 

Church at 10:30 today on You-Tube.

Edward and I on our Wedding Day

 I always loved this picture. Ed didn't as much because you couldn't see me in it but I liked it because it was all about him. His big smile as I brushed confetti off of his face. We were married in my childhood Church but I had already told him that I would go to whichever Church he wanted as a family. I love being Anglican but that is a part of my very being. Worshiping God is the important part and it doesn't matter which Church you attend as a family so long as you are all together. 

 

 

Rain hopefully today

Today I am only thinking about rain really. I would like it to rain. Then I can go out and work up the garden beds. If I do it before rain then I am just mixing that lovely wet earth just below the surface with the dry on top. Right now the roots are deep into that wet earth and I need to leave it that way. I do not want to start watering yet and learned that from Edward. Wait until you have to water he would always say. Nature will give you the clues. He was so knowledgeable about so many things natural Edward. He was a comfort to be around and I will always miss him for his thoughtful comments. I keep trying to keep them in mind when I am working through a problem. Usually I can remember the answer. He talked a lot; I listened a lot. He liked to explain the why of everything; that was his way. 

Life is a process; you can not necessarily see it when you are young; you are just growing and the mind is developing. But when you are old and look back you can see that education never ends. The education system captures us for a while when we are young just to standardize everything so that people know the rules to follow. Most learn them very well which is good because a free society depends on people obeying the rules. 

Washing today and finishing off cleaning the basement. Almost everything done in time this week. 

Edward Kipp at the National Research Council

 

 

 

 An interesting find in our reviewing all of Edward's notes. This is an excellent picture of him in 1999/2000. He loved working at NRC in CISTI. He probably would have also liked to have continued with his Research in Inorganic Chemistry but Edward was flexible in that regard; he preferred to have a job and this one was available. He certainly had a lot of degrees with his HBSc, PhD, MLS and he also did a two year postdoc in Chemical Engineering (Environmental) before he headed off to CISTI. While he was doing the postdoc his research in the library showed him that he could contribute to science in more than one way and so he pursued his Masters in Library Science. He worked for nearly thirty years at NRC and for maybe fifteen or more of those years he biked to work and back every day except in the winter when he walked out to the bus stop and took the bus in. 

When he started to talk about retiring I supported him in his idea. I knew that he wanted to get into his genealogy and that first year of retirement we took a course at NEHGS in Boston where Gary Boyd Roberts looked at his work thus far which he had done from afar and quickly recognized that Ed's ancestors had been very early to the American Colonies and directed him towards records that helped to link his people back to these founding families. That support (and we attended a number of these courses through the years) combined with his own research provided him with a huge family tree that he has built and enjoyed the seventeen years of his retirement.

Watershed moments

 In our lives are many watershed moments but I think the biggest other than the birth of our children might just be marriage and if your husband dies before you then widowhood. One must struggle to become one person again and having married at 20 when I was still living at home with my family this change at 75 sometimes seems impossible to make. There is just so much to handle that you do not really want to do. 

Breaking up Ed's library has been a struggle for me but my daughter is very organized and we are well into that and he would want people to be able to use all of these books to help them as they helped him. He enjoyed every one of them as they took him on his trips back through time. Not only in a written way but we actually went to these many places that his people lived in and visited the Churches, the graveyards where many times grandparents were buried with stones still lovingly cared for even after several hundred years. Attending local American conferences he often met 5th, 6th etc cousins who have never moved from that area. He was thrilled at what he found and each passing year of his retirement he found more. We were getting into the really distant ancestors and finding details became more and more difficult but we haunted all those old record offices and kept finding them. 

But as his health declined the trips were harder for him but he pushed himself anyway and we walked through so many graveyards looking for particular stones. Many times people had noted the latitude and longitude and with our GPS we found them. Modern inventions have certainly made genealogy a lot easier. Sometimes I dream that his spirit is visiting all of these places he still wanted to look at and it is comforting. God be with you Edward always and I know your spirit continues with me to the end of my days. That spirit of adventure and thrill at discovery which you had in abundance. 

The process though of dismantling everything that he put together is so very hard. Everything organized by shelf into areas for rapid consultation. If anyone called him he could immediately bring out the books that he needed to carry on that conversation. He sent information to so many cousins through the years. It is that material that he accumulated in family folders that I need to scan and share. Some of it I will put up on his website which will continue as my daughter will manage it later. Some of it I will offer to people with whom he particularly corresponded. It will take me a while but I am starting to see my research time ahead of me now and part of each day I will devote to working on his boxes. 

Coming in to genealogy late I am pretty much entirely electronic. I will again give some of my books to the OGS library as well that I no longer look at. I scan what I want and then I can have it all online. I have one large plastic bin of records that I mostly purchased or bought scanned but eventually along with my collection of  fiche I will give it all to the Anglican archives if they still want them. They are mostly parish registers or other documents that pertain to the parish system. 

Edward Kipp 17 years of age

 Edward's last high school picture. He looks confident and pretty much he looks like he did when I first met him. 

I was in the Physical Chemistry lab (a year behind him) when he asked me if I could watch his sample in the kiln. I said sure no problem. When he came back, fortunately it was still in good shape, he asked if I would like to go ice skating and I said yes. There was an outdoor rink near my house (actually at the high school which I had attended) and he thought he might like to do that. My parents would not have let me go out with someone that they hadn't met although I didn't say that. Perhaps he guessed it. When he arrived all of my siblings were there except my older sister who was already married and at that point I had not told him that I had six siblings! He was thrilled to meet all of them and they became good friends. 

 

 

Match at Ancestry for Edward

Sometimes it is very sad to encounter something and that happened to me today when I found a reply to one of Ed's letters on Ancestry to a cousin which he sent in early 2019 before the lockdown. She was responding two years later. He would have loved to have read that note and I do believe he knows. I will eventually answer it but not yet. I am still not yet up to responding to people other than my family. The number of Condolence cards continues to grow as Edward knew so many people. It is very kind of people to do that and I will thank each and every one in the future after we have our Memorial Service for Edward. I will make a book of all the cards. The Memorial Service will be just close family and in the mid-summer providing that we are permitted to do so. Otherwise it will just be his very close nuclear family. I need to add his death date to his tree on Ancestry and have not yet done that. I will.

He loved receiving notes from his cousins; he often shared them with me and you could see the glow that they gave to him. With his mother and brother both gone we were his close family other than his brother's daughters who do not live in this area. Going back and visiting with cousins was a delight to him and we started doing that I think after his pacemaker was inserted. That was his warning I guess that life can offer changes that we need to pay attention to in order to do all the things that we most want to do. He did take it that way and we traveled the highways back and forth time and again as he visited with people he knew as a child and renewed old friendships. 

He is gone from us in the living but still deeply ingrained in our hearts and minds as we plod on forward without him. I have things that I need to do and somehow I manage to get them done or into process. There is a process for everything really and I have a number of things that are ongoing at the moment and which will come to fruition over the next couple of months. 

The Tower of Babel - Daily Bible Reading - Genesis 11: 1-9

 Genesis 11: 8

But when the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower, he said:

These people are working together because they all speak the same language. This is just the beginning. Soon they will be able to do anything they want. Come on! Let’s go down and confuse them by making them speak different languages—then they won’t be able to understand each other.

I always saw this as "collapsing inward" and that a people/nation that collapses inward can not survive. Fresh blood is always needed to enrich a society and make it all the more productive. The Bible, many parts of it, was written in a bygone age but many of its passages continue to be relevant and timely as we pass through life. 

For myself I love to have a Bible Reading in my mailbox every morning. Reading the Bible from cover to cover is something that I did as a child and it was wondrous to do that. I loved all the stories and probably did not truly understand all that I was reading but it gave me a familiarity with the Bible that is my constant friend and companion through life. My husband and I did talk about the Bible. We had different concepts of religion and I understood his, my mother was raised in the Methodist Church (later United Church) and some of her thinking continued to be in that tradition even after she decided to be confirmed in the Anglican Church of her ancestors. My mother's mother was raised Anglican as well although my mother's father's parents did attend the Methodist Church as well as the Anglican so he was raised in a mixed religion household. But Edward did not understand Anglicanism; too rigid perhaps and too much symbolism with which he was not comfortable. I always respected that and did not expect him to attend my church. I also agreed to take our children to his Church but must admit honestly that they were really closet Anglicans because their daily life included my teaching them their Catechism and singing hymns in the Anglican tradition and praying daily. Since I was home with them that was just part of my natural day which tended to be full of hymn singing and prayer which they enjoyed. 

But back to the story of Babel. What did it all mean? This is my interpretation. Seeing that mankind was about to circle the wagons and cling together God knew that the survival of man depended on his ingenuity and sense of wonder at what was in the world around him (I still tend to use the male terms to express humankind and probably always will). Man and woman had to go out and discover this world of ours; populate it and develop it in a sustainable way for the care of future generations. I do not think it meant anymore than that. Clustering people together generation after generation does not work well and we have a tragedy unfolding in front of us in the Middle East because of that. The more fluid borders become and the more transitory people become the greater likelihood of good coming to the world. Canada and the United States are an example of people coming together and building two great nations full of enterprising people who have produced many of the great inventions of the past couple of centuries. Most of these people came as immigrants to this hemisphere. Not everything has been good because people start to form tight groups that lock others out and demand surrender of personal liberties in order to control and wreck havoc on a system that doesn't support their outlandishness like the attack on the Capitol in the United States. 

So that is my interpretation of Babel; I love that story because it shows a very caring God who actually wanted us to be successful and to care for the land he gave us.

Edward Kipp 16 years of age

 This is the order that he had the pictures in so have used that in these blog posts. His cousins were amazed he still had all these pictures from his high school days. He was on a path though and they remembered that as well. He was going to the University of Western Ontario to study science. Initially he debated between Geology and Chemistry but Chemistry won out by the end of first year. 

 

 

 

 

Edward Kipp 15 years of age

 Still at Paris District High School and again his cousins shared his recollections of their High School. They loved to chat about that when we visited with them.  

He still looked mostly the same when I met him at University. He had bright blue eyes though and this picture doesn't show that. About the right colour for his hair though. He loved going to University and did well there.

 

 

Edward Kipp 14 years of age

 Edward in High School and he looks very happy. He is on his way to fulfilling his dream of going to University. This is what he looked like in his cousin's memory. He had such fun meeting with them all those years later.

 

 

Edward Kipp 12 years of age

 Edward certainly looks happy in this picture. I always think it was his last year of childhood because he started to work in the summers when he was just 13 years of age. At this time he would go to his grandfather's home at Woodbury and help to chop and stack wood for the winter in his summers. He enjoyed it but I expect it was a lot of work for him. But he was a tall strong boy even at this age so probably a good workout for him as he was not into sports very much. He liked playing tennis but running or other team sports did not interest him. Interesting in later life he did need a pacemaker. When we were first married he did try running with me as I used to run a kilometer first thing in the morning after breakfast before heading to work. He found he just could not keep up the running even with us doing a low key approach with run five and walk five. So instead I gave up running in the morning and we walked to work which was about 2 miles; that he could do easily.  Instead I ran in the late afternoon!

 

 I never could get him to have a yearly physical even with my family doctor from childhood. Not sure why he didn't want to do that. When we moved here the local pharmacist recommended a suite of doctors to me when I was in to the Medical Centre looking to see if there were any doctors looking for patients in the building  the suite had several doctors but the receptionist for the doctor that we later attended said that since we spoke English we might like to have that doctor as the other doctor was French speaking; it actually didn't matter to me as I  could understand French although my spoken was somewhat broken. That doctor turned out to be Edward's third cousin (he told me that they shared 2x great grandparents) and I must admit to being rather hopeful that he might persuade Edward to have a yearly physical. He was pretty healthy but there were a couple of issues that I had noted and wondered about. He did indeed persuade Edward to have that yearly physical but in our 30s nothing was really showing up that could have warned us about the years ahead.  Fortunately Edward loved to garden, walk, bicycle, canoe, and lift weights which stood him in good stead for many years.

Church on You-Tube

The singing was wonderful at Church yesterday. Three old hymns that I particularly love to sing and the sermon was particularly fulfilling. I was missing going to Church before You-Tube brought my Church into my living room. I love going to Christ Church Cathedral and I have been going there almost as long as I attended my childhood Church which was just around the corner from where we lived. I was married from my childhood Church but our children were baptized in the Churches that we were attending at the time. I used to go back Sunday morning early when we still lived in the area and go to Church with my father as he always attended early morning communion but I didn't go every week as Ed and I did attend Church near where we lived in London. We also attended a small country Church (Church of the Hosannas Anglican) at Hyde Park for a while after we moved to Komoka and our oldest child was baptized there. When we first married we went to Metropolitan United and sometimes St Paul's Cathedral but he really liked Metropolitan United so we went there mostly. I could always go to early morning Eucharist with my father or on my own to the Cathedral.

Donating Medical Items

 CCAC contacted me about a week after Edward died on the telephone. The telephone is not my preferred mode of conversation; never really has been. When email was invented I discovered, with my family's help, that I loved email. I think they always regretted introducing me to email! I loved to just write it down and then send it. I preferred to hear back by email so that I could think about what was being said to me. The telephone call was well meant but the email that I requested was so much more valuable except it was all telephone numbers. I finally wrote back to see if there was an email that I could use for contact. There was and I wrote. The individual on the receiving end had all the information. Now I wait to see if the offer of all the medical supplies to be donated will place these items that at the end served Edward so well can help another. Barely used some of them, hardly used for the rest. The last year passed so quickly in retrospect, the hard parts are receding, yet it was an entire year of smiles, laughter and talking which I shall cherish to the end of my days. 

Is there a path through mourning, I begin to wonder that. No markers to show the way; one just stumbles along. God features strongly in that mourning path; he is forever ahead of me and helping to lead me down that path that one who mourns always must pass through. 

Edward Kipp 10 years of age

Ten years of age now and Edward would have been in Grade 6. I do not remember the name of his teacher at this grade level. He liked school; loved science. He was heading that way already from listening to him talk when I knew him at 22 years of age. We were both so young. We loved to wander in our noon hours around Medway Creek looking at all the plants that abound in the woods around Western University. 

 

 

We just had fun. We always had fun until that last year. We laughed together. 

Putting one-name studies on hold

For about six weeks my one-studies Blake and Pincombe will be on hold while I continue to work along this path. I would like to continue and hope to be able to do so.

Edward Kipp 7 years of age

 Another school  picture and still at Princeton Public School. He loved going to school and was especially fond of the teacher he had for Grades 1-3. Meeting her years later you could still see the strong relationship between teacher and pupil. She was excited to learn what he was doing and he was thrilled to tell her how life was going for him. 

 

 

Spiritually speaking I know that Edward is with God

I know that Edward is with God. I have prayed and prayed that would be so and I just feel that God will take care of him now. The other night I awoke to a bell ringing. We had a bell close by Edward at all times and he would ring it if he needed us. If we didn't hear it the first time he would ring it again. This time the bell only rang once and I believe that God answered him and he no longer needs us. As much as we would still like him to be with us his body finally could not maintain his bright and active mind. He belongs to the Spirit world now and knows and sees all things. It is our place in the heavens that awaits us one day but we must continue God's work on earth before our time comes. 

Jesus said " I go to prepare a place for you, in my Father's house there are many rooms." The pain of loss seems overwhelming at times but the open arms of Jesus await for all who turn to Him for his loving care as I try to move myself along that path that pays the most respect to Edward's life and how he would like me to proceed. His bright spirit will live on forever in our minds and the minds of those that love him. He was a formidable person who accomplished so many things in his life.

Edward Kipp 5 years of age

 Edward went to school a year early. He was five in April and went to Grade 1 in the fall of that year. His teacher, whom I met years later, said that he was so keen to learn and fitted quickly into the classroom (Grade 1-3) even though the other children were older than him. She was so happy that he did his PhD in Chemistry and then a MLS in Library Science. She just always felt he was going to do very well.

 

 

He looks very happy to be at school in this picture. Princeton Public School had four classrooms at that time, Grades 1-3, Grades 4-6, Grade 7 and Grade 8. These children then went on to Paris District High School although some went to Woodstock I think he said. 

Over one month old widow

Remembering my mother these days after she was widowed. My father had spent seven years in long term care so she was the same age as I am now when he went into long term care. She was 82 when she was widowed but had had the seven years to prepare herself for that change in her life. I think it might be the abruptness of my husband's passing even though I knew he was quite ill the last year. My father did not have a chronic illness; he had a stroke which incapacitated him and made it impossible for my mother to care for him. 

Just over the month since Edward passed away and the incredible loss is still very much with me. Analyzing it I can see that a lot of the loss is still that he did not do everything that he would have liked to do in his lifetime. I am sad for him because of that. He enjoyed life; approached every new event as something wondrous and exciting to pursue. I must admit we were alike in that respect. We liked to sit and look at each of our trips and review the possibilities of what we could also see if we just went for a walk here and there and we did it. I would make up an itinerary for each day of possibilities if we were into a hotel early. We didn't do happy hour or sit with people and chat we were out and about seeing everything that was possible to see and still stay within the guidelines of our planned day. 

I will miss that enthusiasm for life that he had; already do. Even in lock down we managed to come up with interesting things to do; to look at to create. In that way he was bright and alert to the end of his life. His body failed him though; I still weep thinking of how much we had to help him those last few months. He never complained; he just wanted to keep on thinking and doing what he could in the time available. 

I am in that state where widows reside for a while I rather think. My daughters constantly jolt me into the present which is good. But I am continuing my trip down memory lane as I find more and more of Ed's pictures and think about them each day in a blog. As we continue to box up his library to share with genealogists, we discover little bits of information tucked into a book that make us think of Ed all the while we are working away. 

We are in lock down now until the 2nd of June. Lots of time to get all of these books boxed up and then given away. He loved every volume. Each one of the family books opened doors and led him backwards in time to an absolutely fascinating ancestry all lost to time. 

I have all his DNA tests he did and the matches continue to pour in. Being from Colonial America he has so many matches. His DNA is really a permanent public memorial to him so long as these databases last and I have downloaded all of his results so really it is a permanent memorial for ever.

You will never be forgotten Edward; your family loves and misses you so much.

Edward Kipp at 8 with his grandfather Link

Another picture from his cousin's album and this time their mutual grandfather Link. Edward is said to be eight years of age in this picture according to the caption. This picture is taken at Woodbury where his grandfather lived. This would be 1951 approximately. This is the first time that I have seen Edward in a suit with short pants. My brothers dressed that way when they were young. 

 

 

His usual smile is missing so perhaps he didn't want his picture taken! He didn't remember this picture when he saw it in the fall of 2019. 

A cousin's collection of pictures revealed this treat for Edward

 There are so few pictures of Edward when he was a little boy still living on the farm. In 2019 in the Fall Ed had decided to do a three week trip down to southwestern Ontario and visit with his nieces, his cousins and then take a trip up to the Bruce Peninsula where we had spent many weekends years ago when we were first married. Then a slow meander back to Ottawa visiting places we had not seen in years. Unfortunately I had a fall and injured my knee almost at the beginning so we did cut the trip short somewhat but still did all the cousin visits. He reveled in seeing all of his cousins as we had not been for a year. One of them had a few pictures that he had not seen. 

 

 

This one with Allen and Ed riding between the two milk cans on the wagon is a treasure. A different day from the other two pictures from earlier, Edward is looking right at the camera.  Taking the job very seriously perhaps and he is holding onto the milk can. He was always serious Edward in everything that he undertook. Although these trips were something he wanted so much to do they exhausted him even with me doing a great deal of the driving. He was getting more used to my driving these days and tended to fall asleep which was good.

Graduation Day June 1966 HBSc

Edward on Graduation Day and this is after; he has his degree in his hand. He had been accepted into the PhD program in Inorganic Chemistry. We used to eat lunch together every day that year and then we would go for a walk around the campus and if there was time play a game of cards until our next classes. The amazing time of togetherness that we shared still plays brightly in my mind. 

 

 His mother was very proud of Edward on this day and he could feel that pride. From the little boy of six who talked about going to University to completion was an event that she viewed first hand and she gloried in it.

Christmas 1960

Edward's mother probably took this picture in December 1960. Edward is with his Grandfather Link, his brother Allen and Allen's wife to be June Brown (they were married 3 Feb 1961). Edward is 17 in this picture. His grandfather looks very well and he would be  83 years of age at this time. He did not live with them but had his own home at Woodbury (close to Princeton). His grandfather was a new widower as his second wife had died in September 1960.

 

 

Edward and his Grandfather Link

Edward adored his grandfather Link. They spent hours together in the summer when he was this age. His grandfather always hoped that Ed would achieve his goal of going to university.  He lived to see Ed complete his HBSc and be accepted into the PhD program and I actually met him although he passed away before our wedding which was a sadness for Edward at that time.

 

 

Edward, Allen and Emiko

Hilton Randall, Edward's first cousin from Texas has come to visit in Princeton with his wife Emiko. All of the Randall children served in the American military and Hilton was stationed in Japan after the war where he met and married Emiko. He thinks this picture was around 1958.

 

 Also with them is Ed's brother Allen. There was very little similarity between them actually with Ed taking after the Kipp family and Allen taking after the Link-Allen side of the family although I thought Ed's cousin Charles Schultz and Allen had some similarities.

The Link family of Horace Link, Edward's grandfather

Edward's grandfather's family. Horace Lorenzo Link is seated at the front two from the left with his second wife Lillian (Smith) (Davies) Link beside him on his left. I believe seated on Lillian's left is her daughter Dorothy Maud Davis with her husband George Frederick Hodgson. At the back in the middle is Edward and I think David Hodgson is to his left and the little girl to his right is perhaps his half Uncle Bill's daughter Judith Link. The far left standing is his Uncle Elton, his mother's brother and his wife Margaret. There is another small child beside the little girl perhaps her younger sister. That would make the date of the picture around 1956 and Edward would be 13 years of age. The other three people I am not sure about but likely it would be Edward's half uncle Bill Link and his wife Dorothy and Ed's mother is seated just below Ed and to his left.  We never talked about that picture other than to say it was his grandfather's family. 

 

 This picture is taken at Princeton on the front porch. Missing from the picture is Horace's other daughter Alma (Link) Randall who lived by this time in Texas with her husband and three children.

Moving forward with sorting

Gradually boxing up Ed's book collection for the OGS Library and there are also a few boxes for the UEL library. The novels can all go to Friends of the Archives of the City of Ottawa which is great for their book sale. I do not generally read fiction so nice to have someone else enjoy them. Then another collection of books for the Reserve Library which would really please Ed as he gave them most of the National Geographic Collection already (this is just the portion that he kept although meaning to eventually give all the rest to them). 

We have about 25 boxes packed now with another 25 boxes to fill. I expect we will use all of them plus there are seven boxes of runs of journals that he was a member of genealogical societies. I will still have about five boxes of my own books (already packed) and another fifteen boxes of Ed's research that will move with me. There are probably another ten boxes that I need to work on to submit to Library and Archives Canada as the Kipp Collection of material. 

I think I can see five years worth of work in what will be left but will do it slowly along with my own work once I am settled in once again. It will be sad to go as I will miss the house where my children grew up and where we lived for 43+ years. We were already married 12 years when we moved here.  God willing that I survive long enough to complete it all. 

Edward and the woodpile

 The little boy sitting on the woodpile has been replaced by Edward as an early teenager. He spent time at his grandfather's house in Woodbury chopping wood for their wood stove. He is proud of the stack that he has produced. Edward was a hard worker. Sometimes I think he worked too hard as a child but he never complained. He enjoyed his life with his mother and dreamed of going to university as a child. He was a good student in school and worked hard to get good grades.

 

 Like other children orphaned at this time, a lot of mothers raised their children on their own. I remember when he told me that his father had died when he was two. It was a sadness for him that he could not remember him at all.

I continue to grieve Edward

Part of my grieving for Edward is that I never expected to outlive him and so I grieve for the things he wanted to do and didn't get to do. As I get further into the process of becoming the widow of Edward and all that entails from a financial point of view the movement forward is a very slow one fraught with small difficulties. In my present nervous state, each of these difficulties looms magnified many times in my weakened brain. I know that Edward would have handled my passing so much easier and better. I am still floundering somewhat although more and more items are being completed or resolved. In the last couple of months Edward brought up some things that he felt I should know and I did listen. I did gradually take over the finances so that he didn't worry about any of that once he felt he couldn't do it anymore. It was a gradual transition but now we are into the big transition and I just do not really want it to happen. 

Once I sell the house and move to my daughter's house I will change again I expect. Surrounded by Edward everywhere; his imprint is on everything in this house, I have constant reminders of what was and that I would still like it to be.

Edward early teen years perhaps

 This picture of Edward may be at Woodbury. He thought that he remembered it from there. His huge smile for the picture taker is nice to see. His mother said he was a quiet child and studious. Keeping mostly to himself and they spent all of her non working time together. His brother was busy out and about with his friends and working.

 

 Edward did remember this time of his life as busy. He worked in the summers from the time he was thirteen years of age on tobacco farms and picking asparagus in the spring. 

Edward and Phyllis Kipp

 Edward and his mother were good friends. They were a lot alike so that they did clash on occasion but generally they got along very well. Ed is already taller than his mother and he thinks he was about ten or eleven in this picture.

 

Although he had an older brother (eight years older) when we talked about his story he always sounded lonely as a child. I found that somewhat heart wrenching as I grew up in a large family and lonely was not likely a term that I would have ever used for the busyness of our household as a child. Along with that his mother only had the money that she earned from working so their life was fairly controlled. I was always of the opinion that a man should spend his money the way that he wants as I always intended to return to the workforce. When he saw something he wanted I was always supportive of buying the item. As we downsize I must admit fewer items would now be nice and finding homes for some of them is difficult during a lockdown. 

In any marriage I guess it is good for one to be a minimalist and the other is then free to pursue their fancy.

Review of the past ten years medical events for Edward

Going over in my mind the history of Edward from the time he had his first passing out episode May 2 2011. The doctor (older than us) that we had at the time sent him to a cardiologist who said that he was aging (the cardiologist was quite elderly and suggested a return in three months). That summer I found I could not leave his side as I never knew if he was going to pass out. I was already helping him in the garden but now I was out there all the time that he was. 

He continued with dizzy spells when he got up from sitting at his desk and light headedness. I took over the driving full time. He was referred to a neurologist who found that there wasn't anything neurologically wrong but did check him out for epilepsy as his father had had grand mal epilepsy. Summer turned into Fall and around Christmas we discovered that he was allergic to a new drug that the neurologist tried. Took him to Montfort and they referred him to their cardiologist which took about six weeks. Now we were getting somewhere. He did a series of tests and the cardiologist then announced that he wanted to put him into the hospital. Ed wanted a week to get ready for that and so back the next week and he did some more tests and then into Emergency with him and he was in triple heart block. Two wire Pacemaker was put in on the third day in ICU at the Heart Institute and then back to Montfort again. He was up and about the next day and he came home. 

Back to the hospital cardiologist about three months later and everything was working perfectly. No more fainting spells but he still had the dizziness and lightheadness when he stood up. The cardiologist noted that the Chest XRay had shown a cloudiness in the lungs. Appointment with Dr Willis a respirologist about fourteen months later ((middle of 2014) takes time to get these appointments for just regular cases). He diagnosed sarcoidosis of the lungs at that very appointment and then told us we were one of his last patients as he was retiring that month. He said sarcoidosis is rare and that he had not seen that many cases but was very sure of his diagnosis and referred us on to another respirologist (2015). 

Ed was back to driving again which was nice as he hated my driving. The respirologist gave him puffers to use for his sarcoidosis. He still had the dizziness and lightheaded when he got up from his chair. The respirologist did some blood work that alarmed him and he recommended to our Family Doctor that Ed should have a liver ultrasound (fall of 2016). Ultrasound picked up possible cirrhosis. Into the Civic Campus for more scans and ultrasounds.

Referred to a gastroenterologist and that appointment was July of 2017. Continued seeing the gastroenterologist and in 2018 a liver biopsy was done which verified that the liver cirrhosis was secondary to sarcoidosis. Began treatment and it was working quite well. He continued with his walking at stores and the mall and his gardening which kept him up to a good level of fitness which is very necessary I think with this disease. Then COVID-19 hit and the lockdowns. It was very hard for him to convert to exercising at home and I shall always blame it for Ed's condition deteriorating as it did. 

We will always miss him. These last ten years were the saddest of our marriage for sure but also the busiest in terms of foreign travel which he loved. I could never watch a husband go through all of that again that is for sure. I shall dedicate my remaining years to my genealogical endeavours. Probably I never would have gotten so into genealogy without Edward but it took a very long time to persuade me to do it for sure (about thirty five years). He studied his family lines for over 54 years. That research gave him great joy and the Ontario Genealogical Society Ottawa Branch was a group that he loved belonging to. The first meeting he went to in the early 1980s was with his cousin Gordon Riddle. He had not attended the OGS in London, Ontario where we lived before coming here but Gordon persuaded him to go to that first meeting and he loved it.  

Certainly not comprehensive but overall is the picture that remains in my mind of Ed's medical history over the past ten years. Ed himself created a five page document listing all of his tests and all the doctors and conclusions.

Edward and his cats

 Another picture of Edward with his cats. He loved cats although we never owned one. Our only live being that didn't live in a fish tank or a cage was a rabbit. Peter the Rabbit lived with us for ten years and his love for the girls was legendary.

 

 I do not think my husband ever wanted the responsibility of animals really. It was I who bought the rabbit. The one thing Edward did say was that he did not want to have to look after the rabbit. As it turned out he retired three years before I did and he ended up enjoying Peter. They would sit together on the couch in the mornings and eat breakfast together. They were good friends. Before he retired the bunny did not really notice him in terms of sitting with him but after they were inseparable.

Thinking about Edward today

We sat and talked about Edward today. Remembering how much he was the centre of our lives (and still is) and moving on has proven to be difficult for us. But we keep busy doing all the things that he had suggested and taking back some of the life that we had before Edward became so very dependent on us for everything in his life. We know he is in a better place with his parents and grandparents and other relatives that he knew and loved. No more pain, no more exhaustion, no more unsteadiness and no more bandaging; it was a long illness for him but he managed very well to the end of his life with our help except for the final stay in the hospital. All of his other hospital stays were short and he was in and out again quickly. 

COVID-19 restrictions really did take him from us because he could not do his usual life style of getting out and about shopping and walking. He loved interacting with people and that too, except for us, was limited to Facebook where he had many friends and the telephone. I didn't realize how much he talked on the telephone, as our workrooms are apart and he tended to close the door when he talked on the telephone, until I was looking at the Zoomer Wireless Bill. I mostly texted so had almost no calls whereas he had 50, 60 even 100 a month (mind you some of those were incoming). He loved to talk to his cousins and did do that. I could never convince him to do all the exercise periods that I tend to do during the day. Although once into physio he did do those exercises but given how active he was before the restrictions they did not even come close to the activity level that he really needed. We used to shop in the morning for a couple of hours and then in the afternoon we would go for a walk at the local Mall for an hour.

We miss you Edward and always will. Every event in the future I know that I will think how much you would have enjoyed being there in person but I know in spirit you will always be with us.

Welcoming Sunday

Yesterday we worked hard in the yard for maybe an hour or two. Building up to it slowly as we raked the front lawn to let the grass breathe. Then digging the dandelions out although I am more for embracing the dandelion but it doesn't take much time to dig them out as we do not have very many. I took down the snow fence and put up the small garden fence that enclosed the end of the front garden. Still waiting for plants to emerge before working up the flower beds. Thinking about the bedding plants to buy and that will be in a couple of weeks. 

May travels quickly but today is Sunday and I will attend Church once again on YouTube. I may do that the rest of my life. Being able to tithe by PAR means I do not have to be there to give the money to God which is His. I can go to Church from anywhere in the world and fulfill the promise of worshiping together. I know that God is my Refuge in times of trouble and in happiness. Jesus is my constant friend through trial and tribulation and all the good times. God bless and keep Edward close to you.

Edward at Woodbury

We have a number of pictures of Ed and wood piles. At this age he stacked wood for his grandfather but eventually he would help with the cutting as well. He was a hardworking child and he liked to work with his hands. But by the age of six he was already saying he was going to go to University. I once asked him why he said that but he could not remember why but just that he wanted to go. His uncles had gone to University; one was a physician, another was a mill owner and the third was an accountant. His father had been a farmer. Due to having grand mal epilepsy he was home schooled his entire school career and going to University away from home was not likely an option. 

 

 

Huge smile on his face and he looks very content sitting on his grandfather's wood pile. We used to visit that farm (just drove by it on the highway) every time that we went to Princeton. After his grandfather and then uncle died we used to visit their graves in Burford Cemetery. The Kipp family was very large in that area.

Daily Bible Reading May 1, 2021 John 14: 1-14

 Jesus Is the Way to the Father

Jesus said to his disciples, “Don’t be worried! Have faith in God and have faith in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house. I wouldn’t tell you this, unless it was true. I am going there to prepare a place for each of you. After I have done this, I will come back and take you with me. Then we will be together. You know the way to where I am going.”

Thomas said, “Lord, we don’t even know where you are going! How can we know the way?”

“I am the way, the truth, and the life!” Jesus answered. “Without me, no one can go to the Father. If you had known me, you would have known the Father. But from now on, you do know him, and you have seen him.”

Jesus has been my constant friend throughout all my life. He continues to support me through this time of change. As I move forward awkwardly and without Edward, my soul mate, I can feel Jesus' strength urging me to keep going. There is still much to do and I have no idea how to do some of it. But the end of the first tunnel is my goal and then on to the second tunnel to continue. That is God's wish for us really to do the best that we can in our life until it is our turn to join the ages that have gone before us. I am still locked in my quiet life and will not likely move from that quietness until everything is settled around me and I move to the next phase of my life. Every time that I do interact with the rest of the world I am exhausted. Email is working well for me and I will continue to use that as my method of communication.

Edward and his Grandfather Link

 

One of Ed's very favourite people was his grandfather Link (his mother's father). He spent parts of his summer with his grandfather after he could bike to Woodbury which was about 2 kilometres from his home in Princeton. I met his grandfather shortly before we were married in September 1966. He was a very lovely person.

 

 Ed's mother had kept postcards and he continued on with this collection after he discovered it in her Hope Chest in 2000. There are now four books of postcards and I am trying to decide what to do with them. I think we will put them in the Hope Chest once again and I am hoping that one of his nieces will take the Hope Chest now. They grew up with Ed's mother in their lives every day and all of the items in that Hope Chest will have so much meaning for them. My girls loved their grandmother Kipp dearly but our time with her was visits only.