It’s Different This Time

Saturday August 30th was, I guess, the start of the long weekend for me. I had rolled into the Carolside Campground early Wednesday for what had turned out to be an arduous camping trip. A sudden heat wave took the outside daytime temperatures above 30C. Inside the trailer it was even hotter at 36C. Stepping outside didn’t provide much relief as the mosquitoes were off the hook. I was using repellent, but, being honest, I think they liked the taste of it. Paddling was challenging between wind and bugs. I picked up so many bites that seeing my back made me look like I had measles. The reservoir’s water was nasty gross with green algae. I had also worked remotely during the week under challenging conditions, which was exhausting.

All of which is to say that it wasn’t a tragedy when the trip was cut short early, except that it was. “You need to come now,” were the five words from my daughter that ended the lacklustre solo camping sojourn on Saturday morning. My ninety-three year old father-in-law, John, had started declining a couple days before but there was some hope he might rebound like he had before. Not this time. The word went out and the family started to gather. I packed up as fast as I could and headed for the farm, dumping the trailer in the yard in front of the old house.

We lost John early the next morning on Sunday the 31st and I’ve been at the farm ever since. The main reason for staying was that my mother-in-law, Faye, lost her husband of fifty-seven years and it’s a helluva thing to suddenly go from having your husband around to having him gone. They were both in the same long-term care together where she looked after him as his dementia progressed. I figured it might help if someone hung around after everyone else left and provided some company, such as it was. We played a lot of Cribbage.

Regarding Faye, I can tell you that she is far from having dementia. I’m a decent Crib player and she utterly laid waste to me over a two week period. I’m playing red above and, as you can see, I barely avoided getting double-skunked thanks to first count and a fishy hand. That woman is a menace with a deck of cards. The worst part was she was clearly enjoying it.

The last two weeks have been spent working remotely, taking a few days for bereavement, sneaking in one lacklustre paddling outing, and trying and failing to take photos. I was either working, cleaning, or visiting. There was barely any “me” time over these past weeks. Not complaining here, it’s just how things worked out. I did manage to get around the yard a couple of times with my mobile phone camera and I even got the drone in the air once.

It’s strange how the farm feels familiar and completely foreign at the same time with John’s passing. The man had an outgoing personality and was larger than life in many respects. He managed to remain a presence in my life even in his last years when overtaken by illness. He was there when he wasn’t, you know? He has been a constant for our family since I met my wife. Well, it’s different this time at the farm. You can feel John’s absence.

My daughter said to me while she was out here before the funeral, “I can’t believe Grandpa is gone.” I remarked that no one is truly gone while they are remembered, and I really believe this. I say it as a person who finds and shares memories. I won’t lay claim to being the person who makes most of the memories in my images, but I can certainly help save them for myself and to share with others.

At some point, as preteens, my wife and her younger brother scrawled their initials on a support post in the old barn. I found them while exploring the yard. She had forgotten about it, but now she sort of remembers. I bet their dad had a chuckle over it. So there’s a memory.

My wife also recalls the times her dad spent tooling around in his old workshop, pictured above. One of them, when he and her mom built a dog house out of the scraps left over from the construction of their new home, they forgot to measure the door and the dog house was too big to get out easily. I guess it took some fitting and squeezing, but they managed to get it out of the shop.

A lot of people remember how John often had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth until he didn’t. One day he made the decision to quit and he did. My wife remembers one, “just in case” pack of cigs floating around a drawer somewhere in the house that was eventually gifted to a friend who smoked and was in withdrawal because he had run out. The tobacco cans storing assorted nuts and bolts are another reminder of John before he butted out for the last time.

John was a skilled horseman for a large part of his life. One of the stories at his funeral was how, at age eleven, he helped drive cattle from the farm he and his parents lived on to the new farm they had purchased, where I’m sitting right now. That was a big job for a small kid, but that was John. Things most others couldn’t do he did with ease. If he couldn’t do it at first, he figured it out.

He used horses on the farm as part of his ranching until a serious incident when my wife was a teen. It nearly killed him. A horse that was not as tame as he was told bucked him into the air and he came down hard on the wrong part of the saddle, splitting his pelvis. It probably would have killed anyone else, but John had worked hard his entire life and was a walking muscle. His extreme level of fitness saved him there, and he was back farming again after, but not as fast as before. He was done with horses, however. The saddles and tack still hanging in the barn are a reminder of times past.

After graduation, John went to diesel school in Edmonton, AB, where he learned to fix nearly any issue with a garden variety diesel by eye and by ear. This was long before the more sophisticated diagnostic tools were common. He learned to use those later as well, as there are some more advanced items like a computerized tuner in one of the shops. He was a guy who could fix pretty much anything that burned gas or diesel or that was used to harvest a crop. There are reminders all over the farm of this.

While the sun has finally set on John himself, his farm is still here for now, if no longer in operation. His wife, Faye, is keeping it for the moment and family will continue to gather here with her for as long as we can. We hope that is for some time to come as she is thirteen years junior to her husband. John’s grandchildren will carry his memory and that of his farm forward for at least another generation.

John’s more enduring legacy is in the community he helped build. At one time he helped a local politician named Henry Krueger get projects funded in the region and people are still benefiting from this infrastructure. He aided with the planning of some local roads. The school in Altario is still there because John and Faye fought for it when others wouldn’t (but they were happy to take the credit for it after). When people around here run a furnace in the winter and there’s natural gas for it, that was John more than any other person who made this happen through getting the local gas co-op going. He was one of those rare people who made where he lived better.

So, yeah, it’s different without him now. It’s weird to be in the farmhouse alone without the parents around, and it’s quiet around the table without John’s regular tales about his days with Alberta Wheat Pool and the gas co-op or playing hockey when he was younger. It’s melancholy to drive past his fields and no crops are being harvested, and to see apples left unpicked in the yard. But, for now, there are photos – and memories – to be harvested while they are still ripe. That I can do for him.

All but one of the images came from my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. I didn’t intend to use it for all the shots, it’s just what I had with me when I could sneak a shot in. The aerial sunset image came from my DJI Mini 3 drone, of course. So much for packing four cameras for the outing.