A year ago today my Poppy went home to be
with the Lord. It some ways it doesn't feel that long, in other ways it
feels long, most of the time it doesn't feel like it happened, but all of the
time I miss him.
To give you a picture of who my Poppy was,
he was born in the late 20's in Newfoundland. He had 4 sisters and 1
brother and was the second oldest. He grew up in the Depression, and
started working at 12 years old. He worked on boats and trains and
finally ended up as an iron worker. He moved to Toronto in his late 20s,
went back to Newfoundland for a while when he met my Nanny and married her
within 6 months! He built their first home in Newfoundland (which still
exists) and moved to Ontario when my mom was 8 months old. They settled
in Whitby and my Pop worked in the Toronto area, helping to build such
buildings as the GM plant in Oshawa, the Sheraton in Toronto and the CN tower.
He was a home body, and always had to be doing things around the house or
little projects. He had a shed in the
back which he would be almost year round, as he got older at the first sign of
spring he would be out there doing something.
Although coming to the Faith later in life, his faith and commitment to
the Lord was always strong.
There are too many things that I missed
about my Poppy for me to even but I am going to try and give you a glimpse into
a few of the ones which come in my mind at this moment, as I reflect on this
anniversary.
I miss my Poppy’s baking and cooking. The one thing that you could always expect
when you went to my Nanny and Poppy's house was Pop's bread. Once a week
he would be up early making bread from scratch. I have so many memories
of getting up to help him make bread as a kid. I loved being able to help
him, getting to knead the bread, covering it up to raise, breaking it apart
into bread pans, waiting for it to raise again and then getting to bake it!
My favourite part was that Pop always made sure there was a bit of dough
left over to fry up to make tiffins.
As I got older, he always made a batch of
buns for me, which I loved to melt cheese on. He would always send us
home with whatever buns were left and a loaf of bread. It's been almost a year
since I last had Pop's bread, as he continued to make it until the end, although
smaller batches.
The other thing Pop was known for was his
pies. He would always have a pie made and ready for us when we came.
And he usually would cut into or put extra dough on the top of the crust
to put our initials on the top. His crust was always so good and I can
think of many many time were I helped him make pies, where he would be teaching
me little trick, which I have always used to make pies.
I think the hardest thing to get used to
is not having Pop's breakfasts when I go down to visit. Whenever I stayed
overnight, he would always make these large breakfasts for me, which included
eggs (cooked the way I wanted), my choice of bacon, ham or fried bologna or all
three, harsh browns, Pop's bread toasted, orange juice and slice of cheese.
As I got older, he would take my order the night before so that as soon
as I was up (which he could always hear me, even though he was half deaf), and
have it ready, or almost ready by the time I came downstairs.
Pop ALWAYS had a joke to be said to make
you laugh. Even though I heard most of them more than once (or two or
three times!), it was always funny because he had a way of telling them that
made you laugh.
He always loved to tell stories from his
life, some of them funny, or some of them now. My favourite one will
always be when he was working on the Bell building in Toronto
and electrocuted himself, blowing the electricity to the whole building
but surviving. A few months later, he's out with some other iron workers
after work, sharing stories, when one guys talked about this guy who was
working on the Bell building and blow the electricity for the whole building
and he wondered if that guy ever lived.
My Poppy just said “You’re looking at him” and they all laugh and the
guy telling the story, couldn’t believe it.
I miss this and all the other stories he used to tell.
My Poppy loved to work with his hands and
he NEVER threw away anything. His shed
is full of jars of old rusty nails and screws that “could be used for
something”. Which I’m still benefiting
from, as we found something in Pop’s shed that we needed to fix something on
our house. All I could do was laugh,
because even now, Pop is still giving us the things we need!
Poppy was so good at coming up with a
solution to fixing something, such as an old favourite purse of mine which one
of the straps had come off, he glued it together with plumbing glue and used
two pieces of dowel and a clamp to hold it in place until it dried. He was also good at just making something
that you wanted by telling him and/or giving him a picture, such as a necklace
holder, which after the first one he made for me, he ended up making a dozen
more for all the women in the family haha!
I always loved helping him build
things. There is a picture of him and I,
when I was 2 or 3 in our apartment in Lindsay, where he came up to put up some
shelves and I am there beside him holding the tape measure, measuring the
shelves with him. He made a few little
tools for me, like a little handle with sandpaper, or give me the smaller tools
and let me call them “mine”, so that I always had some as I went after him to
help. I think what makes me most happy
this now is that my husband has taken all his tools to use to make things
around the house, so every time I go into our garage I see Poppy’s tool and the
memories of use working together with them come flooding back.
I could continue to go on and on about the
things I miss, but I’ll end now with one last thing, and that is his love for
Christ. He came to Christ later on in
life, but from the time he gave his heart, he was full in. Pop never missed a Sunday to go to church,
until he got really sick. Pop could
always be seen reading his Bible, which he kept beside his chair. One of my favourite last memories was when I
spent a weekend with them just over two years ago, when I woke up early and
decided to go down to the living room to do my devotions. There was both my Nanny and Poppy doing their
devotions, so I sat down with them and shortly after, Pop finished reading and
got down on his knees to pray. This
wowed me as despite being sick and having bad knees, he still bowed down to
speak with his Lord.
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| Pop, you are never far from my heart or thoughts. |
