Remembering….
This month I turn 40 years old. I would be a damned fool if I didn’t stop for a moment and reflect on those years. I am probably a damned fool for choosing to share some of that reflection with you. But I will and here’s why.
Sharing my feelings through writing somehow crystallizes my thought, values and opinions. I feel more accountable to myself by doing so. Accountability, introspection, clarity, and catharsis are all personal goals of mine for the next 40 years. So I have chosen to share this story with you.
The catalyst moment
At the age of seven, a week into a new school year, a young boy will be vibrating with potential and vigour. In 1978, when I was seven, I am sure to have had equal parts of both. The middle child of three, ages six, seven and nine, I was lucky to have a gang of two siblings to share this time with.
Lisa, my older sister at nine years-old, Robert, my younger brother at six. This was my gang. The day was September 12th, 1978, and our gang was on the move.
Living in a low-rental townhouse complex on the east end of Grande Prairie, we had ready access to our bicycles, the open park just yards away, and a grocery store across a busy road. Freedom for a child-gang back then was abundant. Mothers had every reason to let their children roam. Playing outside was the preferred alternative to staying inside.
On that day, our gang was heading north to Eastside Grocery. Perhaps to buy cigarettes with the simply adequate parental note, or maybe to buy a $0.05 Mr. Freeze. Either way, it never happened.
On his bicycle, riding eastbound along the busy east-west thoroughfare, my brother Robert chose to cross the street into the path of an oncoming pickup truck.
Robert died the next day in an Edmonton hospital. Removed from life-support, an anguished decision, made by parents with really no other choice.
From there, an entire family crumbled.
As an eyewitness to this event, I am ashamed to admit that I really don’t remember much. I know that I ran home to tell my mother of the incident. I know that we were shuttled quickly to an aunt & uncles home nearby, shortly thereafter. But I really can’t recall the events surrounding this tragedy beyond the tangent recollection of the accident, and making the 200-yard sprint home to tell my mother what had happened.
Like a Family Circus comic, I could draw in my mind the dotted line of desperation I must have tracked from home to accident back to home. I have been able to do that for 33 years.
Up until yesterday, I felt quite satisfied to leave this memory alone. Frankly, I have excelled at burying it. But my 40-year self has decided to investigate the impact this event has had on me.
I spent yesterday afternoon in Grande Prairie, physically experiencing that day again. I visited the accident scene, my brother’s grave, and the library to find evidence of the accident from the newspaper of the next day. Below is an image, showing most certainly me, from the front-page of that paper.
I was moved by the image; surprisingly not for the horrifying content, as much as for the sense of curiosity I felt about seeing myself. What did that day DO to me, and my family?
I plan to write soon about what I think this day did to my family and me. You might be surprised to read that I think it changed me for the better.
Also, a 360 degree profile of that same location from yesterday.
To be continued…
Co-Founder of two beautiful daughters and 