Me and a couple of cousins

Getting back around to cleaning out the office a bit and thought I'd scan some more photos.  Just sharing four tonight.  If you're able to read the exif data from them, you'll get more context.

Me, waiting for Dad to get home from work.

A couple of my cousins that may choose to identify themselves.  They know who they are.

I'm the one in the snowsuit.

I don't have anything to say about this right now, just thought I'd share.

New Mission: Dad's Stuff Too

This started out being all about my mom and what happened leading up to her death and what I found afterward, going through her things.  I'm changing my objective a bit now, since I also have a huge amount of my dad's stuff to go through.  I think it's still keeping in the spirit of what I started to do after Mom died, sharing the memories that I found and hopefully getting some help from friends and family in putting together some of the pieces I'm missing.

So that said, I'll start off with an obvious bridge.  A photo I found in Dad's stuff dated February 14th, 1987.

I remember that trip to Charlottetown, there's even a photo of me from that session, but it's not been scanned in yet.  I may post it here when I scan it or I may not, maybe it just lands on G+ or Facebook one of these days.

Next are a couple of photos from a little later.  I'm guessing this is from 1990 or 1991, but this is where I need some help from family.  It was taken at my cousin Sheila's place (that painting in the background is now hanging at the bottom of the stairs leading into my bar and theatre).

Austin, Dad, Stella and Lila

And this looks like it was at my aunt Lila's place on King Street around Christmas, but I couldn't guess which Christmas, exactly.

Dad and Herb

This one was dated, September 1989:

Stella, Eileen, Dad, Lila and Austin

Three more from the same packet, undated, but I think they were probably during the same week or two:

 

And I'll end with a photo Dad took that he was always very pleased with.  He told me the lens flare in the upper-right quadrant looked like an angel to him.  That's all I've got for now.

Another Anniversary

Today is the first anniversary of my father's death and since I've been meaning to come back here for ages, I thought now might be a good time to do that.

Dad died on December 18th, 2013. I made it home in time to say goodbye, but just barely. I was at the hospital at 11:30pm on the 17th, he passed away sometime before 3am the next morning and by the time and any civilized human would call "morning" the first(?) of a seemingly endless series of snow-storms hit the island. There were many reasons why I couldn't have been late, and I knew it on the drive home and I think the boys knew it too, because at one and three years old, no one can be expected to take a thirteen hour drive in good humour, but they did.

That was not easy. What was worse was dealing with everything that came after. Once again Steven and Brenda stepped up and offered the kind of help that I couldn't ask for. I had family all offering to help too, of course, but going through the house and the garage and all of dad's old stuff, I don't think I could've done that with family, I needed someone who wasn't as invested to help me figure out what I really needed to keep and what could go.  I don't want anyone to think I didn't want or didn't appreciate the offers from all of my family, but I know if I'd had the people there who had been at all of our Christmas dinners and birthday parties while I was growing up and so on, I'd've been paralyzed by the memories.

Anyway, there were treasures we found while cleaning out Dad's place, too.  Here are two of them.

A photo of Mom I found in his garage, in a place where I'm sure he saw it all the time but nobody else would've.

And a photo of him.

More later.

Happy Birthday Mom (again)

Today we finished up our first War Amps CHAMPS seminar. I don't know what I really expected going in, but coming out I feel so much better than I expected it's difficult to believe. I had no idea how much support they would be able to offer us. It's really an incredible organization. There was a session on Saturday morning for parent counselling and while I didn't think I was particularly well adjusted to the whole thing -- and I'm not, I did see some of the areas for concern still there, so I've got something to work on -- I was really shocked at some of the stories they were able to share with us of the reactions some parents have.

Anyway, it wrapped up early today and it's been raining pretty well all morning, so I decided to take a bit of time on Mom's birthday to scan some more pictures and share them here. There's the one in the link, which is from about 1954 of her and her brother at the farm in Norboro (I think), but there's a few others in there I never expected. As you'll be able to see, the envelope was just a mix of her random photos that didn't fit anywhere else. One I'm pretty sure my dad gave her when he was first chasing her really speaks to the time.

The First Surprise

I hadn't planned on scanning or posting anything today but I had the "Nice Day" photo still out sitting on my desk so I thought I should put it back in the envelope where I found it and just started flipping through some of the other photos in there. There are a few negatives there (I'll get to those later) but most of the photos clearly didn't come from them, it's just a random collection of sizes and shapes from all different times. Then I found this one and figured I had to share.

I don't know anything about this picture, I've never seen it or any like it before. My guess is it's a school photo from when she was going to school in Norboro, but that's all I've got.

The gallery I put this one in is here.

Anyway, I hear crying upstairs, I'm going to go check on things, more photos later this week, I figure.

Photos from Evie

We went to cousin Evie's for Easter dinner yesterday and she gave me an envelope full of photos, nearly all of them from a Christmas (probably 1978) and a summer vacation they took to the Island. So I'm taking this as my first attempt at scanning and uploading the photos I've been saying I'm going to do for literally years now. They fit this blog since most of them have Mom in them and I'm sure Mom has some similar photos to fill out these sets when I get through the bins of photos I have from her.

The full set of photos are over here. This applies to all the pictures I'm going to post here, if you know something about them that I don't know, people, times, places, whatever, please post that either in the comments or on the Picasa comments section!

The Photo

I hope I'll get back to this now, I'm feeling motivated now and specifically went into the pile of totes full of Mom's stuff looking for this photo so I could start this off.

Why right now? Mostly because I had a dream last night that won't leave me. I was at the curling club with Christine and James. It was a party and we were drinking and talking with friends and then by the door I saw Mom standing there. She wasn't saying anything, just watching and smiling. That's it. That's the whole dream.

Anyway, the photo that inspired the name for the blog. Or at least one of them, I'm sure there are others I've seen with exactly the same "Nice Day" comment on them, sometimes with a period, usually not.