When-abouts

   A couple of days ago, somehow or other I found myself having a talk with someone about time travel. The subject had arisen out of a comment my friend made about how cool it would be if hovercrafts took over from cars as being the principal way of getting around in the future. And, while you were at it, what if there was a hovercraft that could go back and forth in time! He quickly envisioned and then made reference to the DeLorean in the movie "Back to the Future".
   We talked about this and I asked him the inevitable question--if you could travel back in time where would you go first?
   His first stop back in time would be the night the Titanic sank and the task at hand would be to warn them about the iceberg. His next stop in time took him back to the baby Jesus, at which point he would rescue the baby and his parents. I asked him why he didn't want to go back when Jesus was a man and "rescue" him then. My friend replied that he would then have to deal with all the Romans and their weaponry. I left it at that....

   So where would YOU want to go, if you could travel back in time?

   I've pondered this many times myself and I suspect that many of us have. I find myself generally wanting to go back to monumental moments in history. Coincidentally, when my friend mentioned both Jesus and the Titanic he touched on a couple of my time travel wish list items.. Far from "saving" the baby Jesus, though, I would have wanted to travel back to the crucifixion and the surrounding events. Firstly, I would want to know if it even happened. Secondly, was it what it has been described as in the Bible, with all the accompanying significance? That would be cool to know.
   Going back to the night the Titanic sank is also hard to resist. The story of the Titanic was ingrained in me long before its discovery and movie made it so much a part of the everyday culture it is now.
   In thinking about it, most of the moments in history I'd want to go back to involve historical deaths.
   I would have wanted to have been there when Kennedy and Lincoln were assassinated. I would have wanted to have watched the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Bonnie and Clyde receiving their dues. George Reeves of T.V. Superman fame meeting his end (suicide or murder?)

   The list goes on and is not always limited to the moments of people passing. I would have loved to have listened to the Gettysburg address. The driving of the last spike in the CPR tracks in B.C., connecting the east and west of Canada, would have been marvelous. Being there when my great-great grandfather, Lewis Nunn Agassiz, after sailing down the Fraser River, beached his raft at the point of land which became Agassiz, B.C. would have been personally remarkable.
   All of the above are historically significant, insofar as they impacted large groups of people and were regarded as turning points, of sorts. I wonder, though, how many of us would choose to travel back into our own pasts and watch events we are already intimately familiar with re-unfold, right in front of our eyes.
   This begs yet another question--would we visit the past in order to spectate or participate? Do we warn the Titanic, do we raise a huge fuss in Ford's Theatre? If we are visiting our own past, do we attempt to change the course of our lives?
   I can look back at my own life and think of many times when even the slightest change in what actually happened might have totally re-constructed the direction I took. All the times I didn't get what people were really saying, all the times I missed seeing people by half an hour, the many times I was just too shy or awkward to act on what I was feeling. Any of these could have been a turning point. The sum total of every move I ever made or didn't make, though, has led me here. And here is where I am happy.
   My friend made mention of the time-space continuum he'd heard about in "Back to the Future", wherein the theory lies that certain actions by someone visiting the past could be catastrophic. You had to be very careful you didn't run into yourself, for example. In general discussion around time travel, mention is also made of the "butterfly effect''. This is a theory stating that from the tiniest of actions (the flapping of a butterfly's wings, as an example) could set off a chain of escalating events which finally might produce a tornado in a completely different part of the country. All of this to point out the hypothetical danger in messing with the past.

   I suppose that "hypothetical" really is the key word in all of this. To date, time travel is impossible and can only be conjectured on. The fact that Einstein himself offered up that time travel might be one day possible, theoretically, is simply a tantalizing carrot on a stick. Unless we have people from the future walking among us...
  

Open Letter: Part Three

   Just a little over a week ago, I dropped my first batch of "Open Letters" in the mail. As you might remember, I wrote a blog entitled "Open Letter" a while back, in response to a plethora of charitable agencies who'd all benefited from my late father's generosity and confused and overloaded mind.
   So far, I've had the time and energy to send copies of the letter to six different agencies. I honestly didn't expect a reply. About five days after I sent the letters out, however, I received a phone call from a lady named Irma Haggith-Fonseca, from Mission Services here in London. She felt honour-bound to reply to my letter.
   She began by offering condolences on my Dad's death. She then went on to explain, of course, that they know very little about the people they send their requests to, their age or mental status.
   This was, at least partially, the response I was expecting from an agency, if I received a response at all.
   She did go on, however. She explained that many groups do share lists with other groups once donors have been profiled but that her agency did not. She also added that there is a website you can go to to take people's names, either theirs or your own, off of such lists. She also gave me some advice about submitting tax receipts for my Dad. All in all, quite helpful and hats off to Irma!

   To date, though, hers has been the only response I have received out of the first batch of "open letters" I've sent.
   I do plan on sending out many more, now that handling my Dad's affairs seems to be winding down. Hard to say what the total response might be but simply the fact that one person read the letter and took the time to respond with some positive energy already makes the effort seem worthwhile!

Furniture

   There is a picture somewhere of me as a toddler. In this picture, I am standing and holding on to the end of a coffee table at the same time, presumably so that I don't land on my butt. I, however, am not the important part of the picture. The coffee table is.

The coffee table, in its new home. Thanks, Bry!

   It is the coffee table I grew up with and it is older than I am. Not only did I grow up with it but it followed me around. I took it with me when I moved away from home the first time and it graced the tiny, cockroach-infested bachelor apartment I had in northwest London. Eventually, I got married and it followed me and my ex-wife around from apartments to houses.
   It was a very unassuming coffee table and, therefore, was never really a centerpiece of any living room. For many years it held a place in our rec room. After my wife and I split up, eventually my oldest son, Bryant, moved out and the table now followed him. Currently, they reside together.
   A couple of years ago, somehow or other I ended up having a discussion with my Dad about this table. I discovered then that he had actually made the table in shop class in high school. I think he was amazed that it was still around!
   This meant that the table was built circa 1940 and I'm sure it likely had some interesting travels prior to my Dad getting married and settling down. Due to its age, I laughingly used to refer to it as the coffee table I was conceived on. I still do, actually, now that I think about it....
   So a hand-made coffee table that is likely 70 years old and has withstood the test of time, lived through many moves, been owned by many different family members and weathered countless spills and tumbles still resides in the same family and likely will continue to do so for another generation or two. This is what I love about furniture.
   My Dad had an antique desk sitting in the bedroom of his apartment for as long as I can remember him living there. I always thought it was kind of cool as old-looking things interest me. I had always taken it for granted until Dad passed away and we were forced to go digging through all the cracks and crevices of his life.
   This desk had several small drawers in it and I pulled one of them open only to find a stash of letters Dad had written to his mum back in 1945 when he was in the Navy and stationed in Halifax. It was like a little treasure trove of stuff I suspect Dad had likely forgotten about.
   Dad's sister, Leslie, came from out west for the memorial service and it wasn't until then that we found out more of the history of the desk. She said it was the same desk she and Dad sat at to do their schoolwork when they were kids. Likely the desk dates back to the thirties. Presently, it sits in what hopefully will be my office someday and was front and center at Dad's memorial service. It is strange to sit there and imagine him in the same spot 75 years ago, doing homework!


Grandparents and ship's clock on the mantle. Thanks, Carol!

Dad's old desk and the same ship's clock

   There is another old photo, this one dating from 1957, of my Granny and Granddad sitting in the living room of the family cottage in Gibsons, B.C. They are sitting in front of the fireplace and on the mantle is an old ship's clock. I am not sure on the history of the clock, I believe it was salvaged from some steamship somewhere. The clock has found its way to a variety of places my Dad has lived and it always seemed to be as close to a family heirloom as he ever talked about. Because it seemed important to him, it has since become important to me as well and now sits about ten feet away from the antique desk.
   There was really no way to keep all of Dad's furniture when it became necessary to clear out his apartment. Family members came in and chose items they needed or felt attached to. Faced with much stuff left over, we found ourselves opening up Dad's place to other people we knew. Doralyn and I both work for the Alice Saddy Association and provide support to people with developmental challenges. We set up a day when people from our Association could come and pick up items they needed. In this way, much of the apartment got cleaned out. What this means is that some of Dad's belongings have left the family, finally, and I may still run into them from time to time in my work travels. It is the dissipation and continuation of his life, right in front of me.
   A couple of years ago, I was at my sister Jayne's home in Parry Sound. We were barbecuing on the deck and they brought out a card table to put plates and condiments on. There was something very familiar about the card table. I asked my brother-in-law, Mike, about it and he said it had come from Dad's place. He suggested I look underneath. I did so and discovered my parents' address on it from when we lived in Edmonton. This would have been back in the late fifties and I have no idea how long before that the card table might have been in the family. But I do distinctly remember playing with it as a child, intrigued by the way the legs folded underneath. So it had travelled likely from Calgary to Youngstown, Ohio to Edmonton, on to Vancouver and then to London. Presumably, it then followed Jean and Dad to places like Kitchener, Woodstock, Vancouver, Calgary (again), Halfmoon Bay in B.C. and then back to London before ending up in Parry Sound.
   I was delighted to find it! It confirmed a reality of my past that otherwise I might have filed away as possibly only a figment of a foggy and suspect memory.
   This is part of what furniture does. Its longevity carries with it the possibility of connecting people with their pasts and the histories of their loved ones and relatives. Sometimes you can almost feel the ghosts hanging around old pieces of furniture, all the little bits of energy people have left behind. The dings, nicks and scratches tell their own stories, describing the interaction of people and things.
   It is difficult to look around at the furniture we have now and try to imagine what lies in its future. It's not that old and not yet totally immersed in history. It's hard to say whether the coffee table I'm looking at now will one day grace the living room of one of our sons or still be with us thirty years from now, as our lives transition. The nature of history, though, is that it just takes time.
  
  

Bad Boys

   My wife, Doralyn, has uttered the following proclamation a lot lately. From it, apparently I am supposed to gather that I am "just as bad as the boys!" Quite often, this proclamation is prefaced by an "omigod" as in "Omigod, you're just as bad as the boys!"
   Now it's essential that you know the boys are not all that bad. But they are boys, after all. And I'm just as bad as them, from what I've heard.
   My wife's biggest problem is that she's having a hard time adjusting to the routines around here. By a clear majority of 4-1 it's quite obvious that the dirty dishes simply are to be tossed into the sink. Not rinsed and put into the dishwasher. The extra floor space in all our rooms was designed to be covered by dirty clothes. Otherwise it is simply unused usable space. And where's the logic to that?
   Speaking of logic, why is it necessary for a cat to have fresh drinking water every day? For goodness sake, as cute and cuddly as our cats are, they are still descendants of ancient and mighty jungle cats, who often went without water for days and, when they did finally find some, were content to drink out of the same slimy mud hole a dead zebra was floating in!

   My wife excels when under stress. What reason, then, to give plenty of notice for anything, when she has proven, over and over, that she can be handed a form requiring filling out, permission, and a twenty dollar bill while in the garage on her way to her car and holding two different kinds of drinks, three assorted bags and purses and work files and manage to fill the form, produce the money and not run one of us through with the hedge clippers, conveniently within arm's reach? And she thinks we're bad for wanting to see her reach her potential?

   As I mentioned earlier, the boys are not even all that bad. If they were constantly robbing the Mac's Milk store, getting their drug-addled girlfriends pregnant, failing school and lopping off body parts in shop and then Doralyn said, "Omigod, you're just as bad as the boys!" well....I guess then I'd feel bad about it!
   The fact of the matter is that the boys are pretty damn good and I don't (for the most part) mind being compared to them. They're all smart, intuitive, loving and kind and I would be happy to be as bad as that! I guess the fact that she seems surprised, somehow, that I am "just as bad as the boys" is a fair bit better than her being astounded that I am "just as good as the boys!" 
  
  
  

Coffee Shop

   I sat in a Timmie's the other day, had a double-double and engaged in a coffee shop chat with a friend. I can't even tell you how many times the two of us have done this and there are thousands of us across Canada who do this on a daily basis.
   Normally the conversations touch on the mundane--our plans for the weekend, the weather, how our days are shaping up, how our common acquaintances are getting along and the like.
   We don't normally get into deep, almost philosophical discussions about anything really, we kind of see our visits to Tim's as being kind of a break from all of that. The other day, though, was different.
   My friend had been listening to some of the details of an ongoing court case here in London, that of the alleged killer of Victoria (Tori) Stafford. For those of you who might not be from my part of Canada, Tori Stafford was a young girl from Woodstock who was abducted from her school as it let out, taken by car to the Guelph area, sexually assaulted in the back seat of the car and then murdered, with a claw hammer. The accused's girlfriend has already been tried and convicted of first-degree murder and has provided the description of how Tori's life ended. The people of London and the surrounding area have been assaulted themselves by the details of the case, which have been outlined daily in the papers. None of us have been spared the grisly details and I would guess that many of us have stopped reading, for our own reasons.

   My friend felt compelled to talk about this case today, as we sat there over our coffees.
   He is someone who angers easily when it comes to the victimization of anyone, particularly the young and defenseless and he felt compelled that day to offer his opinion as to how the perpetrators of this crime should be ultimately punished. Without a doubt, he thought, they should be executed.
   I'm sure many of us feel the same way, in our disgust and anger. It is almost impossible not to. These days, though, capital punishment is not an option, rightly or wrongly, and we are left with what seem like inappropriate options for dealing with these kinds of perpetrators. The fact that it will be our responsibility for likely many years to come to house, feed and protect her killers has riled my friend and many others. Our only option is to make sure that these people are never allowed to do the same thing to anyone else.
   Personally, I have always been against capital punishment. I understand the disgust, heartbreak and anger which some crimes cause. The contradiction that capital punishment presents to me is that on one hand we see murder as being the most  heinous of crimes. The measured response to murder that capital punishment suggests is to murder someone, yet again. If, in fact, murder is bad then we need to ensure that we do not engage in it.
   I presented this as a point of view to my friend and he admitted that he hadn't really looked at that way. But, indeed, if I were the family member of someone who'd been murdered then I'm not so sure I'd feel so merciful, either.
   At the end of our discussion, I suggested a totally different option. I suggested, in this particular case, simply letting the murderers go free! My friend looked at me in shock. I explained in the following manner.
   Envision a courtroom scene wherein Tori's killers have been convicted and are awaiting sentencing. As a sentence, the judge tells the two of them, in the midst of a room jam-packed with Tori's family, friends and well-wishers that they are free to go. And at that point, the judge, bailiffs and any attending police officers simply walk away.
   My friend understood what I was suggesting and smiled.
   I suppose this might be justice in the purest sense; the consequences you suffer are commensurate with the crime you commit.
   This, of course, will not happen, nor should it.

   This is more or less where our talk ended at Tim's that day. It wasn't what we usually end up chatting about. I will wager that at some point that day another couple or group of coffee-drinkers sat and talked about Tori and quite likely expressed the same outrage and bemoaned the whole justice system. I also imagine opinions were offered on why people like her killers even exist in this world, what can be done to identify them earlier and what can be done with them afterwards.
   As you might have noticed, I have not named either the current defendant or his accomplice. I did not choose to leave them nameless due to any regard for their anonymity. I believe that one of the rights you have as a human is the right to a name. I believe that when you begin to act in a sub-human way then you have given up the right to be referred to by name. At least, in this blog. So be it.

   Okay, I didn't intend to spend so much of this blog talking about Tori Stafford. I kind of meant to spend this time talking more about how coffee shops serve as community sounding boards and, more simply, as places of congregation. All that for another day, I guess. In the meantime, I have graced this page with pictures of Tori. It seems as though lately I've talked about nothing but death, dying and the afterlife. I really meant to do something different today but such was not the case, as it turns out. Her pictures have helped. They have helped by taking some of the ugliness away.
  
   
  
  

Afterliving

   In my last blog, I offered the suggestion that Heaven might, in fact, simply be a place where you end up doing all your favourite things.
   It didn't really occur to me at the time but then I started to think about, given that definition, what Heaven would look like for ME.
   Here's what I came up with, in no particular order.

   Walking, hand in hand, with my wife, Doralyn, strikes me as a little slice of heaven. It has, from day one.

   Making an incredible save in ball hockey is hard to beat. To throw out a little of the miraculous, in the truest sense of the word, for a bunch of guys to see and then remember is an incredible feeling.

   Blogging is wonderful. To have that instant audience and get more or less instant feedback is an altering experience, if you are inclined to be any kind of writer.
   Sex, of course. And it is even better with a like-minded partner. I remember thinking as I was writing the last blog that perhaps a good definition of heaven would simply be one eternal orgasm. Except that we would likely get bored with it after awhile!
   A good morning coffee and the paper.
   Solitude. It can come in a variety of ways, times and places and occasionally is invaluable. There can also occasionally be two of you there.

   Music. Playing it or listening to it. Hundreds of different types of musical instruments around the world from cultures that have no common familiarity and they can all be tuned together. This tells you something about the nature of music.

   Coming home and seeing my wife's car in the driveway.
   Golf. A long, straight drive. A high, arching second shot. And a short right-to-lefter, for birdie.

   Driving through the Rockies. Something about this was ingrained in me when I was just a young boy. It may go back even further than that as, generations ago, my ancestors were true pioneers in the Rockies. Hard to beat.

   Blowing raspberries on my kids' bare bellies. They're in their 20's and 30's now, so it doesn't happen very often anymore...

   Gibsons, B.C. Where we usually ended up after our trip through the mountains. It has a magical quality to it which seems to infest all who visit with any regularity, especially children (but adults are not immune!)

   So these are some of the things you might find in my Heaven. I know there are many others, life is full of wonderful things that often we run into on a daily basis. And there is enough variety in them that you never seem to get bored or tired.
   As I've said before, I am in no hurry to discover what Heaven actually is or whether it even exists. I can grasp little bits of it here on earth and that is fine with me. I also believe that if there is no Heaven then the worst thing that can happen to you when you pass is to enter the state of not having been born.
   When I think of all the millenia that passed before I came into this world, the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, continents shifting, ice ages, dark ages, wars, explorations and discoveries, suffering and magnificent achievements and the fact that I sailed through all of them in blissful ignorance makes me think there really is no fear in returning to that state.
   My best guess, though, is that Heaven will find me safe in the warmth of all the things above, sharing them with the people I have loved and those who have loved me.
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Heaven: Part Two

   For the longest time, my own personal view of heaven was a place wherein I would be able to explore whatever reaches of the universe and galaxies I wished, almost instantaneously. I would be able to do this because, having died, I would then be unfettered by earthly bonds and restrictions. This seemed like a wonderful concept to muse on.

John Edward--famous medium

   At some point, though, I became intrigued by watching psychic mediums at work. Their perceived ability to communicate with the dead presented a whole new and different concept of "heaven" then the one I'd developed in my head.
   Suddenly I was presented with a view of the afterlife wherein the dear departed seemed as though they were only a breath away from their loved ones, almost hovering over them. Okay, I thought, if this is what it's really like then maybe that's not too bad of a concept. But I was also presented with a picture of a very busy, hustle-and-bustle kind of heaven where the spirits seem to be restless and eager to connect with their loved ones for a variety of reasons. More than one medium has described spirits as jostling other spirits out of the way, simply to get at their own earthly friends and family.

   This almost strikes me as "heaven, with an agenda" and not really what I had in mind for myself when I pass. The idea of being able to somehow re-connect with your loved ones and reassure them that all is well is fine but when I am in heaven I don't want to have to beat the crap out of the spirit beside me every time one of my family members encounters a medium.
   On top of everything else, who constitutes a "loved one" and will I only encounter "loved ones" in my afterlife? Or will I possibly run into people who hated my guts when we were both alive? Or will my heaven have a population of only one, once I get there?
   In the previous blog, I conjectured on my Dad running into both of his wives in the afterlife and what that would look like. My cousin Carol, after reading that blog, offered up the opinion that perhaps her dad, who has also passed, and my dad would simply go fishing together and leave the two ladies to talk! Hard not to latch onto that image!

   Perhaps heaven is that place where you simply continue to do all the things you loved the best when you were alive. But how soon would we become bored with that, as bizarre as this might sound? Sometimes the things we love the most are loved that way because they seem like islands in the midst of tedium. Part of the enjoyment of these things is in the anticipation of them. I wonder if there would be anticipation in heaven, or even a little pain, to make the pleasure more enjoyable, by contrast.
   I do wonder if my Dad is out there now, just waiting for an opportunity to send a message and hoping that I will have the ability to receive it. I wonder the same about my Mum and a variety of other people who are no longer with us. If they aren't, I don't have a problem with that. If they are exploring the vastness of the universe I really don't have a problem with that either. One of the other theories I have ( wonder where these theories come from...) is that there is not the same concept of time in heaven and that, once you're there, it seems as though we all get there at the same time, with no interminable waiting for your loved ones to arrive. Here on earth, though, it seems like years.
   So, here I sit, just in case, waiting for a message. Or not, if it is not to be, and that is more than okay, as well. At the very least, I feel watched over. Not in a judgemental, nor possibly even in a guiding way but simply in an interested and loving kind of manner. It just seems as if it should be this way.
  

Heaven

    As you can imagine, I have been thinking a lot lately about heaven and, more importantly, if there is one.
   The fact that it is also Good Friday today has prompted this consideration even further.
   Any time someone I know passes away I find myself wondering what exactly that person has now discovered and what kind of a journey they might currently be on.
    In an earlier blog, I mentioned that I am somewhat jealous of the dead. The reason for this is that I believe any truly important question you might have had is answered when you pass away. You find out whether there is a God or not. You discover if there is a Hell. You find out if there are aliens. You suddenly know where anything you might ever have lost went to (and still is!)
   If time travel is a possibility then you suddenly are aware of its mechanics. You find out whatever happened to Amelia Earhart and if there actually was a Jesus. All these questions and more get answered for you, in one fell swoop.
   Currently, my father is someone I envy. Today, as well, marks the 39th anniversary of my mother dying so I guess I envy her, too. This brings up another question--are my Mum and Dad together again? And how would my stepmother, who has also passed, fit into that equation?
   There are simply a mind-boggling number of questions I believe get answered when we pass.
   I do believe in an afterlife, not so much because I am deeply religious (far from it) but simply because the laws of physics seem to apply. One of those laws states that energy cannot be destroyed, only changed. Because we all are made of different kinds of energy and because this energy cannot be destroyed I think that we simply change when we pass. Moreover, I think we are all derived from that same incomprehensible burst of energy that occurred when the universe was formed and that's why we are all so interconnected. As the hippies put it, we are one with the universe!
   What I don't think, however, is that there is any kind of deity running the show.
   My Dad now knows what the story is and I am jealous, just a little. I'm also content to wait until it is my turn to find out. 
  
  
  
  

Relief

   I am still in the middle of lots of paper-worky (my new favourite word) kinds of things to do with tidying up the details of my Dad's passing. As time has progressed, things have become steadily less stressful and time-consuming. This has given me a little more time and headspace to reflect on some of the things his passing has meant.

   I am relieved.

Karen, thank you...

   This feeling of relief has been gradually growing in me, almost imperceptibly. It occasionally stops me dead in my tracks, during unoccupied moments. My new-found sense of relief stems from no longer having to worry about my father. I no  longer need to worry if he's safe, I no longer need worry about his finances, there's no need to worry about a slow decline with Alzheimer's and having to find a nursing home.
   It had not occurred to me before just how much mental and emotional energy I was allotting my Dad, subconsciously. Whenever a worry or concern popped up consciously I always managed to tuck it away somewhere. Anything I might need to worry about was years away and so easy to avoid thinking about it now. At least knowingly thinking about it...
   Above all else, I guess, was the fear that he would die. Realistically, I knew the man was almost 86 and simply would not live forever and that, at some point, I would be faced with dealing with this eventuality. I did have some doubts as to my ability to do this. Three month ago, however, if you'd told me my Dad would live for another ten years I would have said that this was probably not a bad estimate. And that was about as soon as I would need to deal with his passing, I thought.

   This estimate, of course, was incorrect and we all found ourselves dealing with Dad's death long before I think most of us thought we might have to. I don't think this is terribly uncommon in families, I think quite often death occurs at times when some families are the least prepared for it. Each time this happens the family wonders how it possibly will be able to handle it and move on. But then they do, and they get through it somehow, more or less intact.
   My Dad's death kind of snuck up on us. It was not preceded by any lengthy illness and was not something we had been preparing or planning for. There was only about a two-week period when it seemed as though death was the most likely outcome for him and this was the time we were given. It was just about time enough for some good-byes and a little resolution.
   So, apart from the afore-mentioned paper-worky kinds of things still needing to be dealt with, many of the reasons I might have had for subconscious anxiety over my Dad have been resolved. The best part is, I think they have been resolved to his satisfaction. Ostensibly right to the end he was fully in charge of his own life. His legacy will be hard to live up to in terms of the love, admiration and respect his family, friends and colleagues had for him. That is as much as many of us would likely ask for at the ends of our lives.
   So I do feel relief. It is not the jumping-up-and-down-for-joy kind of relief, as you might expect. It is certainly a very quiet and self-contained kind of feeling. I find myself wondering whether my Dad is now experiencing some kind of relief of his own, wherever he may be. I almost know that he is.
   Me? I feel just a little lighter...