Paying respects

Yesterday hubby and I went to a funeral.

It was a sad and beautiful affair. Sad, because the wife, sons and their wives, grandchildren and great grandchild are going to miss him terribly. Beautiful, because the sons shared their memories of a once vibrant man who had experienced a lot in his 89 almost 90 years. I learned many interesting things about the deceased - such as, he was in the navy in WWII, he worked for the CN Railway, and travelled the world and lived in a different parts of Africa for a time as a consultant for Railways. It was interesting to hear brief snippets of his life and left you longing to know more. Through his sons, it seemed like we were on a whirlwind tour of history through this mans life. Not the history that you read in books, but a working persons history of what it was like to live during the depression, WWII and of course, raising a family.

You can't help after such and event about reflecting about your family's history. On my mom's side, my grand-father was a miner who mined iron ore which was sent back to England to help with the war effort. I can remember him telling some stories of the mine, but it is our mom who tells us about it now, though her perspective is from the family that was at home and her memories of her dad coming home from the mine totally black and covered in ore dust, or the worry that they had if there was a problem at the mine and so on and so forth. On dad's side, his parents were educators. My grand-mother was one of the first female teachers in their area, and my grandfather at the end of his career was the school inspector. To this day I am still known as the old school inspectors grand-daughter.