Sudden Tragedy.

Shock. Absence. Regret. Disbelief. The Unknown. Unreality. Sadness. Tears.

In the past week or so I have experienced all of this and more. I was playing some hockey, on the 10th, two games in sequence, one to spare for a friend’s team who was short on skaters, and one with my own team of which I am the General Manager/Owner. The first game was great, even though we lost, I had a few sweet goals and it was quite a lot of fun, and no pressure as it wasn’t my own team.

Unbeknownst to myself, and unbeknownst to my teammates, the family was in a panic mode as information started to fly around. But I remained to this point completely ignorant.

In the second game, we started down 0-2 to the opposing team. We eventually scraped and scrambled back and in the end it was a 7-4 win. I had two goals and an assist, and it was a great game overall, everyone playing their roles and finishing strong. If you couldn’t tell, I am no sports writer.

After the handshake, we went to the bench and grabbed our water bottles and headed towards the dressing room for the typical beer and shower routine. But this time was a bit different, my wife was there.

My first thought was that it was odd and a nice surprise to see her as she rarely comes to my games (the arena is very cold in the stands and she is Brazilian). But then I thought something was up, perhaps my kid was hurt at school or maybe she threw rocks at traffic again from the schoolyard.

Her first words were that she had bad news. Her second sentence had me in complete and utter disbelief.

Zooming back a few weeks before, I was on the phone with my dad, as I had just discovered through a friend from Oregon that if you have a male Luxembourg ancestor, you might qualify for Luxembourgish citizenship, which is also EU citizenship. I had been looking for this sort of thing in my genealogy research for some time, hoping for an angle of this type. All I had to do was prove the lineage of my father’s mother (my Grandma in other words) and then since she was a grandparent, I would qualify and so would all my descendants, and it would make it easy for the rest of my family I share with Grandma to do the same, expanding our access to education and work in Europe and creating many unknown benefits for the family in the process. Dad asked: “Do you want to do this?”, I replied yes, and so we began to work on it together.

There were quite a number of documents I needed, and all had to be true and certified copies of the originals. But the pathway was clear and possible and so forward we went. I was in communication with him essentially daily, but it was normal for him not to reply for a number of days as he had a pretty busy schedule and many projects on the go himself. He called the uncles and aunts to find things while I dealt with: British Columbia, Alberta, Oregon, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, New York City, and Luxembourg itself.

One thing I needed from him, though I told him I’d pay for it, was a marriage certificate from his marriage to my mother (they are long divorced but were amicable). Characteristically he didn’t reply for a few days but I knew he had a few paddling club meetups and he was also working on renovating a truck camper so I wrote it up as just being busy. It was in this totally normal way I went to work that day, the 10th of October, and after work attended my hockey games.

My wife tells me after the game that my father had passed away. That my brother found him around 6pm (game started at 5:30pm, ending around 7pm), in my Dads house. Myself, dripping in sweat, soaked, sort of didn’t believe it. My wife would never joke about this of course so I knew it was true but at the same time it felt a bit unreal. I sort of just knelt down in my gear and tears welled in my eyes. Teammates saw me and consoled me. But I couldn’t just go in that state, I had to go through the post-game process, I had to get undressed, showered, changed, packed up, and go.

As I drove to my Dads house I fought back pained tears and lamentation to keep stead on the road. When I got to the street, it was packed with cars parked on both sides. The first person I see is my brother’s fiancé, who was with my brother when he found Dad. I can tell it had greatly affected her. I went to the door and was met by my mom who had come down for chemo that week, and gave her a hug, and then my brother.

And there he was, laying on the floor, the life gone from him. The wind exhausted from his body. Stiff. Cold. The coroner asked me some questions. I told him what I knew, though it was completely unexpected. I told him about two years or so prior I picked him up from his home and took him to the hospital to get him checked out for his sudden heart pain. He had followed up with a heart clinic but is heard nothing of it since. Other than smoking, he hadn’t seemed to be a big risk. He was in pretty good shape. He got regular exercise. He ate healthy food. He kept busy with projects.

We waited outside while the body-snatchers packed him up, and wheeled him to the van en route to the hospital morgue. The investigation is automatic as he was an unexpected death, which could take weeks or months; a long time to wait for closure.

The impact was of course very wide. At 66, he was the youngest of my grandparents’ children. Everyone is shocked. I had to pick up my son from his work that same night. I told him what had happened. He was very shocked and sad and together we had a few minutes of reflection and tears. It was the first death in the family of someone very close to him. I have called my aunts and uncles, cousins and my Dads cousins. Friends, old girlfriends; I even had to cancel a date he seemed to have been arranging.

About four days later we had thanksgiving dinner at my brother’s house. It was a lighthearted affair on the surface but it was with a heavy heart in which we gathered, still in shock, still wondering if it were real. In any case there was a definite absence.

To the reader, I am not sure exactly why I am writing this, perhaps just to get it off my chest, but I think I want to extend some thoughts on life, especially given the time of year. Be thankful for what you have, for as long as you have it. Be grateful for who you have, for as long as you have them.

Treat your moments with the dignity they deserve, they are the moments of your life. They are the moments of your being. Your presence ripples through time and space and effects so many, do not underestimate your own impact or the impact of others. Like a skipping stone across the water, one second you’re flying through the air and, BAM! You bounce off the surface and you’re back baby! In the air once more. Then BAM! Off the surface and again you’re flying. But too like said stone, the laws of physics take no prisoners. Rejoice that you live and have lived, no one can rob you of that. But eventually we have that final bounce, an odd wave or waft of wind kicks the surface and your trajectory is suddenly changed, and if not of yours, then of others.

But do not despair. Live, and appreciate. Love, and care for; for once it is gone, you’ll miss it.