I write this today, sitting before the indomitable CNN, writing, editing photos from shoots recently passed sitting, quickly collecting dust in my hard drive; half listening to the various Remembrance/Veteran’s Day reports.  Iraq, Afghanistan.  Men, women.  Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters.

We are going to my Grandfather’s in Calgary this weekend.  His 90th birthday.  He lives alone, my grannie having died two-and-a-half years ago.  His closest relatives, my mother and us, living almost four hours away.  We see him every couple of months or so and in recent visits he’s been more and more eager for our presence.  Once a loner, preferring the company of books over that of his relatives, particularly those with loud and messy little children, in the wake of losing my grandmother and losing confidence in his independence and ability to get around, he’s become dramatically more receptive to visitors.  In fact, he’s downright happy to see us as the kids barge in his door, fundamentally shaking up his silent, solitary existence.

He’s also a veteran of WWII.  With his fellow Winnipeg Grenadiers, he was captured by the Japanese almost immediately upon his arrival in Hong Kong.  He spent four years in a Japanese prison camp.  He still loves rice and more specifically the scum that collects around the top edge of it as it cooks.  After four years buried in the earth’s crust working Japanese mines, he came home to get the education promised him by the Canadian government and made a successful career as a Mining Engineer, moving his family to and fro from northern Ontario mining town to northern Ontario mining town with a brief stop in Britannia Beach, just up the coast from Vancouver.  The man couln’t cook anything beyond his early morning porridge and burnt toast.

My cousin and I, the oldest of our brood, have strange, disjointed memories of him from our childhoods.  ‘Unavailable’ would only graze the tip of the iceberg in describing his involvement with us.  But it is with great joy that we have watched him mellow over these last several years, particularly those following my grannie’s passing.  He positively glows as he greets the miscreants when we arrive, embracing the disorganized, stinky chaos we bring to his ordered, regimented life.  There is happiness visible on his face as he watches my children create anarchy in his tidy, orderly living room.  He even pets the big ol’ dog as she ceaseless nudges his hand for constant attention.

I look forward to these visits.  And this month there will be two.  We wonder how long he will choose to remain so far away, alone.  My mother has a room waiting for him, with his own little kitchen and cable TV.  He has yet to show much interest in making the move.  Given his need for independence and self-sufficiency it will be something of a sad day when he gives it up.

He now makes his own roast beef dinners and Duck l’Orange, for crying out loud.

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