FAMILY HISTORY

Recently, I posted a poem that was taught to my Grandmother by my Great-Grandmother. The poem is called "If". After I posted that, my Grandmother suggested that my Great-Grandmother (Rest In Peace) would be proud of me. See, in 1963, she travelled to Uganda to see my Great Uncle Charlie and her six month old Grandson Cameron. Now, 43 years later my Grandmother is reading about my experiences in Ghana and corresponding with me via email.

Through this corresponsdence I have felt blessed to have a internet savy Grandma (note that my Granny in B.C. has also learned how to use the internet to check my blog and has printed off pages for my Dad to read, who is not as interested in using the internet, but loves reading the posts).

This letter that my Grandma wrote me warmed my heart. For me, it is further proof of what Maya Angelou told a Toronto audience in May of 2006 where she insisted that, in this life, we could never know how far the light that is in us has reached onto the paths of the lives that our life has touched.

The letter reads...

Dear Christopher,

Yes, you Christopher, are the only one of my grandchildren to have ever met my beautiful mother. In fact, when I brought you and your mother home from the West, in the summer of 1980, your great-grandmother, my mother was in St.Joseph's Hospital in London as a result of a freak accident which happened on an airplane while she was returning from a visit with her oldest son, my brother Bert and his family in Thunder Bay.

It happened following the Thanksgiving Weekend in the Fall of 1978. In spite of the impact of my father's death in June of 1977, Mother bravely struggled on through a crippling bout of Rhemoitoid Arthritis which attacked her joints over thefollowing year. Eventually, through "Gold Treatments," she was delivered from her disabling condition and happily planned a trip toThunder Bay to visit Uncle Bert and his family. When I picked my mother up from the airport, following that visit, I could see that she was pale but I believed that her appearance was simply as a result of fatigue from her first "journey from home" since the death of my father.

Never, for one moment, did I imagine the horror that night would ultimately bring. When we finally arrived at the door of her apartment, mother collapsed and began to vomit great volumes of blood. To this day, I cannot remember what happened next. Somehow, I was given the strength to call for an ambulance and phone Uncle Charlie but to this day, more than two decades later, I am unable to recall details of the events of that evening.

The next thing I remember was being with Uncle Charlie at ScarboroughGeneral Hospital, in the middle of the night, and hearing that mother had been operated on for, a suspected Stomach Ulcer, which proved not to have been the cause. Their ultimate conclusion wat that the bleeding was froma her Osolpegus. To stop the bleeding they placed a "BakemoreTube" down her Osophogus which collapsed one of her lungs. Not long after she was released from hospital, Mother reluctantly, made the decision that she needed to move to London where she would be closer to Uncle Charlie who (being a doctor) had the connections which might preserve her life.

In some time, Mother's condition had become critical. As we clung to one another, we prayed that mother might survive since we were totally unprepared for her death so soon after the death or our father. As it happened, Mother's life was spared but what followed but we could not have imagined in the unimaginable suffering she experienced before her death, in March 1981.
Before that time, as soon as her great-grandchild, which was YOU, Christopher, entered the hospital room, my mother'sresponse was immediate. You were only 10 months old at the time but I can still remember her joy at seeing that her great-grandchild was not only walking but, at the same time, was able to kick about a cool-whip container. You can only imagine the joy you brought into mother's life six monthsbefore her death!