Grieving the other stuff

My father passed away very quickly and unexpectedly in January. It’s been hard, but I’m working through the grieving process. What I didn’t expect was how much I would grieve the losses beyond just the loss of my Dad.

• No more homemade maple syrup. Even though my parents didn’t make maple syrup last year, there was still the possibility that they might make it again one day. 

•  No more homemade wine. Some of my best childhood memories are from unloading cases of grapes in the garage, pressing them, tasting the fresh grape juice, helping to siphon the juice into the barrels and then months labour enjoying the new wine. 

•  No more garden. My parents always put in a huge garden. While it’s gotten smaller over the years, it was still plenty big. There is something so wonderful about being able to walk barefoot through the deep rich soil, pluck a cucumber from the vine, clean it on your shirt and eat it.

• No more campfires at the cabin. Watching Liam have his first roasted marshmallow in my parents bush is a memory that will be with me forever. I had always expected to share more campfires with Liam, as they were a regular occurrence in my childhood.

For now my Mom is staying in the house, on the farm. So I don’t yet have to grieve the loss of my childhood home, eating wild leeks in the bush, going for walks through the trails while beating off swarms of mosquitos. But I know that those loses are closer now than they ever were before.