When my dad passed away this past weekend, we’d been making plans to do a few things together over the summer. My sweetheart had retired this spring, and he and I had already written up a list of outings with my dad – all dates weather-dependent, of course, but planned for Thursdays so I could keep a meeting-free day each week:
- Next Thursday, July 27, we were planning a day-trip to Rawdon, to where his family had a summer cottage for decades (and where we spent all our summers ’til 1976). My dad and I had talked about this day-trip by phone last Wednesday night, and were meant to finalize our plans Friday night during a BBQ at our place – but my dad had already passed by then. We’d talked about stopping to see Dorwin Falls, the lovely old stone Church where his dad is buried, and the house he rented the summer I was a newborn in the late 1960s. Then we’d head to his favourite place in Rawdon for French fries, for either a late lunch or an early dinner based on what time we’d finally have hit the road;
- On August 4th we’d go to the beach at Voyageur Provincial Park in Ontario, where he had a season’s pass. Depending on the state of my old camping gear, we might stay and camp overnight;
- Then on August 10th we’d drive to the Long Sault Parkway, near Cornwall (Ontario), for another beach day and maybe another overnight tent-camping stay;
- For August 17th my husband and I had planned to take my dad out in our canoe, from the Anse à l’Orme Nature Park onto the Lake of Two Mountains, and paddle to La Petite Plage (the ‘hidden beach’) for a swim;
- At the end of the month, on August 24th, we’d take my dad to ‘our’ beach – the one just a few minutes from our home, at the Cap Saint-Jacques Nature Park. A place that I bike past almost every day during Montréal’s short cycling season.
I wish we’d had just a few more weeks with him, one last summer.
Miss you already, dad.