November 11th is important to me in a very personal and emotional way. My two grandfathers served, in different uniforms, in World War II - both very young men at the time. In the case of my paternal grandfather, much too young - he lied about his age in order to enlist, as many boys did. He travelled to Europe and directly into the fighting when he was barely seventeen.
The reason November 11th is so very close to my heart is that it's the day I pay tribute to both my grandfathers, in a way I don't do throughout the rest of the year. I never knew my maternal grandfather, Wilfred McFarland. He died when my mother was about 12, so even she barely got to know him. His grave is at the far northern reaches of Toronto and is not all that easy to get to for someone with no car, like me. And, as he died when Mom was about 12, she was not helped to deal with it... it was another time, another world then - and (I hope) things would have been handled differently now. She does not go to his grave site regularly, and so I never have either.
My paternal grandfather, James Henry Challoner, is a different story for me. I knew him well and loved him dearly. He died in 1995. He taught me some of the values that I hold within me... that money isn't everything but that it needs to be taken care of; that family is worth more than everything else put together; that hard work and perserverance are sometimes their own reward; and that you can't make a really, really good devilled crab with margarine - it simply has to be butter. When he died I lost a mentor, a confidante, a fellow joker and prankster, and a potential tap of ancestral history that I didn't even know I wanted at the time. His grave site is in an ancestral cemetery, several hours away from here and I don't go there either.
In WWII, he was in the radio corps - that is, he went ahead of his military unit, sometimes into No Man's Land, to set up communications systems so that his unit were never out of touch. To my mind, it's a seemingly inocuous but extraordinarily dangerous, selfless and essential duty. And I feel as though he spent four years doing that in order to help the granddaughter he would have, some thirty years later. In the past few years, I've been doing a lot of introspection and work within myself. Some of this has been questioning and evolving my idea of what God/a higher power/a spiritual force is for me. I don't have a definition of what my higher power is, but I have a way of communicating with it... I simply talk to my Boppa Challoner, assuming that he has gone on ahead to set up communications, and I ask him to pass the message along. He has been doing an excellent job.
And so, because I don't go to the final resting places of either of my two grandfathers, Remembrance Day is set aside - for me anyway - to think about them both. To honour them. To marvel in disbelief at the things these men had seen and done at such terribly young ages, and then were asked to put it all aside once they came back home to live the rest of their lives. This is the day I remember to thank them for what they did for their country, for their family, and for me.
And this is the day that I really hope that they've met each other now and are fishing together.
Thanks Grandpa Wilf. Thanks Boppa.
Love you and miss you both.
The reason November 11th is so very close to my heart is that it's the day I pay tribute to both my grandfathers, in a way I don't do throughout the rest of the year. I never knew my maternal grandfather, Wilfred McFarland. He died when my mother was about 12, so even she barely got to know him. His grave is at the far northern reaches of Toronto and is not all that easy to get to for someone with no car, like me. And, as he died when Mom was about 12, she was not helped to deal with it... it was another time, another world then - and (I hope) things would have been handled differently now. She does not go to his grave site regularly, and so I never have either.
My paternal grandfather, James Henry Challoner, is a different story for me. I knew him well and loved him dearly. He died in 1995. He taught me some of the values that I hold within me... that money isn't everything but that it needs to be taken care of; that family is worth more than everything else put together; that hard work and perserverance are sometimes their own reward; and that you can't make a really, really good devilled crab with margarine - it simply has to be butter. When he died I lost a mentor, a confidante, a fellow joker and prankster, and a potential tap of ancestral history that I didn't even know I wanted at the time. His grave site is in an ancestral cemetery, several hours away from here and I don't go there either.
In WWII, he was in the radio corps - that is, he went ahead of his military unit, sometimes into No Man's Land, to set up communications systems so that his unit were never out of touch. To my mind, it's a seemingly inocuous but extraordinarily dangerous, selfless and essential duty. And I feel as though he spent four years doing that in order to help the granddaughter he would have, some thirty years later. In the past few years, I've been doing a lot of introspection and work within myself. Some of this has been questioning and evolving my idea of what God/a higher power/a spiritual force is for me. I don't have a definition of what my higher power is, but I have a way of communicating with it... I simply talk to my Boppa Challoner, assuming that he has gone on ahead to set up communications, and I ask him to pass the message along. He has been doing an excellent job.
And so, because I don't go to the final resting places of either of my two grandfathers, Remembrance Day is set aside - for me anyway - to think about them both. To honour them. To marvel in disbelief at the things these men had seen and done at such terribly young ages, and then were asked to put it all aside once they came back home to live the rest of their lives. This is the day I remember to thank them for what they did for their country, for their family, and for me.
And this is the day that I really hope that they've met each other now and are fishing together.
Thanks Grandpa Wilf. Thanks Boppa.
Love you and miss you both.
Left, James Challoner. Right, Wilfred McFarland.
