Family and friends, love and relationship are essential pillars to the structure of personal happiness and well-being. Family and friendships come in varying shapes and sizes, and fragilities. They can break and they can be fixed. Good parenting builds the best families. Even divorced parents who maintain goodwill and mutual respect can continue to provide their children the love, comfort, and support they deserve. Single parenting is obviously tougher, but a dedicated, loving single parent can raise a strong family, preferably with help from extended family and friends.
There are two families I know, the parents are good friends, who exemplify the best in families. Happily, they are not unique among the families I know, but certainly worth attention, a lot of which they recently received due to tragic events. One lost their eldest son and brother suddenly; the other, their wife and mother, also quite suddenly. The shock to families and friends was understandably massive.
I knew both of those who passed, however, up to and at their memorial services I got to know them and their families better. Despite the utter sadness of their passings, I gained a greater appreciation and admiration for them and their families, which can be a sad irony of someone’s passing. For the families and closest friends, they clearly knew who and what they’d lost. At both memorial services, siblings gave heartfelt, heart-wrenching, yet eloquent testimonies to their departed brother and mother. They made us cry and they made us laugh. They described remarkable people who had achieved much in their shortened lives, more than most of us who have lived longer.
The families and close friends will bear the pain of their loss for a while, miss them forever. But I sensed that the positive force and presence of those they lost, with the happy memories and positive influences left behind, will continue to embrace and sustain the families and friends. I left the memorial services with appropriate mixed emotions; — a lingering sadness, but a quiet joy, even awe, at past and present lives well-lived.
The lives of those who passed were exemplary. But I also heard and saw greatness in the siblings. They presented their brother and mother as the best of them — kind, decent, fun, responsible. As difficult as it was for them to speak at the services, I heard and saw children who are accomplished and wonderful themselves. They, in turn, are a testament to their remarkable parents, also accomplished and successful, perhaps mostly in child-rearing. They created wonderful family environments, full of love, congeniality, creativity, opportunity, and the all-important friendly sibling rivalry. The children live and lived as their parents live and lived: active, inquisitive, interesting, accomplished, kind, and loving. And it will be passed on to the grandchildren, the community, the world.
Others can tell of good, wonderful families. The families I mention are two of my poster families. We as friends will continue to grieve for and with them, but are blessed and grateful for the examples they set and the legacies they create. It adds to my faith in a better world, despite the challenges we always face.
Roger Jackson is a former deputy minister and a St. Albert resident.
