This time last week, Ron and I headed down to Saint John and picked a literal van full of boxes and furniture from my grandfather’s apartment.

It was hard. Even pre-sorted and boxed and waiting.

After, on the way out of town, Ron and I stopped at a Chinese restaurant for our anniversary dinner, which was the next day. Good food.

We unloaded the van quickly, all these boxes stacked around the house, me making quick decisions as the where (oh god where) do I even put these things. I said we’d take all the linens, which we could always use, and anything in the kitchen (given Sarah is headed off to college). Boxes and piles are still everywhere. Some new frames are on the wall, on any available nail I could find.

Sometimes I catch one of the frames, and think to myself that it’s out of place. The same frame I’ve seem for thirty years, the same photos inside – just on the wrong wall. Me, me and my mom and my brother, with 1979, 1980, 1981 written under each photo in my grandmother’s neat slanted printing. Another frame, me and my two cousins, always children.

I now own real art – a chalk sketch of my father playing at a music festival, the program taped to the back with a newpaper clipped about the gallery show for the picture. Another pen sketch of the hospital where my grandfather worked, tall and big on the hill. They tore it down a few years ago, after standing empty and useless.

We’ve gone through all the boxes by now, most of which we packed back up. Too many decisions to make on each piece. Thankfully, my aunt had said that I didn’t have to try and keep it all, it was okay if I put what I didn’t want in a yard sale. I’m glad she said that, nothing’s worse than Memorial Tupperware. This way I don’t feel like I have to keep it all.

Even with the stuff I want to keep, there’s a bit of hoarding going on. There are all these everyday items with things I had given them but that are now returned. Unpacking was less like treasure hunting but still with treasures inside.

Just ones that make you want to weep.

Somewhere on my way home, while I was still in Toronto, my grandfather passed away. I found out in Montreal as I was changing trains. He loved trains. He’s the reason I learned about computers at a young age, a really smart man who expected the same in others, the funny English gentleman. He was always referred to as a gentleman, because he was. There was no other word to fit. He’d go down to the harbor whenever a cruise ship came in, and take a picture of it. He walked fast *everywhere*. In later years, he had a cane, and he told us all he had to do was wave it in front of him and people got out of his way.

We had been planning to move him into a nursing home, at his request, as his health had declined to the point he needed someone there all the time. He had been living in a senior’s apartment complex, with home care workers coming in. At first, a couple times a week, then recently almost every day. I say “we” but really my aunt has been doing a lot of the work. :-/

He wrote his own obituary, which if you knew him at all, should strike you as funny. That way it was done right, you see. Some of the things below I didn’t really know, but I do know every time I was pregnant, he wanted as many details as possible about the ultrasounds. One time I asked with, with less sarcasm as you might think, if he wanted me to get my doctor to send him a copy of the reports and he said that wouldn’t be necessary. He did have his shoulder operated on once, and got the doctor to videotape it for him.

We’re going to miss him, but are glad he’s at rest.

THORNTON, Alfred Thomas, of Saint John, passed away on Sunday, March 8, 2009 at the Saint John Regional Hospital, at the age of 93.

Born February 16, 1916 at Ipswich, England, he was educated and trained in telecommunications and radio in England.
He served his country during World War II with the British Post Office Telecommunications Dept., the Royal Naval Wireless Reserve, the 11th Middlesex Home Guard, and the Royal Corps. of Signals. He started his training in electro-encephalography in England and, after emigrating with his family to Canada in 1957, continued at the Montreal Neurological Institute. While working at the Provincial Hospital in Saint John, he did research on the affect of colour on epilepsy and became the first Canadian to win the Monty Wyand Award with a paper on that subject in 1962. After setting up a new E.E.G. clinic at the Saint John General Hospital, he pioneered the use of ultrasound for the detection of tumours in the brain and the breast, and also for checking the heartbeats of unborn babies. In 1976, he established a new E.E.G. clinic at the Dr. William F. Roberts Hospital School for Children, financed by the Colonel Harland Sanders Trust Fund.

Predeceased by wife Marjorie (Gayton), he is survived by 3 children: David Sr,of Toronto ON, Adrian and Glenda, both of Saint John NB; 3 grandchildren: Andrea (Ron) Rennick of Lakeville NB, David Jr. (Ashley) of Toronto ON, and Ryan (Cynthia) of Ottawa ON; 5 great grandchildren: Addison (Kaytlyn) Rennick of Fredericton NB, Sarah, Meaghan, and Emma Rennick of Lakeville NB, and Hunter of Ottawa ON.

According to his wishes, there will be no funeral service. Cremation has taken place at Fernhill Cemetery. The family will receive visitors at the Fundy Funeral Home on Saturday, March 14, 2009 from 1 to 4pm. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to: Alzheimers Society of Saint John, Heart and Stroke Foundation of New Brunswick, Saint John Free Public Library, Admiral Beatty Seniors Social Club, and David Suzuki Foundation.

You can sign the funeral home’s online guestbook here.