I asked myself this morning, how will I explain my long absence from the blog? It wasn’t that Christmas was so busy I didn’t have time to think. I had lots of time to think... and write... and think...
My dad, G. D. (Doug) Harrison (born Sept. 6, 1920, died Feb. 6, 2003) contributed to the Norwich Gazette, his hometown weekly, for many years, and one day in the fall of 2011, while I looked for a particular article he had written (I needed a pithy quote for a Remembrance Day article of my own), I found a worn brown folder longing for attention. Though I knew it wasn’t what I was looking for, I opened it.
Instead of a single quote about what motivated Dad to join the Merchant Marine, I found 46 hand-written pages - over 35 years old - that summarized, as well as he could remember (and he had a sharp mind up to his death), his involvement in World War 2. Accompanying the notes was a neatly typed 21-page version of his familiar scrawl.
I tipped my hat to my youngest sister, Jane Harrison for her efforts, then set the folder aside. I wasn’t quite ready to dig into it. I had a deadline hanging - like a sharp Navy dirk - over my head.
A month later I decided to turn his memoirs into a small book, realizing as I typed that it was coming together many years too late. The person I needed to talk to for more details, wanted to talk to about certain events, ask questions of or discuss a fine point with, was dead and gone. Now that I want to ask, “Tell me about where you were when the ships were loading for Dieppe?” my dad inhabits another sphere.
Many others surely understand the hard lesson I learned as I typed, i.e., I’d waited too long to ask for the good stories I’d now like to hear, am ready to hear. Such is life, my dad would say.
Fortunately, my dad wrote many things down in his later years and I have his hand-written notes, his contributions to two books assembled by foresightful members of Canadian Combined Operations and numerous articles he wrote and later clipped from the Norwich Gazette about his ‘Navy Days’.
And compiling his notes into book form kept me pretty busy for the last 3 - 4 weeks, so busy I barely had time to wrap presents for Christmas morning.
My schedule is a little more relaxed now and I hope you’ll understand re my absence.
PS Does anyone have the address of the person who invented the gift card? I feel I need to send them a big ‘thank you’ note.
[Photos by GH]
***
Please click here for a link to my backyard adventures with local furry scoundrels.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment