On a sunny Friday this past month, I travelled with my Oma (my grandmother) and parents to go visit my Oma’s cousin Jack and his wife Margaret.
This visit stemmed from a conversation I had with my Oma about taking a photo of her at the same CPR station in Winnipeg she arrived at in 1948. After that conversation, she was interested and wanted to learn more about her arrival to Winnipeg. Jack’s family were the ones that picked up my Oma, along with her brothers and mother.
However, we got a lot more than we bargained for. Jack is an amateur historian and instead of just telling us stories of that arrival, he brought out a large stack of photos and began to give detailed accounts of the Deister family, which included his mother, my Oma’s mother (my great grandmother) and their three brothers. Over the course of that Friday morning, the faces in these old photos had names and stories to go along with them. I’m grateful to my great uncle Jack for keeping these photos and this family knowledge.
The thought of now knowing these names of distant family got me thinking about how there is a certain sort of death when someone isn’t remembered anymore. I was going to write about it and expand on it here but then I came across a quote from Ernest Hemingway that perhaps says it more succinctly:
“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name.”
.
.
.
May was smoky, sunny, and sickly. Looking back, it was full of:
Fixing trek bike, Urinetown, St. Boniface hospital visits, reimagining Raglan, impromptu family lunch, Glenelm neighbourhood, Vera’s pizza, house offers, chopping wood, Josh’s birthday, Mother’s Day, Riverview neighbourhood, Jets in the basement, Roslyn neighbourhood, McNally Robinson, friends’ game night, The Bay closing sale, Bike Jam, critical mass documentary, Marika’s birthday visit at work, cousin’s wedding shower, working on my neighbourhood project, crusty bun with Oma and the parents, Taste of Asia, reading about John Norquay, playing Kubb at Vimy, $1000 cargo bike, impromptu Costco trips with friends, BLTS, Canada vs Haiti soccer game.
Enjoy the photos,
Michael, not Mike
