Traditions

When Damie and I first moved to Canada we lived to a small town on the boarder of Ontario and New York.  It was a nice place to live, and Damie worked in Buffalo....she shuffled down daily....well really she drove across the bridge but still shuffled down sounds like more fun doesn't it.

We spent 8 months there.  Zeb was just a baby, and although we didn't do much we really loved our time there and have often thought we would love to move back to that area one day.  This past week we made a trip back there, and it was loads of fun reliving our lives during those months.  So much of it looked the same, yet different in some way.  The feeling I had then came flooding back like I was right back there, it was a magical time for us.  We were as poor as church mice but Zeb was learning to crawl, and then to walk three weeks later and those are the things we remember.

We made the move to Windsor, well actually LaSalle ON, to be closer to people we knew and be on the boarder so Damie could work.  We missed having friends, and my best high school friend and her family lived here so we thought why not be closer to someone we know.  We also felt that the opportunities for Damie to find a good job would be better in the greater Detroit area, than it was in the greater Buffalo area, and at first it was, until the economy took a giant nose dive (thanks President Bush, as it was 2007/8 when Damie lost her job and we sunk into the biggest whole you could imagine, Obama hadn't yet been elected.  Not to get political, but people forget that fact for some reason).  I regress, sorry.

Our lives, for the most part, were better than not in LaSalle.  We started developing our lives, making traditions, becoming a stronger and stronger bonded family there.  I have truly loved how we have grown together.

One of our traditions started 5 or 6 years ago.  I was reading the local paper one day and I read a story about a man in LaSalle that had decided to do a Halloween light show to music at his house.   The story told how he got the idea one day, researched the whole thing and had decided to give it a try.  He was going to put off the show nightly, on the hour every night until Halloween.  Well I decided to go, and take the family too. 

We went on a Friday night, around 7:00.  It was dark, but not too late for Zeb.  We arrived to the house and found a sign outside telling us what FM station to tune our radio to, so we did.  On the radio was a nice friendly voice welcoming us to the show and then telling us that it would start in a moment.  It did start shortly after we arrived, and was Zeb hooked.  I don't think he moved the whole 20 minutes the show went on.  Damie and I were thrilled, it was fun and exciting and we all had such a wonderful time.

We went back a month or so later to see his Christmas show.

We have been every year since, for both the Halloween and Christmas shows, sometimes there has been rain, sometimes there has been snow on the ground, sometimes we  can see well, sometimes we can't, but every single time we have all felt that it was the tradition that we enjoyed the most.

A couple of weeks ago we went by his house to watch the Halloween show.  When we arrived there was no sign on the front lawn, no lights on the house or the trees, nothing!!  Damie and I first thought maybe he had moved and we don't know where he went.  I thought maybe he wasn't doing it anymore, which made us both sad....but then we decided that maybe he just wasn't doing it for the whole month of Oct, and that we should come back later in the month and look again.  That's what we did.

This past Saturday we drove by the house on our way to picking up some pumpkins.  It was during the day, but we thought we would drive by the house to see if the lights were up and the sign was on the front lawn.  When we arrived there were lights, but Christmas ones, and no sign, however he was working outside so we parked the car and Damie went to talk to him.

We, of course, had never met the man who had built our family tradition, we certainly appreciated him from afar, but never actually laid eyes on the man.  A couple of time we saw family members coming home from this or that while we were parked outside their house enjoying the show, but we never actually spoke to any of them.  This was the very first time.

Damie came back to the car after a few minutes to tell me that he is not doing the Halloween show, and wasn't going to do the Christmas one but has just recently decided to do it.  It seems that he lost his wife to pancreatic cancer in Feb and was not going to do the shows anymore.

Of course this broke my heart.  I couldn't believe what Damie was telling me.  I hurt for him, for his young children whom we have seen come home with great big hockey bags over their backs from time to time.  How sad that has to be for all of them, and no, I don't think I could bring myself to go on with such a joyous Holiday offering.  But he was going to do it.

Damie expressed her sympathy to him, told him how sad she was, and also how much these shows had meant to our family.  She told him how much joy he has brought to us all of these years, and how much we look forward to his offerings every season.  She suggested an offering cup, can or box to help with whatever cancer organization he preferred, but he didn't want to deal with money.  He did ask that if we felt the need that donating to the hospital would make him happy, so there you have it.  We can finally give back for all the years of being entertained, in his memory.

This is heartbreaking, why do such bad things happen to such good people.  I know, we don't ask why good things happen, so we should not ask why bad does.  I would ask that in his wife's memory that all who read this give of themselves, either with thought, work, or fortune.  No matter what good is happening around us, there is always someone going through the worst life has to offer, and in small ways we can help, sometimes just with our thoughts.

Thank you light man for finding the strength to keep the tradition alive, even when you just didn't feel it.  I hope by doing it, you start to mend.