I was so excited to go to Montréal and see my father! The week before we just got back from a small staycation over thanksgiving and I had everything setup to help my father pass his Canadian Drone License. We were also going to do some interviews and he was going to have his ‘portrait photography system’ all setup for doing a photo shoot.

I was arriving Wednesday evening (Dec 4) and took the first few days to get all the Christmas gifts setup, wrote all the cards, and precut the wrapping paper so that I could wrap all the gifts after passing through customs. I told Ayano as we were coming back from San Diego over Thanksgiving how much I was looking forward to spending some quality time with my father and to let him know that Ayano was coming out to visit shortly after the New Year as well.

I was looking forward to hearing how his Christmas Party on the first went. I was looking forward to helping him get the Pointe Claire Lawn Bowling Club website all finished up… I was looking forward to a lot of things.

When I arrived in Montreal, my father wasn’t at the airport to great me. Perhaps he fell asleep after having an exciting and busy time with Anita over for the last week and going to The Pionair’s Holiday party, so I took an Uber home.

It was almost midnight and no answer. I couldn’t get in, so I called 911 to have a patrol come over. We had to break the door down as my father had collapsed from a stroke. We found him on the floor, inches from the front door, trying to get out and call for help. He fell right after Anita left back to Ottawa and no one knew. No one thought anything was wrong and it wan’t until two days later when I arrived, that I would see my father lying on the floor, jumping into the ambulance, and rushing to the Jewish General hospital.

Two days.
Two days with a brain hemorrhage…
With blood seeping into this lower brain stem.

A week later he died.

I’m actually writing this in June 2020. Six months after my father’s passing as I just couldn’t deal with the loss. I am still hurt, depressed, lonely, and angry. Angry at life because he was robbed from being able to do some amazing things. Angry because he was healthy. Angry because I felt robbed of spending some quality time with my father… we had a lot of awesome things planned to do during my next few visits and throughout 2020. I am still angry, still hurt, still depressed, and while Ayano is always there for me, there are still times that I am still lonely. There is a void in my heart were my father was. A void and will always be there and never be filled. I’m so fortunate that I have a strong network of people that provide me unconditional love and friendship. My wife in that department is supper amazing. But there are times when the ‘not-so-positive’ emotions sneak out.

So I don’t have much to say for this month as it still hurts to write in detail about what happened. Rather, I’ve decide to post a few pictures of my father and only tell the highlights. Please forgive me for this month as it is not a pleasant one.

It was nice to see some people at the funeral and I did have a lot of support from people I hadn’t seen in over 20 years (i.e., Susan and Emily). One of Dad’d best friends, Jim (aka – Jimmy to my father) invited us over to their place for supper one night as well. I used to see him come by to visit my father all the time, so it was nice to spend some time with his family (which usually includes a number of dogs).

After the funeral, Ayano and I flew back to California only to have our flight diverted to Sioux Falls South Dakota due to engine failure. After 14 hours (and no food), we finally got on another flight and just made it in to the airport before curfew. Total travel time – 22 hours.

We spent a night in downtown LA at the Omni Hotel so that we could see Handel’s Messiah at the Disney concert hall. It was our first time going as we’ve tried to go so many times in the past, but it’s always been sold out. This time we booked 8 months in advance. Needless to say, my heart wasn’t into it, but we did get to spend some time walking around LA, going to the market, and getting out of our regular routine. Ayano bought me a nice tie and I picked up a book about the ‘health of walking’. I love both of them and I might even mention them in later posts. This small get-away was to be our Christmas vacation for this year. We also stopped at the Huntington Library on the way to downtown LA to walk the gardens. We even signed up as members for the year and gave a second membership to some friends of ours as a Christmas gift.

We didn’t celebrate Christmas.
No decorations and no tree this year.

I just couldn’t do it. And on Christmas Day Ayano flew out to Japan to see her family. I went to see our friends to drop off the membership gift, but then just came home. I spent the next week doing home projects around the house like putting up window blinds, fixing the electrical, putting in new LEDs, etc.

I even got the piano tuned and I decided few days after Christmas that I was going to learn how to play. My goal is to play the songs that were played at my father’s funeral come his one year anniversary.

One other ‘so-so’ exciting thing was that we had a bee man come in and remove a bee hive from the back yard in our flower pot. That was done shortly before Ayano went to Japan. But that was about it. I simply stayed home and don’t even remember what I did except for watching the sunsets from the music room upstairs or our little kitchen balcony.

I picked up Ayano on New Year’s eve and with jet-lag, she conked out early. That worked out well as that meant I got the have all the Champagne and we had planned to get up before sunrise to go golfing at Black Gold on New Year’s day. But that my friends is for next month.