My Father

My father passed away suddenly on Saturday, February 20th, 2016!  My father was an awesome man. He had a great sense of humour, a heart full of gold and  who you could only aspire to be as a person.  He is my dad and I will always love him.  I miss our daily texts and talking about family, his grand kids, and cottaging.  He was a very loving man and a great constant in my life and our family unit.

Here is what I said at his Celebration Of Life service:

I want to thank everyone for coming today, I know my dad would be flabbergasted to see the number of people here.   As you know, my father Ralph was a pretty amazing man.  My dad had many wonderful qualities that have been passed to me and my sisters.

Dad, I love you!  Your grandchildren love you!  You gave me a big heart.  I like to help anyone when I can.  You gave me the gift of the gab. I can talk to anyone and everyone.  You taught me that family was important and to welcome people into our lives and hearts.  I have fond memories of family dinners, (or as you would have corrected me, supper), roller-skating and ice skating every Sunday as kids.

My dad would always tell us that we were his favourite to all of us girls and of course as we got older, we realized he said the same thing to each of us.  Of course, I really was his favorite!   I will miss our daily texts and conversations about family, food, his grandkids and whatever came up.  Every wine related post he ever saw on social media, whether it was a sweatshirt or a large wine glass he thought I would like, he shared it with me.  He definitely knew his daughter.  He would joke to me about how he always had so many more twitter followers than I did and that I needed to catch up.  I never did.

I always knew that my dad was a talker and carried great conversation. After the news of his passing, I saw the magnitude of friends whom he kept in touch daily and I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was amazed.  I want to thank his friends from the virtual world who gave him laughs, talked to him about sports, his kids and grandkids.  Thank you for being his friend.

Since my father’s passing, through organ donation, he has given someone the gift of sight.  Even in his death, he is still giving!  He would be happy to know that he was able to help someone in this way.

Thank you to friends and family for being such an important part of his life.

Dad, I love you and you will be dearly missed!

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The pouring of support has been amazing and I want to thank everyone for their kind words and love over the past couple of weeks.

My dad is now a special angel looking down on all of us!