There is no joy at Strangedaze

To most people today was Tuesday, a day to return to work after a long weekend of speeding up to the cottage, having drinking competitions with your liver and crawling home bumper to bumper. It was garbage day. It was another day where bills had to be paid and the rent had to be earned. It was hot. It was just Tuesday.

To me, it was my Uncle John's funeral. A funeral that sadly, I was unable to attend because I was camping over the past five days and he passed away last Thursday.

I know people lose family members everyday and their grief is no less. Yet I can't help feeling the loss here is greater. Sure John fought a courageous battle with cancer and it should have taken him a few years ago. And sure, some would say he lived a long life, fathered four children, had grandchildren and experienced the world to the fullest. Yet, for all his achievements some will now not come to fruition.

You see, Uncle John was a great story teller and in the last years of his life he set out to write many of those stories in a book. Pages of which he entrusted to me for my opinion from a novel that will never see completion. His stories were not only rich with detail, they were side-splittingly hilarious- funnier than I could ever hope to be.

In time I will endeavor to reproduce some his material on these pages. I some how feel he would not be displeased, for Uncle John loved to make people laugh.

However for all his mirth, today there is no joy at Strangedaze.

Goodbye Uncle John.