I just love this photo of my dad peeking out from between his dad and his uncle Charlie. It would have been taken in the summer of 1940, in Brockville... right around the time my aunt Patsy was born. Don't you just adore that 'do my grandfather's sporting??
This is Aunt Patsy waiting at the Brockville train station for the trip to her new career in the RCAF. She was 19 years old and excited to be embarking on this adventure. Sadly, her life was never this happy again. She married Daniel Jansen in 1963 and gave birth to two children, Mark and Wilma. Her life spiralled out of control and she found herself a patient on a psychiatric ward; Dan took the kids and divorced her in 1966. I don't think she ever saw those children again. (I know we haven't. In fact, I don't remember ever even meeting them.) Once healthy again, she met Cecil Wortman and they married in 1970. The following summer, they came to visit us in St Margarets, New Brunswick. They were on their way to Cecil's hometown of Petitcodiac, near Moncton, where they were going to pick up the baby girl they were adopting. On July 30, en route from St Margarets to Petitcodiac they ran into a thunderstorm just outside of Fredericton; a combination of road conditions and speed led to a head-on collision with a truck. The car was sheared in half, with Patsy taking the full impact. Cecil was unhurt and Patsy died there on the highway. She was so disfigured by the crash that her funeral was a closed-casket affair. Ten months later my sister, Lindsay Patricia was born.
No comments:
Post a Comment