April, 1996- At the beginning of April, I received a phone call that my dad was real sick. He had cancer all over his body and wasn't going to live much longer. I guess he'd been ill since October and I wasn't told about it. All my brothers and sisters had gone to visit him then. I was the only one that hadn't seen him yet. John and I left immediately for Quebec. When we got there on Tuesday, he was still conscious but not well at all. I talked with him for a while that first day and by wednesday, he was unconscious most of the time. They were giving him large doses of morphine for his pain. He would sit up for a few minutes and try to get out of bed once in a while so the nurses had to tie him down. We couldn't stand to see him tied down so we took turn staying with him day and night. On thursday night it was John and I's turn to spend the night with him. Around 4:00 AM, he came to and sat on the side of the bed and had a conversation with us in english like nothing was wrong. I asked him if he was in pain, he replied "yes all over". He said he was thursty so I gave him water.He hadn't eaten any food all week, so I asked him if he was hungry and he said "yes". I cut up little pieces of cupcake and fed him with my fingers. (He had a large tumor in his throat). He took a few bites of cake and layed back down. I don't think he ever woke up again. April 7,1996- At 2:00 AM on Easter Sunday, he finally quit hurting, he died, with my twin brothers at his side. My mom was sleeping at the hospital and as soon as my brothers walked in she knew he was gone. She yelled oh no! and had a heart attack. She was not able to attend the funerals. The big Catholic church was packed with family and friends. My youngest sister Rachel gave a beautiful eulogy. Since the ground was still frozen, they couldn't bury him until May. We walked to the special freezer in the cemetary.
After the funeral, we all met in a rented hall for lunch Everyone was invited. The place was packed with family and friends. There was people there that I hadn't seen since 1964. I knew most of their faces but couldn't remember names but they all knew me. John and I had to leave after lunch. It was snowing a little when we left. We stopped at the hospital on our way back to visit with my mom. Snow in April in Canada is not rare, but it usually don't last long or accumulate much. We ran into a blizzard in the middle of nowhere. We drove 65 miles with nothing around except cars and semis in ditches everywhere. John was driving, I was too scared to drive. There was ice under all that snow. At times, we couldn't see nothing at all. As we got in a curve, at the bottom of a hill, a semi was backing up cause he couldn't make it up the hill. John had no choice but hit the breaks to avoid hitting him. We ended up in the ditch and we rode that ditch for a while until we got back on the road. The semi was on his way back up the hill by then and as we got on the road, we hit him. Someone must have been looking out for us, because we hit the side of his tire and didn't get hurt, just broke a side marker on my car. There was a van behind us that wasn't so lucky, it vanished somewhere in a field, the other side of the ditch, it was coming pretty fast. We made it to the town where my ex-husband came from. We stopped at a Service Station to inquire about a Hotel-Motel and the wind was so bad, I couldn't open the door. Some guy opened it for me and the wind nearly took the heavy door out. We followed a big snow plow and found a nice hotel and spent the rest of the night there. The next morning we couldn't find my car, it was burried under the snow. Once we got back on the highway, I couldn't believe my eyes, there were cars in ditches everywhere and some snow banks at least 10 feet tall. Somebody was looking out for us again, in Toronto. We were riding in the far left lane, when I noticed a car getting close to us at a very high speed. I told John to get in the next lane and as soon as we moved to the next lane, a truck dropped a huge piece of metal and it fell on that speeding car that took our lane on the road. I looked back and he had hit the 3 feet tall cement divider. I'm sure he couldn't have survived that crash. We couldn't stop, there was too much traffic and by then we were ahead of it. We made the rest of the way home without any problems. We stopped to eat breakfast at my favorite Truck-Stop, close to home.
