My mother recently got the courage (her phrase) to write in my father’s daily cottage journal. The first thing she wrote was, “Enough of silence.” After a month-long hiatus of the South Channel blog, Enough of Silence! My apologies to the blog readers who have faithfully been checking the blog over the past month for a new post, only to find silence.

We are all working through our own ways of coping with my father’s recent death, and I guess taking the break from the blog was one of mine. It’s hard to describe some of the feelings one deals with when confronted with the loss of someone you hold so dear. In the first few weeks after Pop’s passing, many of us who loved him were finding our way day-to-day immersed in the acts of necessity such as planning his funeral, writing obituaries, dealing with financial issues, and generally doing what else had to be done. We were all in a state of shock. Losing someone you love is never easy. However, unexpectedly losing someone like a father, or a mother, or a sibling, or a spouse is especially hard and something that was completely foreign to me. I have read about the various stages of grieving that people go through, but now I have firsthand experience as to just what that means. All in all our family is doing remarkably well in adjusting to the absence of The Channel Man. There has been someone at the cottage several times in August, beginning on the Canadian Civic Holiday early in the month when all of our family was here to scatter Pop’s ashes in the place he so loved. We have continued with the ongoing tasks of maintaining the place, performed water testing, and followed through with other obligations of daily life on the island. We all seem to be ok, or at least as ok as anyone can be expected to be under the circumstances.

My mother arrived back at the cottage solo for the Labour Day weekend on Thursday, and I followed her on Friday afternoon. We have been busy organizing things around the place, attending to some of the projects Pop had underway, and starting the preliminary steps to prepare for closing up the cottage in mid-October. The weather has been comfortable, but “iffy” in terms of the same sporadic precipitation that much of Eastern North America has experiencing, reportedly as a result of disturbances from Tropical Storm Ernesto. Today was overcast with periods of cloudy sun, but overall not too bad. Mom and I went water testing this morning and did some minor tasks in town, one of which was preparing their boat to be put up at the marina for the winter. There has been moderate activity on the bay, but far less than usual for the “last hurrah” weekend of the summer, undoubtedly due to the forecasted unpredictable weather. Results from the water tests will be available on the South Channel website in a couple of days, joining the results from tests done earlier this season including those from August 7th and 21st. Results can be viewed by following this link South Channel Water Quality Results.

I will be heading back to Rochester late tomorrow afternoon, but will be replaced by longtime family friends Donna and Doug Carroll who plan to stay for another week with my mother before returning with her to the Hornell area. Over the years Donna and Doug have spent many weeks at our cottage and this will be their first visit here without Pop. I hope that they will find the spectacular beauty of the Georgian Bay experience and the fond memories of times spent here with Pop as comforting as I do. I know my mother was pleasantly surprised at how good she felt about getting back to the cottage on the trip to spread Pop’s ashes here in early August. This is truly God’s country.