A Father's Thoughts
You hear it every day: A child or youngster got killed in a car accident. You recognize the tragic, you feel sorry for the parents and the family - but within a week you most likely forgot about the incident. What a difference it makes once you got hit with the news and the victim is your own son!
I will never forget the words, when my wife called me from the scene of the accident: "HE IS DEAD!"
Our son was diagnosed at age 15 (9 years ago) with juvenile diabetes. Frank never accepted this disease; he fought for 2 years by exercising, that he did not have to inject insulin. During the last 9 months of his short life he fell at least 4 times into a coma (insulin reaction) and I was getting increasingly scared that one morning he might not be around - I never expected it could happen during the day and while he was driving.
Frank lived his life to it's best. He enjoyed playing hockey, playing the guitar and going fishing. When he did not have a drivers license, his mom drove him all over the city, Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan to hockey tournaments. Then he started to play and collect guitars; he had at it's peak 28 of them, and when I asked him, why that many - he just put up his typical smile and came up with some explanation, which could not really convince me - but he was happy. Then his last hobby began: Fishing. Being highly allergic to fish, he supported strongly the motto CATCH and RELEASE. He sold some of his guitars to buy his first boat. Along with the boat there had to come a heavy truck. Once he specialized more and more in walleye-fishing, he had to get a "walleye boat" ... and please don't ask me what a walleye boat is or looks like.
We miss our son - we miss him a lot. And as we appreciated all the sympathies and support we received - and still receive - there were special surprises how a lot of his 'old buddies' responded from all of Frank's involvements: From school, hockey, his guitar times and fishing friends. We noticed his school teacher from elementary school, his hockey coach, some friends came from Toronto, Kelowna and Edmonton to show their last respect, and some relatives flew in from 'our old country' - Germany. All this showed us, how well liked our son was - and that gave us a lot of comfort.
In these times you are getting very sensitive; and you notice also the very few exemptions: A very good friend of our son's did not show up or responded at all, although his mother and sister came to the funeral. Old good friends of ours did not respond, just wanted their curiosity satisfied - in two cases a really sad experience for myself. To balance this out - others, of which I thought, they could care less, called from Germany several times to comfort us, and we could feel, that their thoughts were with us.