I was at an antiques show in Abbotsford, British Columbia.
I was wandering around the fairgrounds looking at the odds and ends when I suddenly said to my friend, “That’s my father!” We were looking at a wartime picture. The face, my father’s, was a real photograph and the body was a cartoon drawing of a man strutting with his chest stuck out to show his new rank. In the lower left corner was my father’s nickname, on the epaulet was “PPCLI,” and in the lower right corner was an inscription: “To Alan from Daddy with love, Christmas 1942.” My father had known my brother for about a year before he was called up to fight. He had never known me.
My mother and father were divorced after the war. Dad married a nurse from Winnipeg whom he’d met after being invalided out of the Sicilian campaign. In 1944 our mother sold off the family farm near Georgetown and moved back to her hometown of London. She must have cleared out Father’s memorabilia and given it to his relatives near Limehouse. We never heard from Father again.
I bought the photo, packed it up, and sent it to my brother. It was the first time he’d seen it in fifty-nine years. It was of particular interest to him as he’s had several strokes and is sometimes more interested in the past than in the present.
It was a special moment, finding that photo, and I’m so grateful to have found this new, and only, memory of our father.
White Rock, British Columbia