My Son

 My son was born today. It was sixty-two years ago when my husband, now also dead, built a house we could afford in a town now shunned as Lower Middle Class, but which stands strong even today. Our baby came along four years into our modest marriage in a nearby little city, once to be BC's capital but changed for one you can get to by ship or plane only. Our baby son held all the promises of life when he came along: love and security. He was a healthy, cheerful child. Our tiny mortgage was paid off before we were thirty even during an unpleasant stint in the North on relocation by an oil company. We went back to BC to a small coastal town with small coastal ideas. I went back to teaching and my husband found a good job in a government institution. Life seemed good. Besides inlaw problems and the minor discomforts of living in a small coastal town mostly run by locals with different life styles than we once knew in the city. My son started school but never liked it. He was polite though a free soul.  His bright wit got him into trouble sometimes with teachers thus he turned to music: the keyboard and classical piano taught by his uncle, a grad of London Music.  The best thing school did for him was his highschool band teacher who encouraged him to take the jazz world, one,  we, too, loved. I am ever grateful to this man. It made his life fine. My son met a great girl at a technical school and they married before they walked across the stage to receive their diplomas. Life seemed good and the two children of his marriage were and are adorable. He hoped to return to music and complete his love of it seriously when the marriage broke. Later, jobs and music on the side never paid enough but he didn't feel sorry for himself. One day, he learned about his brain tumor, benign, but after surgery, time to learn to walk again and work again. Life was not easy and there never was enough pay. He drove a bus latterly, and  loved it: the routes, the customers, the company boss and the benefits. He had good friends, some music pals and true. Then Pancreatic Cancer came along and it all ended at sixty-one years old. He accepted, as always what life threw at him, without blaming or complaining. He's back now, resting in the coastal town in a cemetery that is achingly small but surrounded by good people who built it through their efforts and hard work. Not every mother has the opportunity to see her son's entire life spread out for her to think about every day and what could have been and why. I have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving for my son and his courage and love.