I Didn't Know Everything About His Past, But I Know That He Influenced My Future

There have been many people in my life that have influenced the person I am and the way I want to raise my children.  Most of those people are members of my family.  I am extremely grateful for the family that I was born into.  My parents have always been important to me, but if you take it one step further back, my grandparents raised a great family.  My grandmother (June) passed away when I was 18.  I can still remember the way her laugh sounded.  I think that may in part be because I hear a little of it when my mom and her 2 sisters laugh.  She was a remarkable lady.  The person who I want to write about today though is her husband, my grandfather, Stan Hoar. 

As I said in the title, I don't know everything about his history.  I know he lived on a farm, he worked at a psychiatric hospital for many years and that he and my grandmother raised 7 children together.  I can only hope that my husband and I still look at each other and act around each other the way that they did after all the years they were married.  He and my grandmother moved off the farm several years after he retired.  Once my grandmother passed, he moved to a retirement residence.  He remained active in his retirement, volunteering at the psychiatric hospital where he had worked and as a driver for community care (taking people to there medical appointments), playing cards, going to dances and anything else that he was invited to do.

He was always a healthy man, so when he developed a lump on his neck , it was a surprise to learn that it was an aggresive form of cancer.  There was a point during his battle with cancer that he was given a few months to live.  By that timeline, it was unsure if he would be around to see my daughter born.  As you can see by my picture, he did get to meet her.  Not only that, but he saw her first birthday and her second birthday.  He actually had almost 3 good years before he passed away.  And by good, I mean that he was still able to enjoy life and do the things he enjoyed doing for a large portion of those 3 years. 

This may seem like a sad story and I guess in a way it is. My family misses him, and my kids, despite how young they were when he died still mention him from time to time, as do my husband and I.  He is lovingly referred to as Poppa Stan in our house (a name my son started).  But this story is about more than sadness, it's about a legacy that was left behind.  My mother and her brothers and sisters (keep in mind there are 7 of them)  still get together on a few occasions through the year and manage to keep in touch much more regularly than that.  I have never heard a disagreement between them.  Their children (my cousins) and my siblings and I also keep in touch (thanks to the internet and social networking) and our children play together at family get togethers. We are lucky and blessed.

Thanks Poppa Stan and Grandma June!