From Shadow to Light

When you are kid, you often feel like you are living in your parents' shadow.

At least that is how I felt, growing up in a small town where my dad was the high school principal, alderman and respected community member and my mom was a teacher and a compulsive volunteer.

"Oh, you're George Hartford's daughter," people would say.  "Ah, I know your mom!" 

Even now I meet people who knew my parents years ago and hear stories about them.

My parents were leaders in their own way. When they would see a need, they would act. Maybe that is how they learned to live from their parents. Or maybe it was a consequence of being city-bred people who moved to a small town or maybe it was the result of growing up during the Depression or living through a world war.

They had high expectations for us, their four children. Not about what kind of marks we should get or what career path we should follow (although they certainly had suggestions we didn't comply with). They did not have expectations about the kind of wealth we should attain or the status we should achieve. Their expectations were about the kind of people we should become. The sense of obligation to honour those expectations was unspoken, but oh so very powerful.

Did we live up to their expectations?  That's something I will never know.  

But I do know their shadows still loom. The shadows are there when we go to places we visited together. I think of Mom when I am shopping. I think of Dad when there are workplace challenges.The shadows are dark when I do wrong. The shadows loom when I wonder what would Dad have done or what would Mom think.That's when the shadows no longer dominate but guide and support. I think of them both when there is big news in the world and when my kids do something extraordinary or when I have big decisions to make or when I feel sad. Their shadows loom over holidays and special days and dark days. That is when their shadows move from haunting me to enveloping me with warmth. 

I thought of my dad today when I learned that his good friend Burns had passed away. Burns or "Fuzz" and my dad had a long history. They fought together in World War II. They returned to Canada where they had families and served their communities.  They were alike in many ways, and though I did not know him well, I know he was a good and wise man who loved his family.

I know enough about Burns to know that his shadow will figure large in the lives of his two grown children and his grandchildren.

I hope for them that those shadows will gradually cease to be the sometimes dark shadows of memory.

I hope they will find, as I have, that those shadows have gradually turned to light. Light that illuminates a path through this uncertain and dark world. 

The light cast by good parents who have raised their children well.