A tribute to Emerson

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Mary Cook

EMC Lifestyle - Losing a sibling is never easy. You try to remember the good times, and they help sustain you, as you come to grips with the finality of the sudden death of a loved one.

Last week my brother Emerson, who has been so much a part of these stories since their inception in 1976, passed away.

He had a massive heart attack and died in hospital in St. Thomas.

And so, this week, please let me tell you about another side of the impish brother who has peppered the pages of this paper for more than 35 years. To do so, I have to roll back the clock to when he was only 16 years old, and when he put on the uniform of a Royal Canadian Airman. The war had barely started and he wanted so badly to be in the service. He would celebrate his 17th birthday in Holland. He wasn't the only Canadian "boy soldier" to join up and head to the battlefields, he was just my brother.

His mail home was full of description. He had a great talent for painting a picture of whatever country he was in. And his ability to always see the lighter side of life certainly manifested itself when he was in Holland. He was a dispatch-rider, and a picture sent home of him straddling his motor-bike, had our mother convinced he was going to end up in jail. Painted in blazing white letters on the motor were two words: "Miss Carriage", while others serving with him, had inscriptions like "Miss Canada" and "Miss America"!

We always thought Emerson was born laughing. When he arrived back in Canada, and he and his young family took up residence in a military base, and with children of his own, I wasn't surprised when I visited, to hear a rap on the door, and a group of youngsters stood there wanting to know if Emerson could come out and play!

He bought me my first flashy bicycle when he came home from overseas. It was blazing red! It had feathers on the handlebars, a bell the size of a platter, and shiny silver fenders. For a young girl in high school, this was the ultimate bicycle, and it served me well for many years.

Emerson was tall, and when he lived in Port Stanley, he was known as "The Laird". He knew everyone in the town and there was no mistaking him. He often wore plus-fours, a deerstalker hat, and carried a walking stick with a brass boar on the handle. A carry-over from his service days, you could see your face in his shoes.

He was very proud of his family, and was devoted to his two grandsons, Tyler and Lucas. We talked often on the phone, and he always started his conversation by saying, "well, g'day, g' day, how are things in the Valley?"

It was always my belief that the war robbed my brother of his childhood. He went overseas as a young boy, and came back a man. I often wonder if he had had the chance, could he have gone on to help design all those glass buildings we see in the cities today. He drew them when he was a youngster around our kitchen table on the farm. We thought at the time that Emerson was "different" ...imagine: glass towers from ground level reaching up into the sky...imagine: elevators going up on the outside of buildings. And we'd laugh at the absurdity of his dreams. Yes, we'd say, "Emerson is different."

And what of the stories I told about him? Emerson allowed me generous literary licence as his mischievous behaviour became part of my tales of our growing up on a Renfrew County farm. It was touching last Sunday at my church, when so many people gave me their sympathy and wondered if the tales about my brother would end. They will go on as before. Memories of a loved one do not cease with his passing.

And so I ask you, my faithful readers, to remember a fun-loving, often exasperating, but always full of life individual, who made my stories come alive. I will miss him greatly, as will those who were dear to his heart, but it is my prayer that he is in another place where he has found rest, where his wit will still be intact to amuse and, yes, perhaps confound those around him.