Tag: grief

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Be The Best.

Borscht and Berries

I usually make a shake for breakfast at least 3-4 times per week.  Chris loved them as well.  He wrote the recipe down last year and called them ‘Randy’s Jacked Shakes’….of course he did!  (recipe: 1-2 frozen bananas, 1 cup strawberries (frozen or fresh), 1-2 cups orange juice, 1 cup yogurt, 1 scoop protein powder (you can get at Costco), all measurements are adjusted to taste and consistency)

Anyways, as I was making the shakes one morning this week I realized what I was making them with.  Remember all that food at the funeral?  Well, through the assistance of amazing friends and family about 3 big bags of strawberries were sliced and frozen.  That’s what we were having for breakfast this week.  I thought again of all the generosity and amazing support.

Tonight I was busy downstairs and Ingrid came down about 6pm and said a relative (name protected!) had dropped off some hot borscht.  If you’ve never had borscht, you better get friendly with some Mennonites  (Toews, Friesen, Harder, Thiessen, Funk, Klassen etc etc) and have a bowl.  It is a vegetable based soup that absolutely hit the spot tonight.  Not only with the food aspect but another humble reminder of how many people have cared and are continuing to care for us.

We get through each day and are looking to the future, but any moment and many moments we have thoughts of our amazing, loving, wonderful son Chris who we will all see again one day.

Until then, we’ll have a shake, eat some borscht and keep helping each other one decision at a time.

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Be The Best.

AC and Friends in Concert – June 26

If  you are ready to hear ‘Love Shines’ in concert with some amazing musicians, mark Saturday, June 26th on your calendar.  Tickets are $15 at the door.  Full details on AC’s website.

What you won’t hear from Cathy unless you pull it out of her is that Gemma (Cathy and Karin Dart) won the award for CLASSICAL/TRADITIONAL SONG OF THE YEAR at the 2009 GMA’s. That is the Gospel Music Association of Canada.  Their music is different.  Their music is cool.  They touch lives.  If you’ve never heard a harp live before, you have to come and hear Karin.  It is really cool.  Yah..that’s right.  Harps are cool.  (you can find people playing Iron Maiden on the harp on youtube…Karin won’t be)

I put together a little video for the CMA’s last October.  If you haven’t seen it, now’s your chance.  That last bit about singing in the shower was a required question from the organizers…don’t blame me… 😉

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Be The Best.

The Stanley Cup and Being The Best.

Wow.  It’s over.  The Stanley Cup for 2010 has been won by the Blackhawks.

Now this is not a sports blog per se, so I won’t mention how much I despise the Hawks for beating our beloved Canucks earlier this year…or maybe I will.  Better yet maybe I’ll make a video…oh yah, did that too.  If you haven’t seen it, here’s a minute and 15 seconds of time that you’ll never get back…

Fun aside, the Hawks Chairman and owner, Rocky Wirtz, was interviewed after tonight’s game.  I’m paraphrasing slightly…but the question was, how did you know you were going to win? how could you have set  your expectations so high?

I LOVE LOVE LOVE his answer.  Mr. Wirtz said, I can tell you this much…if we had set the bar lower, we would have achieved it.

Let that sink in.

If we set the bar low…if we aim low…if our goals are low…we’ll probably achieve low.

If we aim high and don’t achieve the ‘prize’, I guarantee you that we’ll achieve more that we ever thought we could.

Be The Best.  What a great example.

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Be The Best.

Longboarding and Be The Best.

I was first introduced to longboarding (like skateboards, but longer!) a couple of years back by Vincent, an exchange student we had stay with us while Max was staying in Quebec at Vincent’s home.

I met a longboarder skating on the back roads of BCIT a few months later and we got to know each other.

I’ve written before about taking calculated risks and to make a long story short, that chance meeting with Patrick Switzer turned into a sponsorship relationship…the first of it’s kind in Canada and probably anywhere in the world between a longboarder and an educational institution.

Patrick flies down hills in races at 70, 80, and 90+ km/h.  It’s crazy stuff.  You can check him out all over youtube.  This article is a great place for more info.

The reason I’m bringing this up today, is I met Patrick this afternoon before he left for the States, then Europe, then Australia and maybe even South Africa over the next 6 months.  He is in the top 3 of the world rankings in longboarding….impressive.

He told me today of how he has set goals, worked hard and never stopped believing he could succeed in his sport and be successful at something he was passionate about.  I love that.  That is Be The Best!  I told him he could win a few races for Chris this year…and I’m not doubting for a minute that he will make that happen.

Go get em Patrick…and thanks for showing us how to live our dreams.

Dreams+Goals+Work+Work+Work=Success.

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Be The Best.

Hit it hard and coast.

I mentioned that I would bring forward a few life lessons that we had developed as a family over the years.

When I was a teenager I worked at a family supermarket.  There was an older gentleman there that had a saying that stuck with me forever.  A big load of groceries would come in off the truck and our job was to get the load into the store and on the shelves.  Every Tuesday and Thursday he would say the same thing to us.  “Ok boys, tonight we are going to HIT IT HARD AND COAST”.

Hit it hard and coast. Work hard, unload the groceries, shorten your breaks and then have a bigger break when the job was done.  Simple.  I love that saying.  I used it with the boys (Max and Chris) all the time.

Our society is built around COASTING first and then WORKING later.  ie…paying on credit and then having to pay the bill later…eating a big greasy meal and then working out later etc.

The principle of ‘hit it hard and coast’ is just the opposite.  Work first. Relax second.

Simple advice that Max and Chris both took to heart….usually!

Hit it hard and coast.

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Be The Best.

Plain and simple.

There is no love like a parent’s love.

Our love for Chris continues every second of every day.

Sometimes we cannot express that as deeply as we feel, but it is there with every heartbeat.

We miss you so much Chris…and when I say ‘we’ I feel you all continuing to stand with us.

One decision at a time…moving towards the new normal, but no one said it was going to be easy.

I know there are many of us who are still working through our feelings about grief and loss especially as they relate to Chris.  If you haven’t already, please find someone you can talk to.  That can be a friend, teacher, parent, coach, relative, etc. etc.

I know after those words saying ‘have a great week’ may sound trite…but I do believe that too.  Let’s have a great week and aim to Be The Best regardless of our pursuits.  For our high school students out there…study hard!

Have a great week.

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Be The Best.

God is dead?

Get ready. This one’s heavy!

Where is God in tragedy? Now there is a question never asked before…(cough). Regardless of your belief system, when you lose a child, I guarantee that you will question everything you believe. Here’s a few thoughts from our journey. Was it ‘God’s will’ that Chris died? Some sort of master plan…everything happens for a reason you know. Really?? Don’t get me going on that one. You know where my mind went? Was it God’s will that 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust?

Don’t think so.

I don’t really know why, but I then thought about the difference between humans and animals.  Generally speaking, animals will operate more by instinct and humans have a unique ability to make choices that go beyond instinctual needs.  Ever seen the Dog Whisperer show with Cesar Millan?  That guy is amazing as he teaches people how to work with their ‘out-of-control’ dogs. You’ll hear a constant theme..don’t treat your dog with human emotions…they are dogs.  Watch the show a couple of times and you’ll see some great illustrations of how we as humans are different from dogs (I realize this may sound silly, but most of Cesar’s ‘interventions’ stem from people applying human logic and decision making with their pets).

So if you would allow me, I’ll suggest the following.  I believe our ability to make choices…some would call this ‘free will’, is so sacred, it’s part of our spiritual DNA….and this is hard to type…even when those choices end up with dire and unintended outcomes. I believe this ability to choose is protected to the point that surpasses human understanding.

Now here’s the wild part.  You know what has been the most EMPOWERING, HEALING, and SPIRITUAL part of our journey without Chris so far?  It has been our ability to CHOOSE.  It has been our ability to make DECISIONS.  It has been our ability to celebrate the one million good choices Chris made.  It’s been our CHOICES that have kept us going. In that ability to CHOOSE we have found strength and a greater understanding of our very human and spiritual DNA.

Is God dead? Your choice, but I think not…I think God lives in every decision we are empowered to make.

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Be The Best.

Is it ok to laugh?

Laughing was a big part of the relationship we had as a family.

Everyone had their roles.  Max, some witty banter playing off a bad pun from me.  Chris, some physical humor or just being Chris and Ingrid being funny without trying to be..which was the funny part! (yah, I know you had to be there most of the time to get this…)

In any event, what I’ve been learning in the past 6 weeks is how close laughter is to tears.  How close love is to anguish.  These apparent opposites are more like close cousins.  The yo-yo and elevator metaphors have never been more real.  Tears are usually just moments or seconds away from laughter.  The emotion continues to be strong.

But is it ok to laugh?  Yes. Yes. Yes.  I can’t imagine what this time would be like without the fragrant punctuation of laughter in the middle of the rain of sadness.  That is truly what it feels like.  The sadness and sorrow is like a fog or a misty Vancouver rain that gets right into your bones.  The laughter is like the perfect cup of coffee on those rainy days.  Yes, it’s ok to laugh…in fact it’s just what the doctor ordered.

In that vein, my amazing crazy group in BCIT’s Marketing department put together a little video this week in our spare time.  Part One you’ve seen before, but I’ll put it here again, and the new video, ‘don’t wear the wrong jersey on gameday part 2’ is below.  We had lots of laughs putting these together…I hope you do when watching.  And finally today….Canucks…please get your act together.  Sorry…just had to say that.

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Be The Best.

Look close, ‘giving’ is a part of ‘grieving’.

Chris' Grandma and Grandpa above Okanagan Lake

Vernon is a picturesque 70 minute drive from Kamloops.  Ingrid and I blitzed up there on Saturday to have lunch with my sister, AC (Cathy AJ Hardy) who had some weekend concerts in the Okanagan and also my parents who live in Vernon.  In honour of Mother’s Day (yes, I know it’s next week!), we took Mom out to the restaurant at Gray Monk Winery just south of Vernon.  Editorial: Great food, service and wine. Go.

Do these people look like they’re in their upper 70’s or late 50’s? It’s hard to tell!

Chris and Max loved going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  When they moved to Vernon, the adventures would usually be week long summer jaunts that included hiking, biking, swimming and the now famous, ‘midnight snack’!  Another highlight was word games which Mom and Dad still play daily.  Scrabble and Boggle were constants or should I say consonants.

I’m not sure why, but I was thinking about the noun GRIEF and the VERB GRIEVE this week.  Grieve is an ‘action word’ if we remember our high school English teachers.  Then I saw something very interesting.  The word GIVE lives inside the word GRIEVE.  We have been blown away by people giving to us during this time.  I write this post from the Boomer family home in Kamloops where they’ve been so incredibly wonderful to us.  (when Langley plays Kamloops today at 1130 in the semi’s we are really going to be in a pickle!!)  From the lacrosse families to my brother-in-law in Vernon (Steve Wulff) who made me speechless yesterday when re presented Ingrid and I with a pencil drawing of Chris…the GIVING has been incredible.

Let me also tell you that our ability to GIVE has been helping us.  A simple act like taking family for lunch or providing support to others has been incredibly helpful for us as well as we continue to find the ‘new normal’.

Is GIVING part of GRIEVING?  Yes…it’s there in black and white.

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Be The Best.

Chris Box Lacrosse Video Tribute

Mean group of players, ready to rumble...!

For those of you who could not make it last night and for those who want to see it again, here is the video portion of the tribute to Chris from the April 27th Junior Thunder game.

You’ll see some of the same interview clips from the memorial service, but I’ve added some box lacrosse pictures as well as a little more intense soundtrack as the 3-minute tribute moves on.  Yes, that is Thunderstruck by AC/DC, but I think my Mom had already guessed that….or not.

Who's that short guy in the middle?

It’s a funny thing…I put this movie together so I knew exactly what was coming and when, but even that did not stop the flow of emotion seeing when viewing the presentation and seeing Chris speaking through the interview clips on the big screen.  “I really want to win”, stated Chris.

So do I man, so do I.