Darlene’s Memorial Opening Comments  November 2020

 Thank you for coming out today to honour and remember Darlene. She was so important to me and well thought of by so many friends and family alike. This became clearer when I posted about her illness on Facebook and later about her passing on September 18^th, all of the 87 responses had a common thread. It is quite clear that:

·          She was much loved by all

·         She was a beautiful lady

·         She had a heart for those in need

·         She was a tolerant, kind and a gentle soul

Clearly I knew all of that and more. I knew her as a wife, lover, friend and soulmate. She was my rock when things didn’t go quite the way I thought that they should. She never had a word of criticism through a couple of career changes. She just smiled and said “you’ll figure it out”. We had 29 wonderful years together.

While she was all of the things I just said and I thought I was the only one who knew this, she was also a very self-assured and may I say it – a strong willed person who clearly knew her mind. Turns out I was the last to find that out. All of her family had known that since she was a child. And I’m sure that you will hear more of that later.

Darlene and I enjoyed a good life together. Travel was important to both of us. We started our life together by getting married in Montego Bay in Jamaica. Then we travelled to some other fun places like Hawaii, Florida, Puerto Rico, St Thomas, San Francisco and Las Vegas. We also spent a lot of time in some not so fun places like the Down Town East Side cleaning rooms and helping tenants in four SOR’s on behalf of Community Builders. They also led us to Haiti beginning just after the 2010 earthquake through 2013 where she found her niche working with the kids in the school and the orphanage.

But we also got to go to other interesting places in Canada like southern Ontario, my birthplace. We went to the Badlands in Alberta, to Whitehorse and Dawson City in the Yukon, to Montreal and Quebec City and on to Charlottetown, PEI and to New Brunswick in the Maritimes. As well, we made the usual trips to Vancouver Island and Barkerville. We were blessed to have also many of those trips with good friends in our family plane all through Washington and Oregon.

All through those years we were a family. We argued with each other and we forgave each other. We tolerated each other’s idiosyncrasies. We suffered each other’s health issues. We prayed together. We moved twice. First from Brookswood to Clayton and then more recently to Langley City. In short we lived together. Now she is gone to her well-earned rest but I am going to continue to miss her.

Thank you for your patience in listening to that trip down memory lane and now I will shut up and allow others who know her as well and perhaps even better than me some time to share their remembrances...

I am honoured that people who were very important to Darlene have all offered to speak today. They are three members of her family. We will hear from Geoff and Tom Carr, Doug Lucier and a lifetime friend, Jill Rose.