Monday, March 6, 2017
To Jack’s family, friends, and of course Lorna
I can’t tell you just how much I miss Jack, and how much he meant to me. From the first time I met him, I knew he was a rare soul. “Miss Beck!” he’d always call out when he saw me. “Miss Beck! Just the person I needed to see.” And then he’d joke with me about getting me to help him split wood, sharpen a chain saw, or clear some bush. Within weeks of my moving in, he insisted on taking me out on his tractor to show me the land that he loved so much. It was a warm but drizzly day when we first went for a drive, and Buster was romping ahead of us. (Buster could still romp in those days). He showed me the lookout ridge and the causeways, and he insisted that I learn to drive the tractor. When I told Jack that I wanted to start a garden, he nodded and didn’t say much. But a few days later he stopped me as I was on my way to work and said “Miss Beck, I’ve been looking at your yard. Your soil is terrible and you don’t get enough sun. I’ve ploughed up some land for you beside my garden.” And so he had. That was Jack. “You can put it on my bill,” he’d joke.
When his wife died, Jack and I spent long hours talking, coming to terms with grief. I had lost my mother just a year before and was still mourning her loss. Jack and I talked through the darkness of those times. That’s why I couldn’t have been happier to see him fall in love again. The first time I saw him holding hands while walking down the laneway with Lorna, my heart just sang. Lorna, you made him so very happy.
As you all know, there were many sides to Jack. In the summertime, I’d often see him resting in his hammock reading book after book with Buster lying in the shade beneath him. He seemed endlessly curious. When we first met, he wanted to know all about my time as a development worker in South Africa. He’d have opinions on politics, history, and of course the stock market, though this is something I knew nothing about. But he and I shared two loves: dogs and the land. I loved that he allowed neither hunting nor pesticides on either of his farms, and so they became sanctuaries for deer, birds, and butterflies. He would also show me the trees he had transplanted and was tending. In the months before he died, he was excited by the possibility of a friend of mine, an apiarist, setting up beehives on his land. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to see that happen. But he did get to meet my dog. And oh, did Jack love dogs. “You know exactly where you are when you have a dog,” he once said. He and I both lost our beloved dogs, Buster and Kara, to old age in 2015, and both dogs are buried out in the woods. But shortly before Jack had his stroke, we were talking about each getting dogs again. I adopted Scout, a rescued Great Pyrenees cross, in mid-May, and Jack was elated to have a dog around again. (Even though I wouldn’t let him feed her hotdogs!) He was talking about taking in a rescue dog himself, and we were going to share the job of looking after them. Sadly, that didn’t happen, but every time I take my pup for a walk out in the fields and woods, I think of Jack. When I see her romping or take her to where the older dogs are buried, I can feel Jack walking beside me.
“You can put it on my bill,” he’d always joke to me whenever he helped me out with something.
I racked up a bill I can never repay – not from favours, but from a friendship that was truly priceless.
I am so much richer for having had you in my life, Jack.
Thank you for being my friend.
With love, respect, and a big wagging tail from Scout,
Sara Beck
