[ joe hill ]

soooooo... we were introduced to an elderly couple, joe & tina, who live oppersite. everyone had the upmost respect for them.

joe walked with a crooked wooden stick & i often had chats with him when i was out gardening. he was always very cheerful & had good things to say. one day he pulled old photos of our house out of his pocket & gave them to us ~ he grew up there.

they have lots of cats & had to buy a ton of cat food every week, he’d leave his stick leaning up against his burgundy mini van while making trips, often leaving the trunk open for hours. both my husband & i offered to help him if we saw him ~ but he had a great sense of pride.

on day flashing lights flooded our sitting room, my boys were going nuts as they LOVE anything to do with the emergency services (especially firetrucks). it was an ambulance outside their home. joe was wheeled out & driven off. later i saw his daughter sitting on her porch so i went over to offer my help in anyway i could.

then i’d keep asking after him & it was always the same news.

last week it really snowed... my husband, mike, took a road trip with us to the supermarket ~ the boys were so excited driving in the snow! mike has a ‘shopping window’ ~ i could tell he’d had enough by the time we’d got to the check out. then i couldn’t get oscar’s zipper up & he was trying to show me a giraffe on an advert!

mike had started to walk out with flynn our other son ~ i saw joe’s daughter, paying for her grocerys, said hello & asked after her dad. she told me he’d died... i could contain my sadness & started sobbing as i gave her a big hug at the check outs. then i didn’t feel i could just walk away, so i stayed sobbing for a minute. mike is wondering where the heck i’d got to comes back into shoprite... to find his wife & neighbor crying... needless to say he handled it very well.

the exciting trip in the snow had ended for me... i was so sad... the last thing i said to joe hill was could i borrow his wheel barrow! & the image of the burgundy mini van, with the open trunk & crooked stick leaning up against it is burnt into my mind.

once he saw me getting out of the car with flynn, who was 2 weeks old, i’d been crying & he asked me what was wrong. i told him i’d just been let go from my job (i was literrally returning from that ‘meeting’) he said great time to be fired! gesturing to flynn & it was true! thank you joe!

...another candle blown out. i will really miss you mr hill.