Sunday night – Four years Sam

Sam.. you left us four years ago today. We remember the brightness of your smile and the strength of your hugs and it lets us go on.

Today we are surrounded by the love each other, our families and our community. We felt you near all day.. I hope you know the depth of love folks still have for you and for us..

We’ve had a candle burnign all day for you.. In my culture we call it a jahrzeit candle.. Jahrzeit means ‘year time’ ..

To say we remember your passing today hardly captures it… we remember your life and your passing every moment of every day. Today marks the journety for us around our sun.. .. or.. I guess.. around our son. .. This is the day that others most strongly remember our loss.. and that brings it’s own special pain and joy..

‘It’s the day we mark your passing .. though the exact day we recognize
hardly matters. Yesterday your soul left your body.. today we made the
legal pronouncement.. tomorrow.. you donated your organs and saved four
folks lives..

As is now our custom, we planned a day of observation with friends. We got some new Sam stickers to give out for this years boards and skis..

Around noon we met about 35 friends for a hike up Bolton mountain. Bolton has been special to all 3 kids.. We’ve climbed Bolton every year since Sam’s passing.. it’s a steep but short climb.. The weather was mild (in th 20’s).. and very little snow..

We got to the top and grouped up in the warming hut.

we had quite a crowd !

Gabe and I took the short kike up to the fire tower. Gabe, Max and I have climbe d the tower each of the past four years. Max couldn’t come up until Wed.. so this year it was just Gabe and me.

We crawled up the rickety ladder to the platform.

It was freezing.. but the wind was calm, .. it was clear too.. which is unusual.. beautiful views !

I screwed a pierced samstone to the railing..

Then gabe lit the smoke bombs we’d brought.. usually we bring fireworks.. but we didn’t want anything with a boom this year.

We came down and the ext group came up to pay homage to Sam..

We came back to the house.. then lounged around for a couple of hours until people started showing up.. Mason had just gotten some new ink he wanted to show us.

Pretty soon, the house was packed.. I think we peaked around 80 folks.. it was more like 60 most of the night..

The phone was ringing all day and night with folks calling to say they were thinking of us and of sam..

We even had a skype call with Kevin.. we put it on the speaker system so everyone could talk to him .

The other big news for the evening was the return of our dear friends the Townsends. They’ve been gone for nearly 2 years traveling the earth.. They flew in around 3:30 into Montreal.. than came straight here. So much of our early time after sam’s death was with them. It was wonderful and meaningful having them back tonight. it was/is So, so good to see all of them , !

Ian grew more than a foot !

mid party I noticed how many folks were in sams shirts.. it was wonderful to see..

The dogs mingled all night.. most of it they spent lying under the tale looking for handouts.

A couple of hours in we handed out red bull and held a toast to sam..

I include this picture because of the ‘ghost ball’ in it.. never sure what these are.. but they appear in my photos of these parties all the time.. very interesting.. what are they ?