I'll Miss You Grampy Thompson

This week I lost my grandfather...Ralph Thompson. This has been one of the most weirdest experiences of my life. They say everyone grieves differently, but I don't even know if I'm grieving. I only recently got to know my grandfather better, he has lived in Burlington, Ontario for all of my life, and I only ever got to see him when he visited in the summer time.

This past summer, I had the opportunity to go to Burlington while he was in the hospital, it was there that I realized how proud and important I was to him. All his family was very important to him. I just think it was difficult for him to show it to us.

It's amazing...I find I've learned a lot about life from this death, and a lot about people. I've even learned a little bit about myself. I gave the Eulogy at the funeral, I never dreamed I would have the privelage and honour to do that for my grandfather and my family...Mostly I did it for my mom. I can't imagine what she's thinking. All I think, when I put myself in her shoes is what would it be like to not have any parents. She and her sisters are where the generations end, there is no parent behind her...I just can't imagine the surrealness of that thougt.

Well, there are my thoughts, and here is my eulogy:

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
Ernest Hemingway

A perfect description to why we like to know a little bit about who a person was, what they did, and what they cherished most in their lives. I received 2 letters one from Metta a friend in Ontario, a neighbour who lived across and Hazel Douthwright Who lived on the next farm in Cassidy Lake.

To begin Ralph Thompson was the second son of Jennie and Leonard Thompson of Taylor Lake Road. He was born on July 30 1929. He lived on a farm and worked in the woods at an early age. He talked about a time when he was 12 years old and his dad was sick and they were running out of wood for the stoves. Ralph and a younger brother hooked up a team of horses and went to woods, worked all day to bring out a load of wood for the family. So even at a young age Ralph was in the woods.

Ralph had 1 sister Doreen who later became a nurse and four brothers, Cecil, Gerald, George and Harold.

As a young man Ralph worked in clearing land, one such job that he helped with was clearing land for the Saint John Airport.

Ralph married Norma Ann in 1957, when they were first married they lived on St. Martin’s Road where they built there home and Ralph spent days driving a government truck. They then went on to the Cassidy Lake Farm, or as I fondly call it Grampy Thompsons farm.

Hazel douthwright can remember when Ralph moved to Cassidy Lake in 1961 with his wife Norma and there two little girls, Laura, Beth, and later on having two more girls Karen and Kelly. He wasn’t a wealthy man as far as money but he had riches with his family.

Ralph loved his farms, he had all kinds of animals and loved them, he especially loved cats and dogs, and his favourite horse named John.

Some of Ralph’s favourite things to do were to go to Sussex to the Wednesday Auction. , not so much to buy anything, just to talk to old friends, and no matter where he went he always made new friends. He also would go to Hauling matches; he attended all he could make, always hoping Elden DeMerchant’s team would come first.

Ralph never talked bad of anyone, he had great patience, very few times he let his anger show, he always seemed happy in his life, never complaining. Metta says the same things: A man true to himself, Ralph was always Ralph, be it whether you talked to him Monday or Friday, he would greet you in the same manner, the famous big smile and always kind words to go along with it


He was a great neighbour, his neighbors became his friends. Like Hazel’s father (Kenneth) they worked together doing most chores, haying, cutting wood, sharing pastures, machinery, even conversation, shoeing horses, even dressing deer that Ralph hit on the road at night.

There was one thing Ralph couldn’t do. He couldn’t milk a cow, he tried and tried to learn always ending up with a dry pail. Norma took the girls to the barn and did the milking.

After Normas passing in 1979 Ralph went through some rough times, then Rita came to Cassidy Lake, they became real good friends and he returned to Ontario to live at her house, never forgetting his New Brunswick roots. According to Metta Ralph was always true to his roots, he missed all those from “down home” most of all,he missed his girls. He talked a lot about his girls. What they were doing, about their families, and even when Laura got a new dog. He loved to share stories about his past.

He would come back two or three times a year, every year, I can see those summers that he was at the farm. Lots happened at the farm, I remember Kelly getting engaged, I remember running through the fields, family barbecues, I think all of the grandkids at one point in time have fallen into the stream and have been drenched from head to toe. Ralph was there for all of that.

He came back every year until 2007 when he was too ill to make the trip. Metta says that He was one of the few people that she’s ever met that managed to maintain his positive attitude all through his illness.

Now his final trip home, he is still going to be resting beside his old neighbors, Kenneth, Murray, and Dorothy, who are all in the Sussex corner cemetery, a place we can visit and have fond memories of days gone bye, with the smells in the air of fresh cut hay and home grown fertilizer.

Ralph Thompson will be missed and will always be in our memories.

Kelly Long his youngest daughter with a little help wrote a poem in memory of Grampy Thompson. As I read this poem think of Ralph.


CELEBRATE YOUR LIFE

Life is precious, life is sweet
I am a Man who know no defeat

Lumber Jack, Farmer, Scrap Yard and More.
My life was full without All the bore

My friends and family I was truly blessed,
Couldn't of asked for anything less

Good times and bad were all special to me
now God has come to set me free

don't be sad, Please don't mourn,
I have been a free spirite since the day I was born

Remember the good times and keep them forever
I will take them with me as memories to treasure

The time has come for me to go
A place called heaven is where I will flow

The Pain is gone and the peace has set in
I am in a good spot now my family and friends


I'll miss you Grampy Thompson