Love Letters from Heather

To my friend Barry.

We both shared a mutual aunt and uncle; however, we weren’t cousins by blood. More like shirttail cousins—my aunt married your uncle.

I first set eyes on you when I was sixteen. Our meeting was the perfect Hollywood meet-cute. Well, if instead of Hollywood, we are talking about a craggy outport in Central Newfoundland, and instead of romance, there was friendship.

My family was visiting Cottrell’s Cove, my grandmother, and the haunts of a different time, snapshots of the past still appearing in the present. Pungent salt air, longer-than-imaginable August nights, white blueberries on low-lying bushes (they were white because they were green), government wharfs, fishing stages, abandoned houses left to be returned to nature, and mystery, wonder, and magic. It was so different from where I grew up in greater Toronto suburbia; the home my great grandfather built might as well have been a yellow wooden house on Mars.

My oldest brother, long married and living independently in Ontario, was entrusted with looking after my dog, Oleo. Christened by my Grandpa, Oleo was a reddish-brown mixture of various dog breeds—some known, some guessed, many a mystery. Oleo means a mixture of oils, and the name stuck.

We had received a call that Oleo was missing back home. Somehow, she had left my brother’s property, and he couldn’t locate her. I didn’t take the news terribly well. I was distraught. And my grandmother, Ida Maud (Nan to me), a woman tough as old boots, with a Goliath will and the heart of a racehorse, said, “Don’t worry, ’eather, me dear. Youse can get another dog.”

She meant well . . .

Fuel. Flame. I was seething. “I don’t want another dog.”

I complained quietly to my mother about Nan’s comment, wiped my tears, and set out on a walk.

Meet-cute, stage left.

There you were in the yard with a beautiful Irish setter. The red fur reminded me of Oleo, and you were most definitely the inspiration for JK Rowling’s character Harry Potter. Well, if Harry Potter had a moustache, wore faded jeans, and smoked cigarettes. But the slight build, wire-rimmed glasses, and bowl-precision haircut were spot on.

“Hi. I like your dog. Mine is missing back home.”

You probably told me the dog’s name. I don’t remember it now.

We figured out that we were related—sort of, but not really—and chatted.

Somehow you invited me to hang out with your friends that night. And, by hang out you meant sitting with a bunch of teenagers on the guardrails on the side of the road smoking weed. I did not participate. Although an education, it wasn’t my scene. Eventually my parents drove by and picked me up, and you probably went to the top of the church hill to drink beer with your friends. We did hang out long enough in the forthcoming days for me to discover a common interest—writing.

I didn’t see you for eleven years after that visit. We wrote letters occasionally. You went off to King’s College, Dalhousie, to study journalism. I thought you were really cool! I wished I was cool and brave enough to get into a program like that! Truth be told, I envied you. Part of me wished I could be like you.

You went back to your beloved Newfoundland and followed your dream: reporter, photographer, columnist, author, and researcher are some of your many credits during your career.

On a return visit when I was twenty-seven, we stopped into your media agency in Clarenville to get copies of a diary written by a Methodist minister who had come to Cottrell’s Cove from England many years before. You photocopied it and also asked to make one for yourself. I like that you are fascinated by history.

You appeared to be the same Barry I had met when I was sixteen, although a cane gave away the fact that MS was just beginning to become comfortable in your body. We didn’t chat long, and now twenty-eight years have passed . . . a cane became a chair, and the disease that initially teased you turned to full-blown taunting. But that never stopped you from achieving your goals.

It was great connecting again on social media in the last few years. I see you put your hat into the political ring in 2019 and continue to advocate for what you think is right. Good on you!

It is my hope to visit you again sometime. However, this crazy pandemic has played havoc with a lot of my plans, and I am dealing with a lot of uncertainties. But there are some things I AM certain of:

You are very talented.

You are determined.

You are smart.

You are very passionate about positive change.

You are resilient.

You are resourceful.

You make a difference.

You were all those things when you comforted me about my lost dog way back when I was only sixteen, and you continue to be all these things today. I am so happy I got to meet you.

You once told me that you haven’t made any new memories since MS shut down your mobility, so in your mind it’s only 2000. I want you to challenge this statement, Barry. I hope this letter, as insignificant as it may be, becomes one more memory for you, and I know there are more memories yet to come.

Thank you, Barry.

Heather

P.S. Oleo was eventually found living her best life with an elderly couple about three miles north of my brother’s house. However, lucky for me (and even MORE fortunate for my brother and our relationship), she was returned without incident.