Lydia puts her new driving skills to use delivering the mail, but increasingly her time is taken up with the children in her family and from the neighbourhood, and little Jeff with all his problems becomes a special case. His fate and Lydia’s are forever entwined.

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In July Brother called and said he was coming up to get Tony, but without his wife, who didn’t like the idea of having the boy back. So Tony left and we were back to just the three of us.

The rural mail route contract was open for bids, and since I had my driving licence I bid on it and got it. I started working at the end of July and had two routes, which had me on the road most of the day. I started with an old second-hand car, but soon we bought a brand new ’74 Mercury, the only new car Jack or I ever owned. I loved driving the back roads, stopping at home in the morning and having a late lunch with Louise’s family in the afternoon.

I would still be called in to do supply teaching, so on those days Jack would do the mail delivery for me. I taught every grade, from kindergarten to Grade 8, and found the children getting bolder and the teacher having less power in the classrooms. I didn’t want to have a class permanently and was happy with delivering the mail. When I had to go to Hamilton with Stephen, Jack could work my route, and I took advantage of being away to visit Carolyn, with whom I would stay. Mother had to sell her house in Hamilton and move to a winterised cottage in Stoney Creek on Lake Ontario. The place was very small and there wasn’t too much room for us there.

Jeff was still having problems with his parents and in school. Some days the school would send him home at midday because he couldn’t behave, and other times they simply refused to allow him to attend. Sister had him on medication, but she still wasn’t able to cope with him. Mother had him at her place a lot of the time, but now that she was getting older and still working nights that wasn’t always possible, so Jeff suffered at home.

Tony wasn’t doing too well in his family either and kept getting into trouble at school. Mother told me he was having a rough time at home, but I couldn’t how I could help, so I didn’t interfere. Brother held the mortgage on Mother’s little house, but otherwise his family hardly ever saw her. Things were going from bad to worse for my family while my life was now very good.

Stephen finally graduated from Grade 8, as did Jack’s brother’s daughter. Karen was Paul’s sister, and I had given her a long dress for the special occasion that her mother had to hem for her.

The morning of the big event, Karen woke to find her dress on the ironing board and her mother gone — again. We took her to the ceremony, treating the two graduates to supper, and stayed to watch their dance. With school out for the summer the kids didn’t really need anyone to mind them anymore, and they looked after themselves until the mother reappeared.

Stephen was now in Grade 9 in the town high school, and the next spring I got a call from Mother to say that Tony, who turned 15 the fall before, was at her house. His mother had packed his belongings and threw him out of the house. Tony had a bit of money, so he took a bus to Mother’s house, but he now had no home and no money. Could we take him in? At first Jack hesitated, but as soon as he said yes, Tony was on the next train to Englehart, where he stayed until after high school graduation. We now were moved into Jack’s mother’s house, with her living with her brother outside of North Bay. She couldn’t look after herself anymore, but wasn’t bad enough for a nursing home. Jack used the trailer as a TV repair shop and now had elbow room for everyone.

My boys, as I now called Stephen and Tony, got along with the boys up the road and we treated them alike as far as being in a family went. If I bought something for Stephen, Tony wasn’t forgotten, and because Stephen had his own pellet gun, we now bought one for Tony. The boys would go down by the creek, shooting at small game, usually missing but occasionally bringing a rabbit home for the dog’s dinner. The boys up the road also had pellet guns and they all played with them in the bush. One day Stephen came home to say a pellet ricocheted and struck him in the chin. There was a mark there, but we couldn’t see anything, so we didn’t do anything about it. Unknown to us, the pellet had embedded itself in his chin bone and stayed there until it was discovered years later by a military dentist when Stephen joined the Army. And only then was it removed.

When I found out the boys were hiding in the hay mow and shooting at each other, I confiscated both guns and told the other boys’ mother, who did the same. The boys were lucky no one had lost an eye.

I gave both boys an allowance, and they had to work for it. A chore chart was made and each of the different jobs they were to perform each day was paid a certain amount. If a chore wasn’t done, it wasn’t paid for, and it didn’t take them long to realise that doing everything on the chart brought the full allowance. I would come home from my mail route and the vacuuming was done, the cows fed, dishwasher unloaded, table set for supper and other chores finished while the boys watched TV.

Once in a while they became boisterous and destroyed a few things around here. After putting up with the breakage long enough, I announced that the next thing broken or wrecked would be replaced by them. That’s how I got a new pair of pillow slips, after a pillow fight tore mine, and a new area rug when holes were put in mine when they were asked to beat it on the clothesline. I never had any more things broken in the house after that.

That August Sister called again to see if we would take Jeff. I wanted to refuse, knowing that once he was here and doing all right she would want him back, and it wasn’t fair to us or to Jeff. So I told her we would take him, but he had to stay for the whole school year, and she had to give us written permission to keep him. She agreed, and Stephen, Tony and I drove down to get him in late August. Mother told us that Sister and her husband were getting worse with Jeff’s care, and many times he would call her to say he was hungry but there was no food in the house. Mother did what she could, but had no success with the parents, so she convinced Sister to let me take Jeff – for the fourth time in his nine years.

This time, Jeff asked why he had to come here to live and go to school, and I was hard pressed to explain that it wasn’t his fault and that his parents weren’t able to look after him at that time. I couldn’t tell him that his own parents just couldn’t be bothered with him.
We got new neighbours that summer when the large family up the road moved away, and Jeff soon became friends with Courtney, the youngest of the three girls. They visited back and forth and rode on the same school bus, but Jeff was in a special class while Courtney was in a regular class.

Courtney spent a lot of time at our place, sleeping over many nights and staying for days on end.

In October Tony celebrated his 16th birthday with several friends and the girls up the road. In the photo he’s standing at the back and Jeff and Stephen are on the right on the couch.

We played a dress-up game where everyone had go grab something from a pile of clothes and put it on. The fun and laughter had everyone in stitches. Tony enjoyed being the centre of attention and Jeff loved all the people in the house just having a good time.
Courtney, who’s in the photo below with Jeff and Jack, wanted Jeff to spend the night at her place, and Jeff had never been invited to a friend’s for a sleep-over, so he was all excited to go. While he was gone I rearranged the living room furniture, and it made Jeff panicky on his return. He couldn’t believe this was our home. It reminded me of myself after my devastating illness, and how changes affected me. I was careful not to change things when he was away and had him help me whenever I wanted to move anything.

Jeff’s printing was all disjointed. When he wrote a word, all the letters’ strokes were askew, and it looked like Chinese, or hen-scratching. Because of all his previous problems at school we didn’t push him to excel, and just let him go at his own pace. Jeff made friends at school with Ronnie and they soon became best buddies. All I heard was “Ronnie this” and “Ronnie that”.

The chore chart now had Jeff’s name added, and he was getting paid for work that he could handle. He loved getting paid each Saturday, just like Tony and Stephen, and spent his money on train-related books or toys.

Winter was very cold that year and we had to laugh at Stephen and Tony. In the morning both boys were “cool” going to meet the bus. Especially Tony, who was quite a ladies’ man. They left the house in running shoes, jeans, shirt open half way down their chests, no hat and no mitts, just wearing a jacket. But going to the barn to feed the cows was a different story. They put on long johns, felt-lined boots, hats, scarves and warm mitts. They were gone for only about 15 minutes, just long enough to toss some hay to the cows and give them some grain, but they couldn’t get cold doing that. Waiting for the bus sometimes took longer, but they braved the cold so the girls on the bus could see how tough they were.

Christmas was coming, and Louise and I helped the CAS put on their annual Christmas party. Jeff was on pins and needles when Santa came in, and the joy he expressed when his name was called to receive a gift was priceless. He talked about what he wanted Santa to bring, and I passed the information on to his parents. They called once in a while, but the calls were getting fewer and fewer. If Jeff felt lonely for them we had him call home, but by Christmas even he didn’t do that very often.

We took the whole family to Midnight Mass and I had Jeff go up and receive First Communion, thinking this might be the only chance he might get since his parents just didn’t seem to care about such things. I explained what was happening, and at the end of the service I told the priest what we did. At Jeff’s age, he said, it was all right, and he congratulated him.

On Christmas morning each boy found what he wanted under the tree. Tony and Stephen got records and clothes and Jeff got a train set and a portable tape recorder from his parents. We gave him toys and clothes too, but that train and recorder were his prize processions. Jack mounted the train on a piece of plywood and Jeff spent hours watching it run in circles. When Courtney came over they taped themselves saying funny things and making rude noises, laughing the whole time.

Jeff’s birthday was in April and I asked a friend of mine who drove a train if Jeff could have a ride in the engine as a gift. It was all arranged, and I wouldn’t tell Jeff for fear he would drive me crazy with anticipation. Courtney was spending more and more time at our house, and I learned from her mother that Courtney was becoming psychic, just like her grandmother. She sometimes spoke to spirits and seemed to know something would happen before it did. At first we just let it pass, but pretty soon we had to take it seriously.
The new year had a big change in Jeff. He settled down at school, was no longer on his medication, and his schoolwork improved so much that we could now read what he wrote. He no longer wondered why his parents didn’t want him home and seemed to mature almost overnight.

Courtney’s mother was an artist and had a showing of her work down south, so Courtney stayed with us while the other girls had a babysitter. After a few days she came into our room in the middle of the night and asked to sleep with us, saying she had had a bad dream but couldn’t remember what it was. She crawled in and then asked if she could go home after school the next day. I told her to let the bus driver know, and she fell asleep.
Next day was Friday and Jeff came home alone. Jack and I had been wanting to buy a set of bunk beds for Jeff’s room and we were going to Kirkland Lake to see about some after supper. Stephen was going to a class toboggan party and Tony was upstairs, listening to records and talking on his CB radio. Jeff didn’t want to go shopping, just play outside for a while before bedtime, so we got ready to leave and told Tony to mind Jeff, who was outside got in the car.

As we were driving away, Jeff ran up to the car and said he wanted to go with us, but he was in his play clothes, covered with snow, and we had no time to change him so I said no. As we drove away Jeff sank down in the snow, crying. That was my last memory of Jeff.
Upon arriving in the driveway later that night I could see a pair of legs sticking out from under an old stove that we recently took out of the house. I screamed that Jeff was dead, and poor Jack, who hadn’t seen the overturned stove, didn’t know what I was talking about. I ran into the house, screaming for Tony, who was still upstairs. He came running down and when he learned what had happened, kept repeating over and over that he thought Jeff went with us because he didn’t come back into the house. Stephen was still away.

Jack lifted Jeff up and lay him by our back door, where he looked like he was sleeping, and I had Tony get a sheet to cover him up. Jack called the police, and while we waited Stephen’s teacher called to see if we could pick him up. I’m now glad that the teacher hadn’t come while we were away and found Jeff. He had a car full of boys and that would have been traumatic for them.

I was in shock. How could I tell Jeff’s parents and my Mother what had happened? Jeff was put in my care and now he was dead. I just couldn’t tell them. Jack called Brother, who went over to Mother’s place to tell her, and together they went to Sister’s place. Mother called and everyone both here and there was crying. Jack had to deal with the police and wait for the coroner and the funeral car.

By now it was after midnight, but I called Louise and Ross and they drove right out. Ross had to go back to look after their kids, but Louise stayed the night with me. I had taken some brandy, too much of it, and spent the night in the bathroom being sick.
The next few days were a blur to me but Courtney’s mother was notified and came home right away. I learned from her that Courtney was very restless after coming home that day and wanted her mother. We figured out that the bad dream she had was a premonition of something bad happening to Jeff and she wanted out of our house. Jack and I discussed what we just learned about Courtney and decided that if Courtney had stayed, we wouldn’t have left both kids at home, but taken them shopping with us.

But the wheels of fate had been set in motion and Courtney had gone home. Jeff didn’t want to go shopping, and the inevitable happened.

Courtney had a difficult time through all this. She kept telling her mother Jeff was in their house, still talking to her and telling her not to be sad. She tried to get away from these spirits but she wasn’t allowed to, and she was getting into a terrible state. Her grandmother talked to her and so did we, but we couldn’t get through to her for a long time. I never believed in talking to the dead, but I had my doubts after witnessing how Courtney acted, both before and after Jeff’s death.

The coroner found that it was an accidental death and it was announced on the radio the next morning. I didn’t hear it, but Jeff’s friend Ronnie did and his mother said his eyes got big and he asked, “Is that my Jeff?”. The two boys were to have a sleep-over in a few days, but now we had Ronnie come with condolences, and he was such a sad boy that I gave him Jeff’s train set and some of his favourite articles.

The funeral was in Hamilton, and Sister and her husband made a big show of the event, pretending for the people attending how much Jeff meant to them. We, the family, knew differently, but said nothing. I always took out school insurance on the kids, so that helped pay for the elaborate funeral Jeff’s father arranged. The company he worked for took up a collection for them, but instead of helping Mother and me pay the funeral bills, he and Sister took a trip to the east coast, not caring how we made out.

I had a hard time getting through the next few weeks, and I still can’t believe Jeff is gone and I’ll never see him again. But life moves on, and the pain, although still there, became number.

Continue to Part 13.

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Previous chapters: Part 1 @ Part 2 @ Part 3 @ Part 4 @ Part 5 @ Part 6 @ Part 7 @ Part 8 @ Part 9 @ Part 10 @ Part 11