2025 A to Z Challenge Blog for the Letter H

April 9, 2025. My father died just a few months before COVID 19 struck. Had he lived, today would’ve been his 97th birthday. I think he would’ve been very disappointed in the world we live in now, a world divided with so much lack of compassion.

During WWII, he wasn’t old enough to enlist at the beginning although he tried. He did join in 1944, but he wasn’t sent overseas the way his friends and sisters were. Instead, he patrolled along the canal, watching for German subs and potential sabotage.

While he worked at the local pulp and papr mill, he stayed in the militia after the war, got into the medical core, and when he finally left the army, he remained a staunch Legion member and a supporter of the Canadian Armed Forces. He was proud to see my grandkids join the army cadets and the two oldest were part of the Honor Guard at his funeral. The last thing he would ever have expected to see was the fractured world we live in and the rise on Naziism in the United States.

Ghandi’s words provide hope in what is essentially a world gone mad. The expression, history repeats itself has never been more relevant. And the adage that says, those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it, resonnates.

It doesn’t matter what your personal political beliefs are so much as what your ethical ones are. We are all human, and we are all flawed in some way. We have faults and qualities, we may have different skin colors and sexualities, our sexual preferences can vary, as can our religions, but we are all stuck on this big blue marble together. Peal away all those layers, and we are all the same: bones, cartilage, nerves, organs, and hopefully souls. We should treat each other with compassion and follow the golden rule. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.

Today’s letter is H, and I’ve chosen to focus my thoughts on my oldest grandchild, the one who made me a grandma. Hannah lives in Europe, so we don’t see her as often as we would like. With the advent of Skype and Facetime, we do get to talk to her and we’ve watched her grow into an amazing young lady with an incredible sense of humor. Her studies have focused on pharmacy. She’s working on her master’s degree. She speaks several language and has traveled extensively. Opportunities to do do living in Europe are vastly different than they are here. Meet Hannah.

And here is a song for her.

Come back tomorrow for the letter I. Looking for other bloggers? MASTER LIST https://tinyurl.com/tauke86z