{"id":34932,"date":"2019-04-26T14:48:42","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T18:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/?p=34932"},"modified":"2019-04-26T14:48:42","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T18:48:42","slug":"is-daddy-coming-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/temas-de-capa\/is-daddy-coming-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Daddy coming home?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was hot in Oshawa on May 23, 1975\u2014over 28\u00ba C. The sun was shining down on five-year-old me as I walked home from a long day of playing with plasticine and drawing with fat crayons in Mrs. Jeffery\u2019s kindergarten class. It was a Friday and only three days away from my birthday\u2014life was fantastic. I had spent a long time pestering my parents to buy me a guitar and was certain that on Monday morning I would wake up and get started on my new career\u2014famous musician. <\/strong><\/p>\n

As I turned the corner I could see the red painted brick of our 2-story house and a row of green lawns dotted with pretty yellow dandelions\u2014I was almost home. The gate slammed behind me as I ran up the steps, ready to greet my dad…but Daddy didn\u2019t meet me at the door. As I made my way to the kitchen I noticed a clean empty plate on the table, accompanied by a knife, fork and glass. Odd. Dad was usually finished eating by now. He\u2019d come home from his job as a gardener at John Brouwer Landscaping, shower and have lunch before going to his second job at the old Dunlop Tire plant in Whitby.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs Daddy coming home?\u201d<\/em><\/strong> I asked my mom.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, I\u2019m scared\u201d<\/em><\/strong>, was her quiet response.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Moments later there was a knock on the door. Two uniformed police officers stood in front of us asking if my father was home. \u201cYou know he\u2019s not,\u201d answered my mom who was quickly getting frantic. These officers were dispatched to give my mother the horrific news\u2014Daddy wasn\u2019t coming home. My father had died at work, drown in a swimming pool on the Brouwer property. Apparently, the employees were allowed to cool off in the pool\u2014one of those old style in-ground pools with a shallow end that led to a steep drop and (in this case) no divider rope to warn the swimmer of the change in depth\u2014and my father, who wasn\u2019t a strong swimmer, slipped to the deep end and never got out.<\/p>\n

Our happy home had been turned upside down\u2014my 30-year-old stay-at-home mom was now a widow forced to figure out how she was going to financially and emotionally raise my little sister and I. Needless to say, she was a mess and the future looked bleak. Brouwer didn\u2019t show up at the funeral or call but he did send flowers. No financial compensation was ever offered and my mother, who could barely speak English, didn\u2019t know where to turn or what to do. The clerk at the Employment Agency encouraged her to apply for social assistance but for a proud Portuguese woman, this was not an option. A friend at Chrysler\u2019s Ajax plant took my mother to fill out an application and speak with Margaret, the manager in charge of hiring. Her application showed no outstanding skills and no experience but Margaret had pity and hired the young lady sitting in front of her, dressed head to toe in black.<\/p>\n

Years later my cousin Tony was speaking with his lawyer and mentioned the accident. Naturally, there should have a settlement but unfortunately the statute of limitations stated that any claim had to be made within two years of the accident. Disappointing but in the big picture, it was unimportant. Financially we were fine. Mom worked hard to make sure my sister and I were comfortable, and our extended family pitched in to help raise us.
\nIt\u2019s been 44 years since Daddy last came home and although I don\u2019t usually think of his death as a \u201cwork accident\u201d because it happened on his break, I do think of it as preventable had safety precautions been in place. I spent my 6th birthday at my father\u2019s funeral, not exactly what I had planned but I find solace in knowing the last purchase he made was a sunburst acoustic guitar.<\/p>\n

David Ganh\u00e3o<\/strong><\/p>\n

DR<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was hot in Oshawa on May 23, 1975\u2014over 28\u00ba C. The sun was shining down on five-year-old me as I walked home from a long day of playing with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":34933,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4530],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/1-23.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}