My Dad worked hard on his hobby farm and often recruited his grandchildren to help him
At my Dad's funeral, three of his grandsons shared stories about their Grandpa. One of the things they all talked about was the way they had worked together with their grandfather on his hobby farm in Steinbach.
He had given them many different tasks to do but the one they liked the least was picking up all the sticks and branches in his yard after a storm or after a very windy day. Grandpa didn't want to risk damaging his riding lawnmower if some sticks got caught in it so that meant every single stick and twig needed to be hand-picked off the property.
My mother often worked alongside her husband and grandchildren to pick up fallen branches and sticks from their hobby farm yard
His grandsons talked about how their grandfather had taught them the value of hard work during those stick-picking sessions which were long and arduous. If they would head to the wheelbarrow to deposit just a few sticks there, their Grandpa would remind them to make sure they were carrying a full load before making the trip to the wheelbarrow. "God gave you two arms for a reason," he would say.
My Dad's funeral was on Saturday in Winnipeg and on Sunday morning our whole family drove out to Steinbach to lay him to rest beside my mother in the graveyard there. On his way to the cemetery, one of my nephews drove onto my parents' old property, the site of all those stick-picking work experiences, and picked up a handful of sticks from the yard.
At the cemetery, he gave one to each of Dad's six grandchildren and they all took turns placing one of the sticks in their Grandpa's grave with him.
It was perhaps a way to symbolize the many lessons they had learned from their grandfather, lessons like the value of hard work and doing a good job, lessons which have served them well in life.
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