Dennis Herbert Jackson

From as far back as I can remember, I had always wanted to find my father, Dennis, having been lost to the family for decades after my parents’ divorce when I was five, followed by my mother relocating us to London, England, a few years later. Being the only one in our family with his brown eyes had kept my mother distant towards me. One day, when I was a teenager, I asked her why, and she confessed that I reminded her of him.

Thirty-five years later, with a whole lot of living, travelling, and adventures behind us, my husband and I and our two children moved to Vancouver to begin a new chapter, and on the last day of my mother’s visit to us, we decided to try to find my father together. Opening the phone book, there were four possible entries. Choosing the most likely, I rang the number, and a man’s voice simply said, “Howdy”. I quickly rambled out a few questions, “Do you have a daughter named Skylar, a daughter named Troy and a son named Peer?” There was a pause, before he replied, “Why, yes, I do. And who are you?” Overcome with shock, I said, “I’m Troy. And my mother is here and she wants to talk to you!” What followed was a series of remarkable moments: my mother asking him if he would please come to see us now as she was leaving the next day. Dennis arrived on his bicycle and knocked on the door. I told my mother she had to be the one to open it. And so, I witnessed my mother and father, now in their mid-sixties, warmly embracing each other for the first time in all those long, absent decades. My father walked over as if in a dream to greet my husband and I. He’d last seen me aged eight while he hid behind a pillar on the Vancouver train station platform, crying as he watched my mother bundle their three children onto the train to disappear into a new life in England. Now, I was surrounded by our four beautiful children, his unknown grandchildren – our eldest son, Luke, aged eleven, our younger son, Beau, aged five, and our new baby twins, a boy, Jack, and a girl, Drew, aged six months.

We bonded instantly with Dennis – just a natural acceptance of each other; no consideration of judgments, recriminations or expectations, only the desire to know and discover each other in the here and now.

Do dreams come true? They surely did, and even though we only had eight more months together before we left for New Zealand, my husband’s homeland, we held steadfast to our reunion, and forged anew a long distance one…frequently corresponding by emails and long phone calls – always growing the depths of our relationship, and those with his grandchildren. From the beginning, he instilled a lasting love of ice hockey in his eldest grandson, Luke, who still passionately plays today. He also proudly encouraged each of them in their creative pursuits of art and music. When we lived in Toronto, we visited him twice for weeks of holiday in Vancouver as a whole family, and my husband and I spent weeks with him on four other occasions, travelling from London, England. He loved my husband. He loved me. He loved our children. And we all loved him. We enriched each other, and each other’s lives, with love and laughter, all the richer for the sharing. Bright memories of these times live on within us. From my family alone, he has four grandchildren, and soon to be a total of four great-grandchildren, with the arrival in February 2025 of a new granddaughter to be named Jackson, after him, from our daughter, Drew.

Dennis was a singular, spiritual, athletic man, proud of his physical fitness, an appreciator of strong women, and an intellectual who lived his unconventional life on his terms, on the outside of society. His early years were spent as a lumberjack, a biker, and later working for the Post Office. He lived modestly, writing his poetry, dreaming his dreams (and with an adept ability to play the stock market). And yes, he had turned his back on his second family, harshly leaving his two children adrift. But that is not for me to comment on further. It’s their story to tell.

He was, in part, a hedonist, and having read his quite extraordinary novel manuscript detailing his wild, early life, it is not hard to see how complex and uncompromising he was capable of being – demons are carried by many, but without us welcoming or understanding them. They are just attached. Long shadows. Growing up, he’d had a very difficult family life that undoubtedly misshaped him as an adult. Who are we, if not the inheritors of our background and parentage? Of our DNA? Life is not perfect. People are not perfect.

In his latter years, having been found by all of his children and grandchildren, who in their individual ways either decided to allow him fully into their lives, or not, he was able to find a peace and gratitude for his life lived.

And so, my husband and I and our family unit do thank and embrace Dennis, a lover of nature and the elements, for the growth from which we have all sprung, not withstanding from my dear departed mother, too.

Always, and until, dearest Dennis.