Our legacies reveal how we live — and love

Down the generations, we all seek answers to the same fundamental questions: How do we live? How do we love? How do we come to terms with our lot? How do we die?

For most of us, that’s the long and short of our stint upon the mortal stage. And as COVID-19 takes its remorseless toll, Canada is full — as mourners share memories — of answers and examples.

The McVeigh boys, Greg and Rod, lost their mother and father within nine days in April, first tough-as-nails “Wee Joanie” to COVID-19, then Joe the retired Toronto cop who had started work at age 14 in a Belfast shipyard.

Joan, 79, and Joe, 77, were children of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and at her instigation came to Canada for a better life. In more than 30 years as a director for a lunch progam in Peel, she never missed a day’s work and, though only “5-foot nothin’,” she struck fear — as Irish mothers do — into husband and sons alike, her boys joked.

Matthew Marrack, 66, of Toronto, was a jack-of-all-trades who taught, ran a restaurant, owned an interior-design business and “loved the spectacle of life,” said his nephew Peter. He was remembered as

“grand poobah” of his fraternity and host of “all the great Marrack pool parties” on Bessborough Dr.

Dr. Dallas Grogan, 87, died peacefully in his beloved family cottage on Little Lake Joseph in Muskoka. He was, his family said, a compassionate physician, captivating storyteller, golfer, gardener, painter, reader and “keen listener.”

Grogan met his wife of 63 years, Jane, at a party. There was time for a single dance. He asked for her phone number, declined to write it down, saying he’d remember it forever. He “could recite that number until the day he died.”

Kevin Roach, who died in

April at age 74, spent most of his working life as a letter carrier for Canada Post and sponsored an array of youth sports teams.

“Not only did he sponsor our team,” Alan Johnstone wrote on a memorial page, “but got tickets and made arrangements to get us to Maple Leaf Gardens to see the Maple Leafs vs. L.A. Kings. My first-ever Leafs’ game.” Kevin Roach delivered memories to last a lifetime.

Then there was Garry Monckton of Vancouver who died in April at age 77. Monckton lost his eyesight at 36, but it didn’t stop the former Oshawa physiotherapist from learning to play the piano and trumpet. His most famous story, though, was about treating the teenaged Bobby Orr when the superstar played junior hockey with the Oshawa Generals.

The joke followed Monckton like his own shadow — the guy who ruined Bobby Orr’s knee.

In her father’s dying days, daughter Samantha serenaded Monckton, playing tunes like “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” on her trumpet from the streets of Vancouver, below his nursing home room.

It was a song they sang together when she was growing up.

In loyalty and labour, generosity and laughter, service, song and story, they live on — answers to our most abiding questions.