Today we celebrate the life of Darryl Fox. It has been 11 years since he left us and I can still see his gentle smile and hear his quiet demeanor. He walked a path that was content with giving help to others through lending hands, an unconditional love natural to him, that most work a lifetime to attain, a compassion usually learned and developed over time. An avid hunter, fisher, golfer and lover of animals. He carried with him many stories of the land told through humor, memories revealed through practice of the traditions he left with us to carry on.

A brother gone whose spirit remains, existent in little ones like my son Kairn who cares for animals the same way he did and my other son Darryl Jr., who creates smiles through his witty sense of humor. Much like our trap line in the North they miss, but haven’t been to, but feel they have, they miss their uncle who hasn’t physically cared for them, but both feel he has. An amazing concept of our Ancestors dancing as spirits from generation to generation, a connection and relationship to which they will live with throughout their life bringing meaning to honoring their Ancestors.

As the pain matures and tears turn to smiles and loss turns to celebration, we accept that cancer and disease is a part of life existent for reasons we don’t understand, but lessons are taught that life is a gift to be opened each day, something our loved ones gone physically but here spiritually, would want us to do. A gift and life lesson to appreciate that the world wakes up every day with a different plan, but the same optimism as we should.

In saying that, the sun is up and I will honor my brother’s memory by not just playing golf, but sharing a day with family and friends while envisioning him hunting, trapping and fishing on the muddy banks and shores of our heavens with an endless playlist of Coldplay and Goo Goo Dolls, his all-time favorite tunes. Our loved ones are never gone or forgotten but always remembered and honored and I see him in my sons every day, their growth is from the push of his spirit, a love found within them that will express itself over time.