Remembering Bruce

Today we laid my Uncle Bruce to rest, four months shy of his 90^th birthday.  He had seen a lot of things.  He had done a lot of things.  And he had collected A LOT of things.  Bruce’s passion for classic cars was well known and the parade of beauties that followed him to the cemetery….well I’m sure it made him smile.

It’s hard for me to imagine what life was like growing up in the ‘dirty thirties’ or training military men how to drive Bren Gun Carriers during the Second World War.  Bruce had many stories to tell, and he did share them with all of us over the years, with a sense of humour that will be greatly missed. 

But even at 44, my life as a youth is vastly different than that of my own sons.  I remember the days of cameras with film and having to wait two weeks for developing on to find out the flash didn’t work properly and I had nothing but blurry and dark images to show for my time and money.  Movie night meant going to the theatre, sometimes 2 or 3 times to see the same film, and if you missed it maybe it would appear on a double-bill at the drive-in the next summer. Eventually you might find the movie in VHS release. Television was in colour of course and we had cable, but we viewed according to the big networks’ schedules.  Oh, and phones were connected to the wall with a wire.

Today, not only do we carry our phones in our pockets, we can take photos with them, instantly see our image and email it to anyone we know or post it on the web within seconds without moving from the spot.  Satellite television and internet streaming allows us to see just about anything we want, and according to our schedule.  Visual imagery is overwhelming, immediate, and sometimes difficult to authenticate. 

We had a chuckle today at the funeral for a few of us had casually commented to colleagues this week, “Is it wrong to take a camera to a funeral?”  No, we not a gruesome group, but we knew on such a bright, sunny afternoon Bruce’s cronies would be cruising in their classic cars.  It was quite a sight to see.  No, I did not take my camera….but there were sure a lot people holding up their cell phones out in that parking lot.