As I approach my seventy-fifth birthday, one I never thought I would ever make, and my health has deteriorated, I thought I had best write something just in case my daughter ever saw it after I’m gone.
After a whole lot of grief with my previous Executor, Rob McCann, and numerous promises from Bob Cottrell, a longtime friend, my buddy, Keith Sage finally agreed to be my Executor. We signed a new will, met with my new landlady to introduce him and went through all the complicated things with all my websites. I’ve asked him to keep this personal site going for a year just in case my kids and grandkids ever want to know about me. It’s been thirty years now since my daughter connected with me so I doubt it will be her, but maybe my seven grandkids might want to know.
My beautiful baby daughter, Heather, came into this world October 7th, 1977. Dr. Thicke, yes, Todd and Alan’s father, delayed his flying somewhere north to deliver her, so throughout the procedure he was singing “Off we go into the wild blue yonder” He also asked me if I wanted him to put in a few extra stiches. He had no idea how useless that would be. His sons got his sense of humor for sure. Unlike with my son born back in 1970 when I was not allowed in the delivery room I was there with Heather. Right after she came out and got cleaned up we noticed something wrong with her upper lip. In typical Dr. Thicke fashion he said it was nothing that a little makeup wouldn’t cover. It wasn’t. It was also shortly after she popped out that I made a fatal mistake. Holding her in my arms, rocking her walking up and down the hall. More later.
The first horrible reaction was from my father-in-law when he came to see her. It was a cleft lip and where he came from having a cleft lip was a lifelong curse because it could not be corrected back then. Shortly after Dr. Thicke said he didn’t want to spoil the magic of the moment of her birth, but, yes, she had a cleft lip. We were shocked to learn that this could have been simply because her mother had been taking aspirin! Who knew? He said he would refer us to a surgeon at Sick Kids to talk about it.
Our first visit with the doctor at Sick Kids, and I wish I could remember his name, was to discuss what and when he would do. He said that most parents want the surgery as soon as possible to avoid the embarrassment of explaining it to friends and family. I asked when he wanted to do the surgery and he said six months is ideal. I agreed.
The day came for her surgery so off we went to Sick Kids again. I still remember her smiling as she went down in the elevator. Broke my heart. After her surgery they put her in the heart ward to recover. It was so hard to see all the young kids with tubes and wires coming out of them and it made me realize how simple Heather’s surgery really was. Later they moved her to the burn ward, which was even harder to deal with. I still remember little Jason who had been in a gas fire and sustained first degree burns to ninety percent of his body. He looked like an alien, but that didn’t stop him running around the ward like any normal kid, happy as a lark, chatting with everybody. I often wondered how he made out later in life when he no doubt had to have all kinds of skin graft surgeries.
My wonderful in-laws, Ray and Marion, looked after Heather as they had done earlier for Chris before he went off to the Kennedy Road Tabernacle daycare. Back then my ex and I both worked.
A few days after her surgery my father-in-law called me at work and said to come right away! He wouldn’t say anything about why but I could hear the panic in his voice so I drove to Brampton like a maniac. As I reached their door Ray opened the door with Heather in his arms and she broke out in a huge smile, as usual. The problem was that her face also split wide open! Dad said she had fallen down the short stairs off the kitchen and split all her stitches. He was full of guilt but I told him this was not his fault. Could have happened anywhere. Off I rushed her to Sick kids again to get her fixed up again.
I said her name before. Heather. A quick side note is that my ex wasn’t crazy about that name because I had a former girlfriend named Heather. I assured her it had nothing to do with that. I just liked the name. Her full name was actually Heather Tyrrell Jones because the tradition in the family was that the daughters had the mother’s maiden name as their second name. My ex was Janice Kennedy Tyrrell after her mother so Heather became Heather Tyrrell Jones.
Although Heather was a great baby at the start, she soon developed that curse, colic. She had it bad! She cried and cried, on and on for days, and nights. The only thing that would sooth her was for Daddy to cradle her in my arms, rock her and walk up and down the hall. The price of my mistake at birth.
Once she finally got over the colic she again became a darling baby girl. She laughed and laughed. She slept through the night. She ate anything and everything. Once she started crawling she was a terror and when she walked was even worse. Always going ninety miles an hour getting into everything.
The following year we went out west on vacation and to Introduce Heather to my family there. My Dad had booked a camper van for our trip up to Jasper, across the Yellowhead highway and back down through Kamloops. It was the best trip ever, especially because Heather sat in her car seat either smiling, laughing, or sleeping the whole way. My dear Mum and Dad said they had never seen such a wonderful baby, certainly not me.
The next milestone in our lives was the dreaded Cabbage Patch kids era. That first year I ran around everywhere trying to find one to adopt for Christmas. I forget who that first one was but it was the first of many. Heather was beyond delighted with her Cabbage Patch kids and proudly showed them off anywhere we went. By this time Chris was playing hockey everywhere, for multiple rep teams and all year long, so the minute we walked into arenas Heather and her Cabbage Patch kids were gone. Back in those days we never worried about her wandering around because everybody knew her and we had no worries. Never happen today.
She breezed through daycare at the same place as Chris, with the staff commenting how much she was a delight. She then went to the same public school as her Mom had. When it came to high school she had shown a penchant for drama so she applied to the prestigious Mayfield Secondary School, a difficult school to be accepted by, but she got in. We were so proud of her. It was during this time that two things happened, one very good and one, not so good.
I’m not sure it was for our birthdays but I managed to get two incredibly expensive tickets to Phantom of the Opera at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto. I believe they were something like eighty-five dollars each. We were seated in the balcony. The lights went down. The music started then right in front of us the lights flashed on and there was something right smack in front us that jumped us out of our seats. I believe it was a giant chandelier. The entire show was mesmerizing and we enjoyed every minute of it. When we came out of the theatre Heather wanted to go to Sam the Record Man just up the street to get the Phantom CD. For days after with her girlfriends she blasted the CD in her room.
The not so good thing was when she asked if she could go to her girlfriend’s house for New Year’s Eve. I knew a little bit about her friend, not a lot of good, but I trusted Heather. Later I got a panic call from her friend’s mother that Heather was very drunk and being sick. I rushed her to the hospital where they said she had alcohol poisoning and I believe they had pumped her stomach. On the trip home I was totally silent and finally Heather asked if I wasn’t going to say anything or yell at her. I asked if I needed to say anything and she said no. Lesson learned.
As far as father and daughter goes our relationship could not have been better. I was always so proud of her in everything she did. She had no interest in hockey like her brother but she was a good soccer player and I went to all her games. Her mother and I never did anything together except go to Chris’ hockey and soccer games, but Heather and I were always doing something. The city built a great skating oval at Gage Park and Heather and I went there skating a lot, especially on New Years. We also did a lot of biking on the paved trails all around Brampton, often ending up at Professor’s Lake. We even went sailing one time in a little skiff that scared the heck out of both of us but was still fun. We often danced with each other, often when her friends were around, so it surprised me that she was okay dancing with her Dad. In all the years we were together the only time we had a problem was when we were in the van and she called her mother a bitch and I slapped her.
Things happened in my life with a business, GlassVision, that I was a partner in with Jim Webb. A custom solarium company. A client who I had no faith in refused to pay until his hundred dollar solarium was installed. I told the crew to come back unless we got paid, but Jim told them to go ahead and install the solarium. When they finished the client told them to get the hell off his property and didn’t pay. I had made commitments to pay our glass supplier so we were now cutoff and the business failed. I returned all the deposit cheques we had with the signed contracts so nobody would sue us and I left.
After the very long hours I had spent, both traveling from Brampton to Markham every day, plus changing everything on how we did business, from getting deposits upfront to changing the installation crews from hourly to a percentage of the contract, something that worked so well, I had no question that we were done. I knew the phones would be ringing off the hook from upset clients to very upset suppliers, not to mention our bank. I had to get away. Jim stayed and begged me to stay but I knew it was beyond hopeless.
I packed some clothes in the car and left with no idea where I was going. When I finally got to Dryden, I think, I bought a map and realized that I was almost half way to BC! This was in May and the days were unusually warm. I could visit my parents and shock the heck out of them, so off I went. I sure did shock them when I pulled in.
After unwinding from all the stress and having a wonderful time with my family after so many years apart I really missed the kids so I made arrangements for them to fly out and spend three weeks. It was the best time ever with the kids and my family, especially with Heather.
.Dad and I had been doing a lot of dirt biking, and, of course, Chris wanted to bike so Dad rented him a dirt bike. Heather was too young to ride her own so Dad managed to attach vice grips to the back wheel sprockets so she could site behind me and put her feet on the vice grips. Off we went to the Kettle Valley Railroad, one of our favorite spots. We had a great ride down to the Kettle Valley Inn where Dad and I always stopped.
On the way back; however, I made a big mistake. I thought I was taking the shortcut down but instead I ended up on the very steep powerline. I didn’t want to scare Heather so, although I knew the trip down would be frightening I stayed calm. At each steep incline I told her to get off and walk down, which wasn’t easy either and I nursed the bike down, slipping and sliding all the way. There were a couple of spots she could still get on and ride, but very few. Not one second was she afraid and we managed to get down to the road unharmed. I was beyond amazed at her courage. When the rest of them finally caught up with us they couldn’t believe that we had just come down the powerline.
As the day finally came when they were to go back home we hadn’t talked about what I was going to do. Heather and I went somewhere early in the day and then stopped out by the lake. I knew I was on the verge of falling apart and somehow Heather sensed that. She said the hardest thing in my life. She told me that she had never seen me happier. She knew how much I had tried but my marriage was over. She told me to stay out west and not come back to Brampton. She said she and Chris would come out for vacations every year. I knew she was right but it nearly destroyed me. After I took them to the airport I went back to the place Heather and I had talked and balled my eyes out for three hours. How could my beautiful daughter that I loved so much tell me to stay across the country from her?
Of course I didn’t listen because I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving my kids so I went back. I spent more years working my face off while my ex sat on her butt not even looking for a job until I couldn’t take it anymore and finally left. My mother was then diagnosed with fifth stage melanoma and given less than six months to live. I knew I had to be with her in what time she had left and Heather told me to go. I had sold our last house and Heather and her mother had moved into an apartment. I still remember my last drive with Heather in my van, the thought of leaving her overwhelming, but I knew I would see her again soon, at least I sure thought so, but I could never have been more wrong.
The great news was that they caught my mother’s cancer in time and she ended up living another fourteen years. The tragic news is what happened with Heather.
One day when I came home my Dad said that Heather had called to ask me to come down for her convocation ceremony at Mayfield. Having driven back and forth across the country four times already doing it again, especially to see Heather, was fine, so off I went.
When I got to their apartment I asked the security guard to buzz them, but he got no answer. I asked if there was a message from Heather and he said no. It was later in the day so I thought she might still be at school so I drove there, but she wasn’t at school. That started hours of me sitting in coffee shops and driving around trying to find her. Finally I got in touch with Chris who told me that my ex and her new husband had hidden Heather away and wouldn’t let me see her! What? I had just driven across the country at Heather’s invitation and now they wouldn’t let me see her? I called my ex to go for coffee to discuss this because I still had the legal right to see Heather, but with her hubby, my former best friend, grunting in the background, my ex said she couldn’t meet me for coffee. Married for twenty-three years, now divorced, and she wasn’t allowed to go for coffee with me? Seriously?
I ended up staying with Chris, Tina, and their daughter, Danielle, for three weeks, just praying that I would get to see Heather, but I never did. I drove home crying all the way. I never saw Heather again. It’s now been thirty years since I connected with her. Over all those years many friends and family have tried to contact her, but all have failed. She blocked me on Facebook long ago. No doubt her kids don’t even know I exist. She had another child back in 2019, Joe, but never told me.
I’ve never stopped loving her and I miss her every single day. Father’s Day and Christmas are just brutal for me. My dear friend in Mexico has gone to her Facebook page and sent me photos of her and her family, which is nice but just makes me more depressed. I never give up hope though and just pray that she will connect with me before I die. I simply want to know why she abandoned me all those years ago.
If anyone out there happens to know her, Heather Jones Seyler on Facebook as far as I know, please let her know that her Dad still loves her and would be thrilled to hear from her.