I remember the day Fred died. Not as well as I should. I should know the date, the year, what was happening in the world, the current events. I should say something like "it was 1986, the Blue Jays had just won their second straight title, Eisenhower was being run out of office".

I was a teenager. We lived in Oakville. We moved there when I was 13 so I know I was 13 or older. I worked at Giannini's Pizza a block away from our house. A squat guy named Ralph owned the place. He lived in Burlington and talked about a wife and kids I never met. He could have been lying. He was young to own a pizza place and he told stories.

He told one about playing pro hockey in Germany, about how rough it was. A raw, grated down version of the game. He talked about taping a foot long piece of an old hockey shaft to his forearm to use as a weapon. He was once locked in a referee's room until the police showed up to escort him out of the rink alive. The fan's wanted to disassemble him and put him back together incorrectly.

He'd never smoked a cigarette, ever. "Oh, but I did try that one thing, it's made from poppies".

"Opium?"

"Ya, that's the one."

"You've never had a smoke but you've tried opium?"

"I didn't like it, made my head spin."

"That's fucked. You should work your way up to opium I think."

I don't think much of his stories. They didn't contain enough reality for me.

I was answering phones, taking cash, and making pizzas the evening a black figure crossed the street and gradually turned into my father as he came closer to the light of the shop. I don't remember what he said but he didn't look right. It wasn't my dad that told me the news. It was a serious, sad representation of him.

He must have eventually said, "Uncle Fred's dead", or "Fred's gone", or "Fred's passed away". I didn't expect it. We weren't waiting for him to die. He hadn't faded, wasn't grey. It didn't feel right. He had things in him to left to give. He and I still had talks to have. He had smiles left to put on my face.

Fred was the closest thing I had to a grandfather. He was married to my great Aunt Leta. Leta and Fred were grandparents to me, as I look back on them now. I was 21 before my mother had the nerve to tell me the truth. She seemed to feel I couldn't handle it but it was the nicest truth I'd ever been given.

I spent every summer of my childhood on this beach, or some portion of it. I sat on this sand and looked out over this part of the ocean at least once a year. I'm here now, a grown man, with a wife and child of my own, for what may be the last time. Leta willed her property to my family when she passed away two years ago yesterday, at 8:15 at night. She left it to my mother, my father, my sister and I. We can't afford to keep it. None of us can live here. None of us will move here. It's too expensive to keep ocean front property as a sentimental keepsake so we're all here now for what will be our last family visit.

I'm sure we'll visit the area again, drive through here when Evan's older. We'll stop and park on the road in front of the house, spend the afternoon on this beach. I'll try to explain to Evan why I know so much about how the tides work here, which half black seaweed covered rocks it exposes as it backs out into itself. Grandma's mother used to own that white house across the street, your great grandmother. You spent a few weeks here, living in that house, when you were just six months old. We used to own it.