Comprising a Life

My father's brother, Elgin Banting and recent author of  Seventy Six Years On My Father's Homestead  fathered three children, the youngest of whom, named Malcolm stayed on with him to co-own and manage the aging Banting farm (established in 1915 by my Grandfather, Wilber T. Banting by homesteading the land).

Cousin Malcolm died recently in a freak farming accident when the walls of a ditch he was digging for a pipeline that would connect the water the farm's dam to a new feed lot suddenly collapsed, killing him instantly.

It seems at the dam end of the ditch, water had wicked its way further back from the dam than had been noticed and had altered the properties of the normally stiff soil.

Although I had only visited the Banting farm a countable number of times in the past, (having  grown up mainly in the Southern U.S.) in recent years Malcolm had made it down to visit his cousins here in New Orleans on several occasions. Always the prankster, Malcolm's and my personalities blended perfectly and my wife Gayle and I alway looked forward to his visits.

However, Malcolm's recent seriies of visits were first kicked off by a trip I made up to Canada to see Malcolm and the rest of my Canadian relatives for what I was led to believe would be the last time. I had just survived a brain surgery to remove a particularly virulent form of brain cancer and was subsequently told by my doctors that I had just one year to live.

Ironically during the early part of the next few years battling brain cancer, I always thought I would be the one to end our friendship prematurely. But one never knows does one, in this dew drop world of ours?

So the following photographs are for you Malcolm. I snapped  them when I came up there to visit you under the afore mentioned circumstances. I understand from Susan that before your death she had worked a slight miracle on your, till then lax Christian values, so perhaps we may yet meet again one day in prayer aye cousin?