My mom married a good-hearted man because she was used to that in her father. Both men were an interesting blend of mind and heart. My grandfather, Dr. Isaac Erb, was a pathologist and a colleague of doctors Banting and Best, the Canadian medical researchers from the University of Toronto who discovered insulin a century ago. Grandpa testified in the few murders that occurred in Toronto back in the 1920s and was revered by many (my mom used to joke that he – a pathologist – had been told that he had an excellent bedside manner).

He also had a soft heart. In a 1907 letter, he wrote to his girlfriend (my future grandmother) and confessed that after a surprise party for his 21st birthday, he found himself so grateful that he was awake most of the night: ‘I felt so glad that I lay down and cried, something that I have not done for many years’ … This was the heart of this wonderful hybrid of a man. And this is the same combination of mind and heart that my mother married.

My 88 year old father passed away suddenly of a heart attack in December.

It’s interesting what memories stand out: When I was a girl, I found him sitting on the couch one day laughing so hard he could hardly speak. Amidst the breath-catching laughing, he told me about an article he had just read in the paper in which two drivers, heading in opposite directions in the fog, had had a head-on (literally) collision when they both stuck their heads out of their windows. He laughed until he cried. I reminded him of this years later and he laughed as hard as he had on that original day.

I loved making dad laugh because there was this sheer joy and innocence that is unusual for someone who knows so much about what is not going well in the world. CNN was a steady diet of things to be afraid of, but he loved staying on top of current global events and when you tried to throw out a newspaper, he felt like a limb was being cut off. He possessed a certain naiveté that couldn’t understand why people didn’t just get along – whether it was in our house (the poor man was outnumbered by females four to one) or around the globe. He wanted to live to 95 to see if South Africa could resolve its political and economic struggles, and up until the week he died, he asked me to google Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa’s Deputy President) in the hopes that changes for the best were on their way. He sweetly mistook constant google information access for actual on-the-ground change, so he wanted to check in on South Africa almost every phone call, even though I tried to let him down easy and explain that change would come more slowly than he hoped.

As a child and definitely as a teen, I know I did not appreciate the kindness that his absentminded scholarly self attempted to convey to his family. As the youngest baby brother of older doting sisters and then as a scholar, he was definitely distracted, not unlike other 1950s/60s fathers, likely. But as a child who wanted him to remember my toothbrush color (he never could), I didn’t recognize the value of his heart. I was a moody teenager and he was interested in many things I was not, and vice versa. But he knew I loved tennis and he wanted to connect with me on something, so he offered to take me to see the Rogers Cup Tennis tournament in Toronto. In my uninformed but arrogant teenage mind, I thought if it was his idea then it couldn’t possibly be good. I envisioned a small tournament with no big names; he knew better but didn’t push the point. He was gracious in my decline and very forgiving years later when I told him how much I regretted missing that time with him.

He was always very gracious; there was never bitterness about anything or anybody.  Family friend Pat Maloney captured it well in his tribute to Dad in December: Chuck was sensitive to life’s discrepancies but rarely if ever have I heard him express anger at life’s disappointments.

In my searching for pictures for his memorial day, I have come across some of the cards I wrote to dad over the years (when we downsize our parents, we seem to inherit the things we gave them in the first place!) In most of the cards, I thanked him for being a good dad and in several I told him that I had married a good-hearted man because he was a good-hearted man. In the conversations we shared in the last year especially, I know he knew that he was loved well by all of his girls.

I am so grateful, Daddy, and so glad you are with a good-hearted Jesus now. Your heart, in the best sense of the word, never failed.

Cathy Sakiyama, M.Ed.
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