Dear Bowen Island,
One year ago, on March 3, 2016 our beloved ragamuffin husband, father, grandfather and friend Blu a.k.a. Piers Rothwell Hayes cut the ties with Earth and bid us all farewell as he sailed onto his next adventure.
I have tried to write this letter so many times during the last year, stumbled and struggled and ultimately left it undone. Where do we begin? Saying thank you feels so flat and trite ... so far removed from the feelings we have experienced over the last year, feelings of deep gratitude, feelings of intense pain, sadness and loss so deep and so severe it left us speechless and unable to acknowledge kindness and care, and then paradoxically it opened us up and gave us strength to share and acknowledge our pain ... to reach out to so many of you waiting in the wings to love and comfort us, this is the curious and growth-giving thing called grief.
We are thankful to the community of Bowen Island: the churches, service organizations, businesses and all our friends for cards and letters full of anecdotes of the Ragamuffin that made us laugh and cry, pictures from little people for Blu because he made them laugh, for food dropped at our door, flowers, walks, talks and hugs, for financial assistance that allowed us as a family to take a month to deal with things and not worry about the café, for the food and organization that went into the celebration of Piers’ life, what a huge task and yet done in such a way that it happened seamlessly and with such elegance.
Piers was a simple man with a simple faith in God, he loved deeply and cared much about the world and the people in it, he was feisty and quick to flare but equally quick to calm down and say sorry or reach out and hug or touch, always looking for and finding humor no matter the circumstance.
He loved us well as a family, as a church and as a community and that is how we all remember him.
Thank you for your kindness and care.
Joan, Sarah-Jane(Gord, Elijah and Madeleine ) William (Seonaid and Iona) and Miles
