My
grandfather died before
my first birthday, so
I can't remember him at all. Growing up I was told that he
died in an accident, but no one ever really said much about it. The story that
I can remember goes as follows:
My grandfather was
out for a walk one night near
Toronto's
waterfront and he somehow had either
lost or
forgotten his glasses, so he couldn't see very well. From certain points at the waterfront you can see
Toronto island very easily and it's pretty close to the
mainland. Apparently, in his eyeglassless
vision, my grandfather mistook
the lights on the island for the city's mainland lights and
fell off a walkway into 20ft. water and
drowned.
As a kid,
I never questioned this. Only recently have I begun to
think back and realize that
something's wrong with the
story.
It seems strange that he would mistake lights on an island for lights on the mainland. The mainland lights would be
a lot closer and the walkways would have been
lit. The
noise factor would also have made a big difference: there would have been sounds of cars and other
people nearby on the mainland, but the only sounds from the direction of the island would have been
waves and
seagulls and perhaps
a passing boat.
The two
likely scenarios I've come up with are that he was either
murdered or commited
suicide. Suicide seems like the most likely situation because I seem to recall that he had bouts of
depression (although
I don't know why
I know this). He could have chained weights to himself and
jumped in the lake. Of course, someone could have murdered him and
tossed the body. My only real problem with that is the location:
if I were going to murder someone I'd pick
somewhere else to
dump the body. The
Scarborough Bluffs are only a 20 minute drive from there and would make an
ideal burial spot.
I only wish that I could work up
the nerve to ask my
parents. I just can't find the words to say "
did grandpa kill himself?"