Jack

Jack was what they would call a real mans man.
He grew up doing all the things boys should do back then and did them well.

Jack met Doris after the war, she taught him to dance and they fell in love.
He built their first and only home with his bare hands, renovating and expanding as their five children came.

Jack always loved to garden, he made sure Doris always had her own space though.
A boilermaker after the war Jack eventually opened up his own engineering firm, employing a wide range of characters that made growing up there highly entertaining to say the least.
Eventually Jack handed the business off to his second oldest son and stayed home more often, he still loved to work in the shop but was too old to do a full days work.

This was when his garden truly began to thrive.
Jack was the reason I took horticulture all through high school, Weekly trips to my grandparents arms loaded with new seedlings would result in what I whined about being child labour half my life yet are now my most fondest memories.
Hours if not days were spent tending to that garden. Vegetables, fruit, flowers anything I wanted to grow we grew. If i could source the seeds a patch was prepared, be it successful or not we still tried.

Jack grew to love WWE too, not as much as Doris though.
At first he would complain, grumble and moan that the silly fighting was on and why did we have to watch it on HIS tv?!.
But eventually it was Jack who reminded us "the fight was on tonight" pestered us to make sure the Pay Per View was booked and ready to be watched. "Cant miss the fight" he'd say as we pre-booked it under his careful watch.

We weren't there for his end, Alzheimers meant Jack was taken from us, put into a home so he wouldn't hurt himself while he was alone. He died without us, after a long fight with lost memories, tearful visits and angry frightened shouting.
To this day we don't know if he remembered any of us.

We love you Jack.