Lloyd Den Boer

Paging slowly through an old family album , I pause at a photograph from the early 1900s . In it , a young man meets the camera ’ s gaze with quiet dignity . Poised and confident , he has the air of someone with a bright future . Yet , I know that he would lose his life in 1903 when he was only 26 . Neighbours had gathered to put a roof on a new barn . It was November , meaning that the men had to finish the job soon before the weather grew more wintery . November also meant that conditions on the roof were likely to be risky . When the young man fell from the peak to the stones below and died , he left behind a pregnant wife and three children . My grandmother , the youngest of the three , was one day short of her first birthday . Although she was too young to remember life with her father , my grandmother opened any story about her childhood by noting that he had died young .

Grandma grieved the loss of a father she never knew , but the effect of his death on her family was the actual point of her stories . When my greatgrandmother lost her husband , she also lost a stable source of income to support her family . After four years of poverty , she married a widower with seven children . Their marriage served the practical needs of the husband , the wife , and their children , but it was not happy . Grandma gave few of the unhappy details , yet she always closed her stories by saying that she was raised in a home without love .

What makes children feel loved and happy ? “ Happy families ,” Tolstoy observed , “ are all alike .” He added , “ Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way .” Tolstoy ’ s puzzling statement opens Anna Karenina , a novel in which the notable

Andrew De Haan , the great-grandfather who died young

Lloyd ’ s Den Boer grandparents and their family

Lloyd ’ s parents and their two eldest

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