Diane Beckett

Jones

Your Mom has asked your Dad’s friends to tell you a bit about how we know your Dad. I have never met him in person, but he has profoundly touched my life and I consider him a good friend.

I know your aunt, his sister. She shared some of your Dad’s Facebook posts and I gobbled them up. They are brilliant. He writes about everyday life with such breathtaking clarity. Makes it so special. So wonderful. He is so observant in such an incredibly insightful way.

So, I reached out to him and asked to become his friend on Facebook. I wanted to see all of his posts. He accepted. The posts I like the best are the ones he writes about you. His love for you is so pure and special. His insights about every molecule of you and the world around you are exquisitely observed and captured.

And his words about you are always accompanied by the most amazing photos of you. Taken by your Mom. She is as good a photographer as your Dad is a writer.

I love your approach to life. I love your smile.

And, in both the words and the photos, I get – not just a sense of you – but a sense of your Mom and Dad and the great love they share and the great love they have for you.

After I moved to Churchill, a small village of less than 800 souls on the shores of Hudson Bay where Polar Bears, Northern Lights, the Tundra and Belugas all exist in a magical and very cold land, your Dad asked if I would do some videos of my new northern homeland for Galaxy Magazine. I was so thrilled and honoured that he asked me. But it was hard to get my mind around the assignment. I knew nothing about filming. What would I film. I am not creative. I deal in facts and logic. My ideas were too concrete. The assignment really stretched me. But, with your Dad’s guidance and belief in me, I finally figured out what I wanted to film.

It is great working with your Dad. He is so supportive. He likes my work. He encourages me to do more. It is exciting to feel competent in something so different than I had ever tried before. I am proud of that work. And its thanks to him, that I did it. And he published it in his magazine.

But most of all, I am so grateful that your Dad reached out to me to work with him. It is a wonderful way to get to know him better.

I wish I lived closer to you, your Mom and Dad so I could spend time with all of you in person.

Big Hugs

Diane Beckett