Stephen Sands

Stephen is the son of Alfred and Gail Sands Of Sunbury Ontario – I believe that Alfred would be a second cousin of my grandmother, Mabel Elizabeth Moreland. He is my cousin and I like him. I like him very well, and I am proud of my relation to him.

Stephen is not the only child in his family. His oldest brother Rickey who has special needs – he was oxygen deprived at birth, as I heard it. Stephen has a way with Rickey, who in many ways is a child in a man’s body but gentle and funny. I suppose he is so comical and cute because he has always been treated with patience. Stephen always got Rickey, understands him and is good to him. Stephen always has a charming story to tell me about Rickey and his latest imaginary accomplishment when I see him, which is not often enough! Stephen loves Rickey and unlike many men, can say so without ever thinking it funny, like many men would. Stephen always stood out like that!
Stephen has always been sensitive, but not in a girly way, the kind of guy that looks you in the eye, and who is so well liked that he could hang around with his mentally handicapped brother and expect never to face any ridicule for it, might have even fought to protect his brother. Probably did, from time to time. He is a man’s man but also the sort that women enjoy being around too.
Stephen is very close to his family. He and his wife Heather (Harris) have a place and have lived next door to his parents on the stagecoach road (Montreal Street) towards Kingston, past the Washburn Road on the left, when you come from my home-farm. Stephen is a mechanic who runs his very successful business at home. He has three children. Two of them are really young and cute as buttons and an older son from an earlier marriage who is about 25 but living at home still. He looks a lot like Steve and is well liked too, just like his dad. They are all nice kids I have heard. I guess it would be expected, since they always had a great dad and Heather is a good mom too, so overall they have been lucky!
People who moved to town would make the drive to Sunbury to have their car looked at, because they knew Stephen tells the truth about what is going on. Yes, you can trust Stephen with your car, and your money too! An honest, family man, is how one would best describe Stephen.
Stephen has a brother named Brian who I don’t really know. He was that much older than me and probably away from home by the time that my memories come in. Our cousin Tracey Sands (Miller) reminded me about him, but I still, sadly can’t put a face to his name and I feel sad about that, because I understand that they have been very close as adults, like best friends! The Sands family is like that! Tight! Wonderful! Really good people.
Stephen’s sister Kathy, I think would be about ten years older than me… she was, and still is, as as nice as hell, and a very pretty girl too. She looks just like the actress who played Daisy Duke in the Dukes of Hazzard – and I think that this propelled Stephen into the career of mechanics – when he was a young teen his brother Robin bought, restored and detailed a car so that it was exactly like the car that the Duke boys drove… “The General Lee”… If you saw this car driving around Sunbury in the 1980’s you will remember Stephen’s smiling face – a slight, young, man with silky blond hair always hanging in his sparkling blue eyes. He is always smiling, always friendly, laughing, always honest and always a good person for as long as I recall him… which is about as far back as my memories go.

He also has a brother Robin who was very close to him – the two were virtually inseparable as youth – Robin, more from the Sands side of the family was courser in feature, coloring and hair but the two were obviously great fans of the other. I don’t know who is the older, and who is the younger, of the two boys – they were so much together, it is hard to recall them as separate. Both of them drove old General Lee around interchangeably. Both of the boys always had a pretty girl on their arm and both of them well liked, good ball players, hockey players, people. Nice kids who grew up to be nice men.

Stephen’s last sibling is my girlfriend/cousin Patricia – who everyone still refers to as “Poo” to this day – after Pebbly-poo on the Flintstones. She, the baby by a few years, was, and still remains the cute little one who was coddled and protected by the family… but like the remainder of her family Poo remains like the rest of the family a beautiful person who is so much a part of the home community that they are virtually inseparable from my memories of home. She is the family member who most resembles Stephen in appearance.

Yesterday, Stephen was on a snowmobiling trip to Calabogie with his oldest son Corey and a group of boys from home. Terry Orr, Dave Tolles, and there were more, but I have not heard who else was there. They had been across the lake already a few times, but then as suddenly as a coin drops, the ice let go from under them and down the boys went – sleds and all under the frozen water. The cold hit them. The shock! But miraculously they made it up onto the frozen surface again. At the top, Stephen did not see Corey, screaming wild he couldn’t hear or see his child and thus he dove into the water to look for his beloved son – just as any family man would.
Hypothermia they call it, life support they say. But a fact remains, today, now, Stephen is dead.
It is a terrible thing, such a good man! A man who will be missed… by his wife Heather, by his children, his parents, his brother’s and sisters, his friends, his community.
Who will fix the cars in Sunbury now? Who will fill the big shoes that have been left by this small man, with a big heart?
It strikes me today, that Stephen has always been a very well liked and well respected person. I struggle to remember, but I don’t recall, anyone ever saying one bad thing, not one, EVER about this man. It is a small community, so this speaks volumes about who Stephen is, who he aspired to be and what he accomplished. To be one among the members of really, really good people. He will be mourned, missed and a part of our long hopes for his children, that they will remember and do their best to be the sort of person that Stephen strived to be and was right up to his last breath.

I struggle to understand why a man like him is taken so early, so sadly, when there are so many bad people who may not even be missed.

Stephen Sands will be missed by every single person who knew him.

God bless him and his family in their loss.