As the Lunenburg fisheries memorial attests, 1927 was a very bad year.

Last weekend Evan and I stood on the docks scanning the list of names carved into rock, wondering what storms or bad luck prevented those fathers and brothers and sons from returning to port.

Entire familes of men, two and three generations lost in the same night. Mack, Owen, Ronald and Warren Knickle. Edward and William Maxner. Guy, Mars and Raymond Selig. Elvin, George, Wilfred and Irving Tanner. James, Samuel and Samuel Warren. Burns, Bradford, Gordon and Raymond Williams.

What happened out there? Did they get any comfort from being in it together, or did witnessing each other make it worse?

I don’t love Justin any more now than I did before. But having a baby with him turns that love into something more tangible.

He is working for the Coast Guard right now for two weeks, and halfway through his time away I know he’s already desperately Evan-sick. Sick enough for the self-declared computer-phobe to park himself in front of the desktop at the station and explore the ‘inter-web’ in search of new pictures of his boy, hoping none of the other crewmen hear him snuffling with pride.

And we miss him too. We have so much to show him when he gets home. New tricksies and cowlicks and giggles and chompers and num-nums.

On the Lunenburg docks, I couldn’t help thinking of all the women who got bad news during that terrible season, their treasured men and boys taken by the sea. It would have made me sad before, in a passing sort of way.

Now, it makes my heart stop to think of it.