If you have followed us our travel log, you know it all already 😉 In short… Canada was fantastic, Nico had a very good talk at the Regina hospital and they can offer him a job after he does the Registered Nurse exam. He is currently looking for books and the prep guide for this exam that he would have to take in June. Things are looking very serious now!

While we were there, we were grateful we had a chance to visit Danny still at home several times. It has been so emotional, but since he was still talking about getting better, he made it easier for us, esp regarding the last visit and having to say goodbye. Meeting his family was absolutely fantastic. After we left, things unfortunately went downhill very fast and, as posted earlier, Danny past away 7 weeks and 1 day after his brother on Nov. 10th. Since then I’ve been sharing my feelings on the local forum saskmetal.com and with my friend Sandy I made a website for the guys: www.band-of-brothers.ca It’s been too painful to put it all up here as well, but OK, here I am now. Right now I feel that losing Danny is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with. I wish I could be closer to the family (how the hell do you cope with losing two sons/brothers/uncles within two months time?!) and the friends over there in Regina.

I already miss you and Dave so much and we can’t imagine having to move to a Regina without you guys!!

my long post on saskmetal:

I wish I had a lot of stories.. As Nico and I only visited Regina two times and way too short, we couldn’t hang out with Dan (and Dave) as much as we wanted to in the past few years. But I still want to put down my story of how I got to know and love Danny (and Dave through him).

Esp. with Dan (with Dave I’d eventually have more online contact than with Danny) I was always looking forward to us emigrating to Canada and settling in Regina one day (might happen next year), because then we’d finally have a chance to hang out together a lot. Even though I never take things for granted, not in a million years I would’ve thought that these guys wouldn’t be around anymore by then.

In early 2002 we became fans of Into Eternity and got to know Tim. That turned into a good friendship and I got to know some of his friends and their friends etc, plus a lot of folks here on saskmetal since Brent started this. I knew of Danny and after a while I saw the first picture… he was posing with my buddy Mark (not Radford-Mark but Tim/Dave’s ex roommate) and he was uhm flashing something LOL! It was hilarious, I’m not sure if it’s something I can post here.. I should still have it somewhere 😉 Shortly after I saw some pics with his sunglasses-look. Now you have to know that I like big guys and I’ve always adored the legendary drummer Gene Hoglan (huge Mexican/native dude). Back in the day he used to wear these sunglasses a lot on pics, so when I saw Danny like that, I immediately loved his looks and called him mini-Hoglan (yes compared to Hoglan Dan was still mini!) 😉 I would always hear what a cool guy Danny was, so I got really curious to meet him.

We first visited Tim in September 2004 and we finally had a chance to meet Danny in person. We hung out several times and once when we dropped him off he insisted that we’d come in to see Marlin’s “museum” and he showed me a signed Heart poster in the basement. He went in his room and disappeared for a while. I was standing there with the cat on my arm, thinking, what the hell is he doing behind that curtain?! After a few minutes he came back with some Radfords stickers and a button, because he wanted to give me something because we had given him a beer cup from a metal festival and some liquorice (which we brought for a whole bunch of people). The button has been on my jeans jacket ever since, accompanied by an Evergrey one (weirdest combination ever). At shows I’d have people come over and ask, the Radfords… mmmm I don’t think I’ve heard of them. I’d just say, nooo probably not… Anyway with his kindness, sense of humour and ability to talk about just anything, his knowledge of music, and how he truly was a person on his own as previously stated – needless to say I loved Danny even a thousand times better in real life. That old zipped up hoody with holes in them, his beard, of course that classic combination of those shorts and cowboy boots! He once told me that as long as his nose was warm, he was warm. When I’m cold being outside, I always have to think of that hehe. Alright, so then I officially had a crush on Danny My friends there laughed out loud, they probably thought I was kidding 😉 (Nico knows me better of course, but he has nothing to worry about and he knows that).

We sort of kept in touch over the occasional email or phone call and through friends. One day he mailed me to let me know that the post office people had put a new flag up on the building and that he had asked to get the old one. “Hey don’t throw it away, I know a few guys who’d be really happy with that flag” he had said. Of course he was too lazy to actually mail it over, but when Marlin came to Holland in August 2005 and visited us, he brought the damn thing, along with some pins of the Canadian flag 🙂 No crisp clean new flag from the tourist shop could ever be more beautiful than that somewhat dirty and damaged one from the post office he obtained for us.

This year we’d talk to both Dave and Danny about being excited to seeing each other again soon. Dave seemed to be getting better, and then we learned about Dan’s pancreatic cancer, I was devastated. But he told us to stay positive as he was gonna beat it. But then Dave passed so suddenly only weeks before we’d fly to Canada again and Dan got sicker, the prognoses weren’t good and I couldn’t wait to get back to Regina. We were too late for Dave, but nevertheless grateful we were just in time to spend some time with Danny on several days, to be there for the benefit and to meet his amazing family. Danny told his mom that I liked the pillows on their couch that say “people who don’t like cats must’ve been rats in an earlier life” and the next visit Carol gave me one! It’s on our couch for all to see now 🙂 She also told us several times how welcome we’d be there when we move there and how they’d be there for us. She moved me to tears with that, are they ever amazing or what?! So yeah, we certainly are very grateful for all that. Yet at the same time it’s still so unreal that we’d be moving to a Dave and Danny-less Regina.

I thought I had plenty of experiences in dealing with mourning, but this seems much harder than anything before. Yet then I think of all the people (even besides the family) who really did spend a lot of time with him, Marlin, Lowell and Mark, his best friends… and I know it must be so much worse for you guys. I wish I could hug you all right now… so consider yourself hugged!