OTTAWA - Andrew has become accustomed to the quiet nights, but he’s never felt so alone.
April will mark two years since his beloved wife passed away following a year-long battle with brain cancer. Her ashes rest in an urn on the top shelf of the walk-in closet they once shared, and where her clothes still hang.
Next to her urn is a wooden memory box, containing documents to prove their first-born son Alex once lived, though never saw the world. There are footprints, handprints and a photo of the tiny pewter boot-shaped urn that contained the ashes of the stillborn baby.
One night several weeks ago, while thousands of Ottawans did their supper dishes, watched television or sat down to help their children with homework, someone broke into Andrew’s home and made off with the urn, his son — taken from him and his wife, now, a second time.
The widower, and single dad to his and his wife’s second child, had carefully surrounded the ashes in both urns in socks — to keep them warm against the sides of the cold vessels.
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