Son shares emotions, grief in series of tweets after father killed in workplace mishap in Leduc
An Edmonton man who lost his father in a workplace incident in Leduc last week has offered a raw, public look at what it’s like to lose a loved one.
Cody Bondarchuk said his father, 52-year-old Daryn Bondarchuk, was one of the three people killed in a mishap at Millennium Cryogenic Technologies on Nov. 16.
Occupational Health and Safety officials continue to investigate what happened at the business, located in the Leduc Business Park. The deaths of the men shocked the tight-knit community south of Edmonton.
According to its website, the company cleans oilfield equipment using a cryogenic technology involving extremely cold gases, commonly liquid nitrogen.
Bondarchuk, 25, began a series of tweets processing his grief the day of the incident.
“I just did it. I don’t know if I thought too much about it,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “I think a lot of emotions are kind of competing in my head at once and really jumbled around. So putting something down in writing is actually kind of helping me make sense of what my brain is thinking.”
Bondarchuk’s father was a tradesman “with little bits of knowledge all over the place,” his son said. He worked at the old Molson Brewery in Edmonton before it closed, and later went into business for himself doing home renovations.
Bondarchuk’s posts dealt with the mental and physical exhaustion that comes with a parent’s sudden death, as well as the sheer amount of work required to get their affairs in order.
He talks about the logistics — picking family up at the airport, collecting his vehicle, filling out paperwork, and beginning to go through his father’s things.
“It’s the first business day after, so you are able to start filing paperwork,” he wrote. “Some staff are very patient and understanding that you don’t know which documents to ask for, but many are not.”
He also wrote about the sudden realization he hadn’t eaten all day, but being unable to swallow food. “You kind of put everything … at the back of your head until you deal with things and emotions,” he said.
At one point, he worried he wouldn’t have any recent photos of his father, who didn’t use Facebook. He eventually found a photo of his father holding a fish after getting access to his phone and computer.
“(You) find photos you’ve never seen, where he looks so happy and alive,” he wrote. “You then realize that he, and everyone else in the world, never plans for someone to root through their phone without them there.
“You see a photo of your dad from when he was your current age and he’s holding you as a baby and you realize how you really thought there was a lot more time to build new memories and have new adventures.”
Bondarchuk said his family is still planning a date for his father’s funeral.