Sporting his trademark fedora, Joshua Oskrdal strikes a pose for the camera with his older brother Zachary. Those who knew him described Josh as one of the happiest people they knew, with a smile that would light up a room. The 12-year-old was found lifeless in the family’s back yard a week ago Sunday as frantic searchers combed the entire region. The Sûreté du Québec is not treating his death as suspicious. (Photo courtesy Oskrdal family)

by  JIM DUFF

The family and many friends of 12-year-old Joshua Oskrdal will gather at Hudson’s St. Thomas Aquinas Church today to say goodbye to the remarkable young man remembered as a computer genius, math whiz, actor, comedian, fashion plate, compassionate friend — and as the boy whose smile would light up a room.

In the ten days since Joshua’s death, the circle of support for his parents Kelly and Jerry and 14-year-old brother Zachary has widened from the teams of searchers who combed Hudson and St. Lazare a week ago Sunday, to an entire community helping shoulder the family’s grief after Josh was discovered lifeless in the family’s back yard.

“There were so many people out there looking for him,” Jerry recalled last week as he and Kelly reflected on the tragedy that has altered their lives. “Everybody's heart is broken, the community's heart is broken...You're not supposed to bury your child.”

• • •

It had started out as a perfect family Sunday, with Josh combing the Internet looking for blue suspenders for his Evergreen graduation. He’d gotten up in a great mood, ate heartily and spent time home alone watching TV while his parents were out shopping for an automatic coin sorter so that he and his brother could roll their loose change.
Josh assembled the machine and they were rolling coins when he told Zachary he was going outside.“He was gone probably 20 minutes,” Jerry recalls. “It's a cold day...why was he not back yet, because it's not like him to walk to a friend's house without letting us know.”

After combing the immediate neighbourhood on foot, Zachary called his father to report that he had found nothing. “That's when I said okay, come home and we get in the car, it's going to get dark soon,” Jerry recalls. For the next hour, they drove around St. Lazare, checking anywhere they thought Josh might be headed before returning to the house to call 911 and get the message out on Facebook.

“...within five minutes, people started coming to the door and more people calling,” Jerry says. “We had people coming from Île Perrot, all over.”

The search ended Sunday evening when Joshua was found in his own back yard. At the family’s request, we are not making any details public except to say the Sûreté du Québec do not consider it a suspicious death.

• • •

“What we're thinking is that it was a beautiful day and he was up in his room and he saw what a beautiful day it was, the sun was shining, he sees his tree,” Jerry says as he hands me a photo of Josh and Zach sitting in the massive pine, perched on branches that curve up and out from the central trunk like two great arms.

An engineer by profession, Jerry Oskrdal is a man accustomed to asking tough questions and getting straight answers. He and Kelly replay that day over and over in their minds, looking for the slightest clue as to what might have befallen their happy, smiling boy. There are no answers, just that one-word question.

“This is where my anger comes in, at the automatic assumption that it was a suicide,” Jerry says.“We struggled with that. If it was truly an accident, I don't want his memory to go down with something said that wasn't true,” he continues. “There was no indications of anything else.

“Joshua — and I'm not saying this because I'm his father, you go on Facebook and you see the tributes and whatever else from his teachers. One quote was 'every room he walked into, he lit up that room with his smile.’ He was so happy. He planned for the future. He didn't plan for tomorrow, he planned for six, nine months from now.”

• • •

They can’t begin to thank the community that has been sustaining them with prepared meals, with offers of help around the house, with kind words and deeds — and the kind of non-judgmental, unquestioning support they need most.

“Through this tragedy, our close friends, the community family is going to get us through this,” Jerry says. “It started off with the doctors. Joshua's pediatrician came to the house that evening because he wanted to be called if there was somebody he could recommend to make sure that Zachary got some grief counselling.

“The same thing happened when we just called our doctor’s office and said we need to see you, we've had a tragedy. He spent a good hour with us and gave all kinds of referrals. Father Demers, what a fantastic man. We spent half an hour with him and both of us walked out — I wouldn't say at peace, but we felt as at peace as we could be.”

The family is deeply grateful to the Circle of Friends, a group providing solace and support to those in need of support in times of crisis. “The Circle of Friends are the most incredible people in the world,” says Kelly. “They're an absolute godsend, offering to do this or that.”

Their neighbours: “We would never move from here because of the community, but also because of the people on our street. We've known most of them since we've been here, their kids used to babysit, now our kids babysit...”

The school communities: “We were worried about Zach,” his father recalls. “His first day back, he got home at eight.” Zachary went to band practice right after school, then set up for last Wednesday’s Westwood Senior Open House for the Grade 8 students from Westwood Junior. His friends and his teachers were like family.

The Oskrdals would like to see Josh remembered in some way, perhaps in the production of the play he was writing.

“Josh was part of the Hudson Village Theatre's pantomime family, Kelly explains. “He did two pantos in the past three years and he was writing his own play that he was going to perform at the end of the year.

“We hadn't read it and since we were sitting here today and trying to find answers, we found it in his memory stick. I know it's not long enough, but maybe somebody can at least perform it at the school. He was so creative, he had so many plans...