http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1208698.html
Missing man’s wife can’t bear to go home
Lunenburg man believed to have fallen off freighter had 'heart of gold'
By BEVERLEY WARE South Shore Bureau
Mon, Oct 25 - 4:53 AM
BRIDGEWATER — Gary Charlton always told his wife Jacelyn he had her in his pocket, patting the empty pocket in his coveralls over his heart.
They spent weeks apart, he working as an engineer on a freighter for Upper Lakes Shipping Ltd. and she an assistant engineer on another Great Lakes freighter, working towards her full engineer’s ticket. But they stayed together through constant text messages and working hard so they could time their holidays just right.
Jacelyn Charlton once half-heartedly complained to Gary to cut back on the incessant barrage of texts.
"He was bloody obsessed with text messaging."
She would give anything to receive a text message from her husband now.
She still checks her phone to see if he has tried to contact her, and she calls his phone, but nobody answers.
Last week, Gary, 59, is believed to have fallen off the ship on which he was working in the St. Lawrence Seaway. He was last seen on board the Canadian Provider at 4 a.m. Wednesday. After intensive efforts, the United States Coast Guard called off the search Thursday afternoon. They didn’t find him or his cellphone.
Today, Jacelyn, 49, sits alone in a Mississauga hotel room, weeping for her husband, knowing she should come home to Lunenburg but unable to be away from where her husband was last seen.
"I know he’s somewhere here and if I go home, it’s definitely too far from here. I want to go home, but I don’t want to go home."
Their home on First Peninsula, just outside Lunenburg, is built with logs Charlton stripped with his own hands. It sits next to the water.
"I can’t look at the water. I’ll see him. I can’t go in the house. I’ll see him," Jacelyn sobbed.
She described her husband as proud, honest, hard-working and brutally direct man with "a heart of gold."
"He was a grumpy old fart, but when we were together, it was awesome.
"He worshipped the ground I walk on."
She said she felt the same way about her husband.
They celebrated their wedding anniversary Oct. 10. The couple was married at Central United Church in Lunenburg, arriving and leaving by horse and carriage.
"It was a fairy tale," she said.
Jacelyn said she was with her husband just hours before he disappeared. She was working on the James Norris, tied up in Toronto, as her husband’s ship entered the locks of the St. Lawrence, so she drove up to spend the day with him Tuesday.
They went into Port Colborne and then shared chicken wings, french fries and a couple of drinks before Jacelyn had to head back shortly before 10 p.m. Her husband texted her all the way back to Toronto. The texts stopped when he went on shift in the engine room at midnight.
At 4 a.m., he came off shift, went to the galley for some food and then sent his wife a quick email.
"Night, night, I love you," he said.
Gary said he was tired, so he went to his room, adorned with pictures of his wife, to get some rest.
He would normally text his wife before going on shift at noon. By then, the wind had stirred up two-metre waves. Jacelyn’s voice breaks with pain when she recites what the U.S. Coast Guard has told her likely happened.
Crew often go up on deck if they can’t get cell reception down below.
"They feel he was walking on deck trying to get service, but the waves had made the deck wet. They think he slipped and somehow went overboard."
She said neither the police nor his family doctor believes he committed suicide, and she does not believe he did. The Ontario Provincial Police are treating this as a missing-person case, while Transport Canada is investigating to ensure there were no safety violations.
Jacelyn said her husband had a terrible year last year with the deaths of his mother, son, brother and best friend. His son died a year ago on Oct. 14. But she said the couple worked through everything together.
Gary was home for five weeks last summer, taking his toddler granddaughter blackberry picking for three hours. They returned scratched and hot and smiling.
"That little girl put so much health in him."
Jacelyn said they lived a different life from most couples because of their jobs. But she said their marriage worked because they understood each other.
She had been a single mother for 23 years when she met her future husband. She was independent and had never needed anyone.
"But I need him because I love him."
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bware@herald.c