So Janice and I have planned a trip this year. Ostensibly to celebrate my milestone birthday - 60! (I tied Ruth, Maris, McGwire and Bonds) - we are taking a riverboat cruise in Western Europe. My birthday is in April, but we decide May would be a better time weather-wise.
I have never actually participated in the blogging phenomenon, but I thought it would be a good way to stay in touch during our trip and a way of documenting it. Who knows, if I feel comfortable with this blogging thing, it may branch out to just be a place where I can espouse my own take on things - regardless of who cares.
Monica went on a trip to Ireland and England last year with a friend of hers, Nicki. Nicki apparently was up on the blogging thing. She posted her thoughts, observations and pictures as they traipsed about the countryside or drove through the UK. That's my inspiration for doing this.
I will need to learn how to upload/post pictures, but I don't think it will be a problem.
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One more subject before quitting this first post.
My brother Henry passed away in the early morning of Monday Jan 23 2012. He was 65. He left this world far too soon. As we grow older, 65 seems to be pretty young. Henry had been sick for many years. Diabetes was probably at the core of all the things that went wrong with his body over the years. When he died, it wasn't a surprise. I think we had all been expecting that to happen - we just din't know when and had hoped for more. Still, shock is still an appropriate word for how we all felt.
But he had come back a number of times. His son, my nephew Neil, on more than one occassion remarked that his dad had taken 9 lives from one cat and was working his way through another one. The will was strong, but the body was too ravaged.
Henry, in recent months, told me that the thing that bothered him most, the thing that hurt him to the quick, was that his grandchildren had never known him really healthy and whole. He had a loving wife, Eileen, loving children and their respective spouses, Neil and Dixie, and Robyn and Julio, and his grandkids - Eric, Marc and Nathan. Just as Eileen and his kids were his anchor during his illnesses, his grandkids were the sparkle of his life through that time. He was their "Poppy" and their love for him and his love for them is a memory and bond that I know will serve them well throughout their lives.
I am almost 6 years younger than Henry, my sister, Hinda, almost 12 years. Not a lot of building social ties as children. But we had a good family life. I know we had our moments, good and bad, but we were family. When our younger brother, Danny, was ripped out of our lives in 1973 when he was 19, I went through a sort of bonding with Henry then. I was close to Danny. I don't think I was so very conscious of it at the time, but in years after that, I came to realize that Henry shared the same loss that I felt at the time. And as adults, the years difference mattered less.
I'll miss you Henry. And I am proud to say that SO MANY people have told me the same thing in a heartfelt way that brings tears to my eyes.
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