Veseventures

We held my mother's memorial last Sunday, a week ago tomorrow. She lived a long life, most of it good, some of it difficult, lived mainly on her own terms: a good enough score for anyone. While Mom died in November, it's really been this past week that it's hit me hard. I'm not sure how it's hit my sister, A, yet. I'll probably call her sometime over the next week. She used this past week as vacation time, flying from Oregon to the west coast of Florida, staying in a condo at the beach, then going to visit her in-laws for a few days. She came down with her husband and youngest daughter, and met up with her son and other daughter. Growing up, and most of my adult life, I'd been closer to our dad than mom. Even if we have a decent home-life growing up, by which I mean two great parents who are doing their best at muddling through the job of raising kids, most of us, I think, tend to feel a little closer to one parent or the other. Usually it doesn't ...

It's never easy to lose a loved-one. If one lives long enough, one tends to lose too many loved-ones. My mother died back in November. My sister and I are having her memorial today. I've been elected to give the eulogy. We had planned to go out onto the beach to scatter a few of Mom's ashes. But unless the rain lets up, I don't see that happening. Such is life...and death. In the meantime, here is the eulogy I plan to give: 'We're gathering today to remember a special person. Some of us remember her as Mom, Sis, Aunt J, Grandma, Maghee or friend. If we include all her names from her 83 years, she'd be J. D. H. S. C. S. Quite a mouthful of names, but then, she lived quite a life. "J was born March 6, 1931, changing her only brother, Dave, from an only child to a big brother. From the stories Mom told over the years, Dave was her brother, friend, confidant, ruining her life – at least in her child's mind, when a stranger offered to take her pictu...