04 August 2010
02 August 2010
My only niece wrote to me, I finally replied
Dear Serena ...
Thank you so very much for you very kind and luxuriously hand-written note to me from June.
I regret very much that I have taken far too long to reply, and I regret very much that I am at this point in my life simply too ADHD to take time to write in longhand. Please, please accept this poor electronic substitute for a written letter ... my concern is no less, I assure you.
I would like to write a short biography of your grandmother for you. Do you have access to standard word processing software, so I may send you the bio in a *.DOC file? Please let me know so I can get started, and I will forward it to you as an email attachment.
The short version is: my mother died from the spread of ovarian cancer.
I wish to write the most pertinent details leading up to her ugly hospitalization, treatment, and ultimate early death. I won't make you wait for the medical history you have asked for: I will open with a one-paragraph summary so you can get an immediate answer to your primary question. However, in due respect for her, it would please me if you would read it thoroughly. I am quite willing to go further into any areas where you still have questions after you read my biography.
After her death, I rejoined the service in 1987 and spent my first year back stationed on Yerba Buena Island. I was a 31 year old roustabout on a sea-going construction tender. My tools were chain hooks, a sledge hammer, a cutting torch, anchors shackles buoy scrapers. The extreme physical labor was the best cure available for my sorrow over losing mom.
When I had leisure time I would drive my 1964 Volvo 122S to the Sunset neighborhood. I liked the restaurants and movie theatre. (Wish I had bought that $200,000 home I had looked at.) I would also go frequently to Land's End and sit in the fog next to the seagrass, listening to the Golden Gate horn bellow.
I adore the life you and Cole have fashioned. I think of you as our family's Chelsea Clinton, except you are not a money-grubbing investment banker. I admire your husband although we have never met. I wish I were in position to rejoin our family but I do not think I have the years left to do so. One of my fondest photographs is one of you elbow deep in a jack-o-lantern we were cutting in the backyard of your home in Albuquerque. The year would have been 1982 or 83 I guess.
Please reply so I will know you have received this.
Thank you for your patience.
Uncle Phillip
Yorktown, Virginia
Grandma gave me this kitchen
I know you and mom are lying together peacefully at last in Middleburg Heights. I hope you both take time once in a while to look in on me. Say "hi" to gramps for me.
God bless you Gram.
10 May 2010
21 April 2010
Man, do I LOVE Spring ...
------------------------------
HER DIARY:
Tonight I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at
a bar to have a drink. I was shopping with my friends all day long so I
thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no
comment on it. Conversation wasn't flowing, so I suggested that we go
somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn't say much. I asked
him what was wrong; he said, 'Nothing.' I asked him if it was my fault that
he was upset. He said he wasn't upset, that it had nothing to do with me,
and not to worry about it. On the way home, I told him that I loved him. He
smiled slightly, and kept driving. I can't explain his behavior. I don't
know why he didn't say, 'I love you, too.' When we got home, I felt as if I
had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He
just sat there quietly, and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and
absent. Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About
15 minutes later, he came to bed. To my surprise, he responded to my
caress, and we made love. But I still felt that he was distracted, and his
thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep - I cried. I don't know what
to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a
disaster.
HIS NOTEBOOK:
Harley wouldn't start today. Can't figure it out but at least I got laid
