Thanks

Global Followers

Many of you have been staying in touch with me especially these past few difficult weeks.  I truly would like to thank you.  I would like to thank many of my high school classmates from the northeast part of the US.  Especially those in CT and NY as well as those transplants that now reside in FL.


They say that grieving is a process.  I must admit that part of my process was to verbalize how I felt especially during these final weeks.  For some of you, it might have made you feel uncomfortable and uneasy.  For others, it might have touched a still tender wound.  The fact is that we must accept death as readily as we celebrate birth.  Both are part of the life process.  We must learn to appreciate what each offers:  joy and grief.


My mother had the good fortune of living a full life surrounded by friends both old and new and by family.  She and her best friend, my uncle's wife, Leo, had shared friendship for nearly seventy-three years and lived within proximity of each other for nearly half a century.


Like my mother, I value friendship.  I believe in staying in touch with you.  I share my experiences both of joy and suffering because we all experience both.  It's never all joy and it certainly is never all suffering.  As a friend, I worry for those that drift into despair and feel there are no solutions.  That there is no hope.


During the past few weeks, my family has found many angels along the way.  We found them as we looked for services and care for my mother. We found people who didn't view my mother as just another old patient and my father as just a tired old man.  One lady actually found space for my mother in a nursing home that had a backlog of 50 patients.  That nursing home was only five minutes away from Dad's house and easy drive for an 88 year old man.

U.S. Friends

We could feel the love of hospice care and the tenderness of the massages and lotions my mother received.  At the time my father needed spiritual care, he found a new friend in a Spanish speaking Chaplain named Fernando.


Even at the funeral, we made friends with a portly funeral director named Doug and an old assistant named Arthur.  They were all angels and blessings along the way.  What I thought would be impossible to do suddenly became possible and worry free.  In the face of grief and hardship joy can be found through the angels we meet.