![]() This year's review is much tougher than in the past, which is one reason why it's a week late. It's hard to judge an entire year against others in a lifetime, but this one has got to be about the most difficult. Accordingly, why not start with what might be called this most difficult personally then on to what is just different, precious or maybe just worth noting. As the year started off, nothing stood out as abnormal or different, and daily life turned into monthly life to us, and we went on as others do about our business. On March 17th, we got a call from Florida and both looked at each other as we saw a hospital number on the caller ID from Florida...fearing the unknown and receiving worse, we got word that my stepfather, Terry, had passed away from a sudden heart attack. Trying to deal as best we could and take care of ourselves and our families, I drove quickly down to Florida to be with the family as Tony stood watch over our lives at home, and as soon as I made it back home, Tony took the next watch and flew down to Florida to help out the family. A few weeks later, another scare all too close hit again, Tony's father also had a heart attack, which Tony flew home to monitor, thankfully to see Ronnie recover. Alot happened through the year (as will be discussed, but lets get through the nastiness first), then in October we got another call. My grandmother had taken suddenly ill. She had lived her whole life with Multiple Sclerosis, and had gotten pneumonia or worse. Unfortunately, within a week, she too passed away. (thankfully our first vacation in a few years was spent at our family reunion visiting her in Kentucky). Thinking this tragedy might be the last within a year, we moved on and hoped for the best, however it wasn't meant to be. In December, Tony's grandmother also became ill and soon had passed away. This was the third for us (as the saying goes, they tend to come in three's), but it meant soo much more than that, we lost alot of special people to us and I tend to think that it made us appreciate things so much more. It's hard to express exactly what the loss means, but it changes us day by day and hopefully will make us cherish what we have as we go on. Nor were we the only ones that suffered losses, and we wanted to mention a few of the people closest to us that went through the same things...In memory of their losses (and others that we do not mention but would not forget) we want to express our sorrows to Brad for his grandfather, Kim for her grandmother, Rick for his grandmother and Rich for his father. Life Continues RJ is a semi-"nephew" of our neighbor Robin. He moved here from VA in July and we rented our downstairs room to him. He's a really nice guy and not only rents our room, but works at the pet store part time and is a cool friend of ours. Although Tony won't probably admit it, he's been a great influence on him (well from my standpoint)--(also I hope we are able to give him some guidance)...RJ has helped Tony see how cool it would be for us to have a kid of our own, and seems alot more open to the possibility and talks about it much more then he used to...Finally he seems ready! (Thanks, son RJ). Public News of our Own Family Matters Tony moved on to 36 years, while I stepped up to 32, but more importantly we celebrated our 12th anniversary together. I could rattle on with this summary for another year (but our calendar is always available to flip through and see what happened day by day), But Tony assures me that this year is going to be the best in a long time, so instead of listing more things that happened, or listing some of our resolves of what we would like to happen, I'll just close out and say that we really do have hope for a great year and with the help of our family and friends, we have no doubt that it's exactly what it will be... Another year down...lots more to go, |
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