Add-on to Last Post

My last post was about my brother-in-law.

My add-on is about my friend, Mickey, who I worked with when we first moved up here 5 and a half years ago. I got a job working at the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory in Shelburne, Vermont. It was a fun place to work, helping visitors pick out their bears, giving tours of the factory, and stuffing and sewing up bears the people could make themselves (the original "Build a Bear" theme was started there.) Mickey and I worked together most days in the retail shop, she and I being the "older" ones in a group of mostly much younger adults. She was my saving grace on many days, and it was great fun getting to know this warm and caring Vermonter who was born (almost exactly 10 years before me) and raised up in St. Albans. She told me about places to visit, best restaurants to eat at and bits and pieces about local sites, including the premier cree-mee stand where they had over 100 flavors! It's still our one and only place to go for cree-mees during the summer, and to take visitors to. After we moved up to Swanton, the commute to the Teddy Bear Factory was too long, and I quit shortly after. But Mickey and I still remained friends, meeting for lunch once in a rare while, or she would stop by wherever I was working, we exchanged Christmas cards, and I would ask about her whenever I went to the post office, where her niece worked. I few weeks ago her niece stopped into my store, and I was able to talk to Mickey's sister, and learned that her health was failing. Mickey had fought breast cancer twice, but her pain now was in her back, and they were trying to figure out what was going on...

A week ago Saturday, another person we worked with at the Teddy Bear Factory came into my store, and I was excited to see her, but one look told me what I feared. Mickey had passed away, also on July 15th, the same day as my brother-in-law. Her pain was from cancer that they found in her spinal cord, and it took her quickly. I still look for her smiling face on quiet afternoons when I'm working, or think of her when I see the Vermont Teddy Bear I have in our guest room. I shall miss her, my friend. It's been a tough month...

The Distant Bonds

This Post is not about being a grandparent, or parent. It is about the distance that separates us.


Yesterday my youngest sister, who lives in Phoenix, lost the love of her life when he lost his fight with leukemia. In just a little over 4 months this man waged his war on heart disease, diabetes, valley fever, and chemotherapy which left his kidneys damaged enough to also require kidney dialysis. The leukemia entered his liver, causing that organ to begin failing. Then this week, because of his weakened immune system, sepsis set into his blood, causing an infection throughout his entire body. By Wednesday the battle was over, he had called his truce, he was ready. He had two days of calm and comfort, rest and assurance. With my sister at his side, he slipped to the heavens in the early morning hours of Friday, July 15th. The mark he made on everyone's life is remarkable, the responses truly endearing. He was a lover of life, golf, food, passionate about his work, and a friend to all. The world is better for his being here for 62 years, worse for his leaving us way too early.


The distance has been with my sister in Phoenix, my sisters in California and New Hampshire, and my daughters in Maryland and Dallas. The distance that separates us. The phone calls and the texts, the individual ways we have shed tears and reached out to one another. But our thoughts, our prayers, our wishes, and yes, our tears also unite us. We have a bond that brings us together no matter how many miles separate us. This has touched us each in different ways, in different degrees, in our own different memories. But those memories also link us as they overlap times spent with him and with each other. I can not be there as my daughter begins her run this morning in his honor, I can't help my daughter who tried to fly out to Phoenix yesterday to be with her Aunt, and I can't offer my shoulder to my sister who is facing yet another loss of someone she loves deeply. But I know that we are there with each other, we are sharing each others' pain, and we are reaching and touching and connecting, because we are loved. Watch over us Dave, our bonds are strengthened in your loss, we shall forever miss you, but our memories of you bring us joy.

Echos of Memories

The grandchildren have gone, the house is quiet, the toys are put away until the next visit, and the bed sheets have been washed and refolded. I wonder how my own mom felt in the days after we had come and gone when my own girls were little. Its easy to feel sad, and a little hesitant to resume normal life again. I know my little 2 year old granddaughter has cried for me several times since leaving. The first time was right after they got thru security and to their gate, when she realized I wasn't coming with them. I guess she was calling me about as loud as she possibly could for about 5 minutes. And she has asked several times to get back on an airplane and come back to Mimi's house. The bonds are there, and that is good, but it hurts knowing I can't just be there whenever I want to. Maybe though, maybe if I did live right down the street from them like we did before, maybe there wouldn't be this longing. Eventually she will begin to remember special trips up here, and her memories will begin to form favorite things we did, or will do again. I, too, feel some of her misery. I think of her when I take the dogs out for their walk because when she was here she "tinkled" three times outside, "like the doggies do.". Or when I walk past the baby strawberries she picked, or when I sit out in the sunroom where we spent so much time playing, even at night when I hear the barred owl calling "who, who, whoooo."  It was a good visit, and yes, its hard to say goodbye, but there are always the memories...

     Playing ball.

                                                               Standing with Mishka

                                                               At the playground