Thank you to those of you who wrote to me. Your kind words were truly appreciated. I'm sorry if I haven't replied individually, but just like those endless "wait / status " messages on your computer, I'm still processing... and at odd moments (like when I'm crossing the street) I'll have the urge to burst into tears. Being my mother's daughter though, I really have a hard time letting them flow, which is starting to affect my sleep...
My brother-in-law was really like my second father, since he married my sister when I was six, and my own father died when I was thirteen. He helped shape the person I became, and was always there for me with a hug and a smile, teasingly calling me "the family's professor".
When we had his 70th birthday party (only four years ago, before Alzheimer's truly took him away from us) I think I made remarks (into a microphone!) to the effect that all of my best attributes came from him, and any faults were purely my own. Judging from the eulogies, the extremely large (intercontinental) turnout at his memorial service last Sunday (Feb. 6th), and most of all, the three wonderful children he helped raise, I was not alone in this feeling. The church was full, and we truly celebrated the generous, honorable, and compassionate man that he was.
Tomorrow, I will go visit my sister in CT, and probably drive her nuts with the number of hugs I will give her (I am a hugger, she, less so) but part of that is because I am needing the hugs myself these days.
I hope she will like the changes to my brother-in-law's memorial website that I have made. Like my absentminded contemplation of different funerary customs across cultures (Chinese, Jewish, Egyptian, Christian... see why he called me his professor?) my devotion to building his site is one way of dealing with his loss.
For those of you who work in finance, please take the time to read his friend's eulogy, which was truly eye-opening for me. I never knew that Paul Volcker (then Chairman of the Fed) and the people on the masthead (?) of the HSBC annual reports all paid attention to his comments. To his family, he was always just a loving, humble, humorous man who worked somewhere on Wall Street and always made sure the backyard bird feeder was full.
For those of you who don't know or care who Stephen Green is, there's a photo I love showing my brother-in-law as a young man. He's smiling with amusement at the photographer, and it's quite startling to realize he was a hottie! I mean he was always an attractive man, but it's like looking at your dad and thinking, "Wow! No wonder my mom [literally, MY mom -- whom many of you have met] always said he was good lookin'!"
Okay, I'm kind of rambling. Clearly time for sleep. No, not the eternal kind either. (The burial was last Monday, the 7th, and it was a sunny but not frigid day.) Yes, definitely rambling.
My brother-in-law was really like my second father, since he married my sister when I was six, and my own father died when I was thirteen. He helped shape the person I became, and was always there for me with a hug and a smile, teasingly calling me "the family's professor".
When we had his 70th birthday party (only four years ago, before Alzheimer's truly took him away from us) I think I made remarks (into a microphone!) to the effect that all of my best attributes came from him, and any faults were purely my own. Judging from the eulogies, the extremely large (intercontinental) turnout at his memorial service last Sunday (Feb. 6th), and most of all, the three wonderful children he helped raise, I was not alone in this feeling. The church was full, and we truly celebrated the generous, honorable, and compassionate man that he was.
Tomorrow, I will go visit my sister in CT, and probably drive her nuts with the number of hugs I will give her (I am a hugger, she, less so) but part of that is because I am needing the hugs myself these days.
I hope she will like the changes to my brother-in-law's memorial website that I have made. Like my absentminded contemplation of different funerary customs across cultures (Chinese, Jewish, Egyptian, Christian... see why he called me his professor?) my devotion to building his site is one way of dealing with his loss.
For those of you who work in finance, please take the time to read his friend's eulogy, which was truly eye-opening for me. I never knew that Paul Volcker (then Chairman of the Fed) and the people on the masthead (?) of the HSBC annual reports all paid attention to his comments. To his family, he was always just a loving, humble, humorous man who worked somewhere on Wall Street and always made sure the backyard bird feeder was full.
For those of you who don't know or care who Stephen Green is, there's a photo I love showing my brother-in-law as a young man. He's smiling with amusement at the photographer, and it's quite startling to realize he was a hottie! I mean he was always an attractive man, but it's like looking at your dad and thinking, "Wow! No wonder my mom [literally, MY mom -- whom many of you have met] always said he was good lookin'!"
Okay, I'm kind of rambling. Clearly time for sleep. No, not the eternal kind either. (The burial was last Monday, the 7th, and it was a sunny but not frigid day.) Yes, definitely rambling.
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