*This is your dad, Wesley. I had to add this note that Poppi sent me while your mom and I were on our honeymoon cruise to show another side of Poppi* Ryan- Glad you’re having a great time. Quick update from home: You were right – those were Aunt Mildred’s teeth on the dance floor […]
Though most of my memories of my Dad are limited, I do remember him singing to me – each night for that matter before I went to bed. I remember how calm I felt when I heard his voice. Your Great Grandpa Dan loved Al Jolson so, as you would expect, most of the songs […]
Controlling behavior: Behavior intended to control your own feelings, control how people feel about you and treat you, or control the outcome of things. All of us have grown up learning many different ways to control – we had to as part of our survival. Perhaps you grew up in a family that used anger […]
Wesley, like it or not, it is inevitable that at some point in our lives all of us will face the loss of someone or something dear to us. The grief that comes with such a loss can seem unbearable. But as difficult as it may seem to grasp, the grief you feel is actually […]
We have absolutely no control over the most life-defining things that happen to us. We can’t decide where or when we will be born. We can’t pick what color our skin will be or how tall or fat we will be or whether we will be funny or sad. We can’t determine whether we will […]
We live in a rule-driven society. We have rules for everything. We have rules that define “good” and “bad”; rules that tell us “do this and don’t do that”; rules that dictate how we should interact with one another. We even have rules that dictate what happens to us if and when we break one […]
In his 1933 Inaugural Address, Franklin Roosevelt told a country devastated by the Depression that it was his “firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Fear, he said, was “a nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror”. Respectfully, Roosevelt was only partially correct. We must also fear those that would use fear […]
I always thought that I would know that I was getting old when parts of my body started to break. My body, I thought, would send me loud and clear signals when it was time to start living in the moment rather than planning for an unending string of tomorrows. Well, parts of my body […]
On September 18, 2007 professor Randy Pausch, a Computer Science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh stepped in front of an audience of 400 people to deliver his last lecture entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans filling the screen at the front of the lecture hall, Professor Rausch […]
When I was twelve years old my Father, your Great Grandfather, died. Actually he died right on my twelfth birthday. He suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage on a Wednesday morning and immediately went into a deep coma. He never woke up. Two days later he was gone. My last image of my Father was of […]