My Memory Box is Overflowing

Ok!  I’m back!  My blogs will get back on schedule. In case you forgot, Tuesdays are nature and things important to me.  Fridays are usually about jewelry techniques and what I’m doing.

It is so nice to be home in Prescott AZ.  I’ve been to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and stopped to see the Condors.  Then we went to Mexico to Rancho Esmeralda for training in locating and surveying birds.  Next I went to Kansas City to see family and last to Tucson for the fall Reptile Show. 

Each place I visited held special memories both past and present.  In Kansas City, I visited my brothers and their families.  Lots of memories revisited!  We reminisced about growing up and about our parents.  There are 5 ½ years between each of us three kids.  We talked about how each of us remembers and experienced our lives with the same parents.  And of course, our parents were in different stages of their life with each of us.  I find it fascinating that the same set of circumstances is perceived in such different ways.  If a family can’t see things the same way, no wonder governments with so many more people and issues are in turmoil and disarray.

My brothers’ birthdays are a month apart and it was very special to have a family dinner at Jasper’s (I highly recommend this Italian restaurant in Kansas City MO.)  Two years ago my younger brother had a terrible accident that left him with nonunion ribs.  I had never heard of them.  It seems that they are involved in less than 1% of all accidents and most people have never heard of them.  It’s when a rib is broken and is so far apart that it will never heal.  The rib tries to connect but cannot.  Imagine living with the pain of broken ribs for the rest of your life.  It was important for me to see how he is dealing with that pain on a daily basis.  I talk to him every day but that is not the same.  He is doing much better with pain management than he was a year ago.  As he told me, ‘It’s the same pain and it is always a minimum of ‘5’ on a scale of 1-10.”  My older brother just finished getting a knee replacement.  This dinner added lots of good family memories to my memory box. 

I visited my mother-in-law whom I had not seen in 2 years.  We talk on the phone often but again it is not the same as being there.  She is 92 years old and the only ‘parent’ I have left.  Her older son, Allen, and I were married 33 years before he died of a brain tumor.  I have known her since I was 13. 

She had fallen and was in a skilled nursing home recovering.  She is the one who said, with tears in her eyes, “Our memory box is over-flowing”.  That it is.