No, there’s no rant today.\u00a0 Today is Memorial Day and, as I have done in years past, I will give a little remembrance to the lives of those who have died.\u00a0 Since Memorial Day last year, there have been two deaths with personal impact.\u00a0 The first is my mother’s sister, Sue, who died last week.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sue, as I knew her, had a passion for several things:\u00a0 Art, humor and her daughters.\u00a0 She was a teacher, a profession I have always admired and felt was underpaid.\u00a0 She was also not one to hide her feelings; it’s a family trait I have strongly inherited.\u00a0 Sue didn’t hold back on anything, as far as I knew.\u00a0 She laughed hard and enjoyed life.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My aunt was involved in a family dispute about a dozen years ago, and it saddens me I haven’t seen her since.\u00a0 This is not out of spite; it’s more a matter of me simply not making out her way.\u00a0 The last time I saw her was at my grandmother’s funeral, and before that I am not really sure.\u00a0 She simply wasn’t somebody I kept in contact with on a regular basis, and that is my shortcoming.\u00a0 Sue had a full life.\u00a0 She would have been seventy-five this fall.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The other death personal to me was my cat of fourteen years.\u00a0 I mentioned this last fall, just before Thanksgiving, when she died.\u00a0 It’s hard to memorialize a cat properly.\u00a0 She didn’t do tricks, there was no particular stunt she pulled or thing she did which was memorable.\u00a0 Shadow was, however, there<\/em>.\u00a0 Whenever I needed her, for fourteen years she was there<\/em>.\u00a0 This, really, is all one can ask of a companion of any species, and Shadow met and exceeded this requirement.\u00a0 Six months after her death, I still miss her terribly.\u00a0 Sylvie, one of my new kittens, is bonding with me much like Shadow did, but she is not<\/em> Shadow and sometimes that hurts terribly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I know Memorial Day is for honoring those who died in battle fighting in the U.S. military forces.\u00a0 I honor them as well, but their loss simply isn’t personal to me.\u00a0 No recent member of my family has been in combat, much less died in it.\u00a0 My grandfather (Sue and my mother’s father) was an officer in WWII, but as far as I know he didn’t see any combat.\u00a0 So I keep this annual post to those whose life meant something to me.\u00a0 I hope next year I have no one to post about, but only time will tell.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meanwhile, my life goes on.\u00a0 See you tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No, there’s no rant today.\u00a0 Today is Memorial Day and, as I have done in years past, I will give a little remembrance to the lives of those who have died.\u00a0 Since Memorial Day last year, there have been two deaths with personal impact.\u00a0 The first is my mother’s sister, Sue, who died last week. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":522,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions\/522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}