Skip to main content

Surprises

What a week it's been!  I found myself frequently surprised this week.  Here's what topped the list:


Sting turned 60. 
What? Are you kidding me? How is this possible? 




I don't care how old he is.  He's still making great music and he's still sexy as hell.  I'm lucky to say that I've seen him live, in concert, twice.  Perhaps if he keeps touring, I'll get to live out my life's dream of becoming one of his back-up singers.  Someday.  Someday.  


Steve Jobs died
I wrote only 6 weeks ago, at his retirement, about Steve's impact on the world. While I knew that it would only be a matter of time before his body succumbed to the pancreatic cancer that invaded his body, I had no idea how the death of someone I never knew personally could impact me so deeply. It was inspiring to see the many eloquent and beautiful tributes that floated around the Internet on Wednesday and Thursday.  

We've been fighting the war in Afghanistan for over a decade
While this is not, in itself, a surprise, it's a stark reality check.  What I did find interesting was the Pew Research Study  that recently examined the impact of the war on civilian and military attitudes about military service.  Did you know that even though our country has never before sustained combat for over a decade, this is the first time in history that such a small percentage of the population is entrenched in the fight? While almost 10% of US citizens participated actively in World War II combat, only 1/2 of 1% of our citizens do so today.  Somehow I believe that directly impacts the pressure we do (or don't) place on our government with regard to the decisions they make about where to go with this (seemingly) endless battle.  I don't like to use this blog to talk about politics. I will simply repeat my mantra: War. What is it good for? 


Richmond is an incredibly generous community
Many of you living in the Richmond area probably heard about The Amazing Raise this week.  This 36-hour fundraising event sponsored by Give Richmond and The Community Foundation raised over $491,000 for hundreds of local nonprofits, including over $1000 for CJ's Thumbs Up Foundation and over $6000 for the agency that I work for, Commonwealth Autism Service. Whenever I start to get cynical about the world, I think of these acts of generosity and it warms my heart.  

What surprised you this week?


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9.  Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole.  There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them."    I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known.  This
Post a Comment
Read more

The Stages of Grief: COVID Edition

It's 2020. It's almost Christmas. We're still in the middle of a pandemic. In fact, we are experiencing what appears to be an incredible surge that is exerting tremendous pressure on our healthcare and social service system. The headlines are clear: we're not done with this madness and December 31, 2020 will not magically be the "end of it".  Earlier in the year, our family thought about whether we might be able to travel at this time. We thought that maybe the curve would be flat enough that we could take a few days away from home during the Christmas holidays. We realized that the pandemic would still be happening, but with the right protections and with prolific mask usage, we could get a much-needed change of scenery. During what is now (clearly) a delusional thought process, we booked a stay in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for the week of December 19th. Spoiler alert: we canceled the trip almost two weeks ago.  Canceling this trip was not a tragedy. In fact, I
1 comment
Read more

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen.  If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life.  I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into
2 comments
Read more