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Call me crazy…but…I’m not a big believer in death. If widowhood has taught me anything, it’s this: When one’s body melts away, the soul is set free. Free from pain. Free from sorrow. Free for bodily limitations. Free to soar! Until illness consumed him, my husband (Dick) gleefully tested bodily limitations on a variety of playgrounds. Ski slopes, bike trails, sailing seas, back roads where he could drive like…well…like no one should. The only force-of-nature that could keep him off a golf course was lightening. (And it took lightening bolts—plural!) His vibrant, adventurous spirit invigorated and inspired all of us …Read the rest of the story…

The snows of Minnesota were legendary in my mother’s tales of childhood winters. Swirling snowstorms she and her sisters would walk through to get to school, ice skating on frozen lakes and parking lots. Magical white Christmases, where they shared some of their best memories before their mother was stolen away by breast cancer at the tender age of 33, leaving my mother and her twin, Martha at 12, my aunt Sandy at age 8 and aunt Judy who was barely 6. It was my mom who taught me to make snow angels and she would share stories of how …Read the rest of the story…

If anyone has ever known the depths of my heart, it was my Aunt Trisha. She was my mother’s sister, but she was a mother to me. In her early childhood, Trisha developed a rare bone disease and was told she wouldn’t live to see ten years old. Boy, did she prove them wrong. She was full of spunk and liked doing that. Her house was my home. I spent more time there growing up than I did in my own house. She gave me a soft, safe place to land. During my teenage years, a lot of our time …Read the rest of the story…