This past week has been both happy and sad. We had family in town; Cathy’s two sisters (and spouses), an aunt and a niece with her family. Several of them stayed with us; the rest stayed fairly close by and would congregate here for many of the meals. As I’ve commented before, I love family events and get along well with all of my in-laws, so it was really enjoyable.
The sad part is the reason we all got spend time together: my step father-in-law George passed away the end of June and we had his graveside service on Wednesday.
George hadn’t been in good health for a long time; I think his system just simply couldn’t keep going. He spent the last four months in a variety of hospitals and care facilities with blood clots, pneumonia, MRSA infections and on and on. It was clear he was probably going to lose a foot from the effects of loss of circulation, so it was probably a blessing that he didn’t have to go through that.
Naturally we will miss George; he was generous with his time and loved being around family. He had a tough life growing up (from what I understand), but maintained his sense of humor, telling cheesy jokes as long as I knew him. He had a surprising facility with jigsaw puzzles too; we had one going on our dining room table over one holiday or another a while ago and he got it put together in record time.
Anyhow, we’ll miss him. But except for his poor health toward the end, I’d say George had a pretty good life. And a Good Life as well.
A death of someone close provides (or even necessitates) an opportunity to evaluate one’s life. What do I think is important? Am I living the type of life I want to? Am I the type of person I want to be? What things can I (should I?) be doing differently? Things don’t always turn out how you planned; in fact they rarely go exactly as planned, but having a plan and working toward it puts you way ahead of not having a plan! I wrote about The Good Life a while ago, and how each of us has to determine what a “good life” really means. Once defined, the next step is assessing what type of life you have currently and how close you are to your definition of a Good Life.
It’s unfortunate that it often takes the death of someone we know to get us to confront some of these hard questions. I’ll be kicking around in my head over the next few days and weeks what I would change about my life to get closer to my definition of The Good Life.
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer.
Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.
The Good Life revisited
This past week has been both happy and sad. We had family in town; Cathy’s two sisters (and spouses), an aunt and a niece with her family. Several of them stayed with us; the rest stayed fairly close by and would congregate here for many of the meals. As I’ve commented before, I love family events and get along well with all of my in-laws, so it was really enjoyable.
The sad part is the reason we all got spend time together: my step father-in-law George passed away the end of June and we had his graveside service on Wednesday.
George hadn’t been in good health for a long time; I think his system just simply couldn’t keep going. He spent the last four months in a variety of hospitals and care facilities with blood clots, pneumonia, MRSA infections and on and on. It was clear he was probably going to lose a foot from the effects of loss of circulation, so it was probably a blessing that he didn’t have to go through that.
Naturally we will miss George; he was generous with his time and loved being around family. He had a tough life growing up (from what I understand), but maintained his sense of humor, telling cheesy jokes as long as I knew him. He had a surprising facility with jigsaw puzzles too; we had one going on our dining room table over one holiday or another a while ago and he got it put together in record time.
Anyhow, we’ll miss him. But except for his poor health toward the end, I’d say George had a pretty good life. And a Good Life as well.
A death of someone close provides (or even necessitates) an opportunity to evaluate one’s life. What do I think is important? Am I living the type of life I want to? Am I the type of person I want to be? What things can I (should I?) be doing differently? Things don’t always turn out how you planned; in fact they rarely go exactly as planned, but having a plan and working toward it puts you way ahead of not having a plan! I wrote about The Good Life a while ago, and how each of us has to determine what a “good life” really means. Once defined, the next step is assessing what type of life you have currently and how close you are to your definition of a Good Life.
It’s unfortunate that it often takes the death of someone we know to get us to confront some of these hard questions. I’ll be kicking around in my head over the next few days and weeks what I would change about my life to get closer to my definition of The Good Life.
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer. Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.