NikB #33 Keep on Keepin On...

[NikB]

Wow... funny I used "survive" as my choice of words! I've had a really sad start to 2009, so far.

On Friday 1/2 my Uncle was found dead in his apartment by a friend of his. It appears to be a heart attack. Not a total shock as he wasn't in great health, but he's only 67 so pretty young still.

Today, I get a call from my Dad that my grandmother passed away.

Geez.

Grandma's been under hospice care with "a few weeks to live" for well over a year now so it wasn't a surprise, but still it's sad. My Uncle, I was never close to and in fact have only met him twice (once when I was too little to remember it). But, it means my Mom lost the remainder of her "family" all in less than a year. Her Mom just died in May of 2008, and now her brother.

During this exact same time frame we got a completely crazy call out of the blue letting us know that one of our ancestors (my great x4 grandfather in fact) was instrumental in getting the Constitution ratified in New York. The guy was super excited to find us - they had not been able to find any living relatives of this guy and now found us. It's been pretty amazing to find out that we had ancestors who essentially helped form the nation as it is today! The guy who called us is a historian and writing a book about this guy, and he keeps emphasizing to us just HOW huge this guy's role was... like we're not getting it (which we probably aren't). Apparently he debated Alexander Hamilton. Wow.

Talk about a mixed bag, huh??

I need to post a lot more soon about all kinds of things just to get it out of my head (and get some advice on how to make some improvements to my M) - but for now just had to get this stuff out. What a weekend.

Hope everyone else had a better start to the year!