Tag Archives: family

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Another tale of loss

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My reluctance to share this latest twist in my life’s journey has buckled under the pressure to reveal a bit about my family to all of you.

I lost my sister to illness not long ago. She was 14 months younger than me. She had suffered terribly for a long time with a list of ailments too long for me to count here. It was a bout with COPD that claimed my sis. Her heart stopped and the medics couldn’t bring her back.

Georgianne died in the house she shared with her husband.

Sis led a complicated life. However, we remained close despite some differences over many issues dating back to our teen years. It’s difficult to explain, except that I knew her my entire life. She was part of my life the moment I became aware of my surroundings as a toddler.

I have been feeling down in the dumps over the past several days. I guess it’s a feeling of mortality that has gripped me.

My parents weren’t allowed to grow old. Dad was 59 when he perished in a boating accident in 1980. Mom was 61 when she succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease four years later. My bride was 71 when she passed from glioblastoma — cancer of the brain. All but one of my parents’ eight siblings have passed away.

We’re going to gather later this week to celebrate Georgianne’s life in a service at a church she and her husband attended in a rural Washington state community. The next day we will gather at a cemetery in Portland to have her remains blessed by an Orthodox priest from the church where my sisters and I were baptized.

I have no particular need to tell you all of this, other than to put it in the open. I have one sister left and I venture to believe we will be drawn even closer than we are already … and that’s really saying something.

Maybe I should declare a bit of regret that I wasn’t always kind to my departed sister. She had this way of getting under my skin with the occasional statement or opinion that exhibited a stunning lack of awareness that others were hurting.

But … she was my sister. I loved her unconditionally. I will miss her for the rest of my life.

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A new era begins

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AMARILLO, Texas — I have returned to commence the next step in a journey I didn’t expect to take.

It will be a journey tinged with happiness, but also some sadness.

Once I depart this city, I will be able to have both of my sons nearby for the first time in, oh, more than 30 years. My older son is moving from the Panhandle to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where I now live near where my younger son lives with his wife and daughter.

The sadness comes — as many of you no doubt are aware — because my beloved bride, Kathy Anne, won’t be there to greet us. It’s just the three of us now, my sons and me.

Our older son graduated from high school in 1991 and went to college in Huntsville, about a two-hour drive from Beaumont, where we were living at the time. Our youngers son graduated from HS the following year and moved to Dallas to attend college; our younger son never looked back.

My wife and I moved from Beaumont to Amarillo in early 1995. Our older son graduated from college that year and moved to Amarillo to start his career.

But for all those years, we were separated from our younger son.

That is about to change. My older son had talked out loud for some time about moving from the High Plains to be near family. The loss of my bride to cancer in February accelerated his plans.

I am delighted to have both of my sons, along with my daughter-in-law and granddaughter, close by. I only wish our family was complete. Tragically, that cannot occur.

Meanwhile, my son and I are preparing to help his brother pack up.

A new era is about to begin. Pray for all of us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Preparing for a sad, but also joyful, duty

I am preparing at this moment to take a four-hour ride from Dallas-Fort Worth airport to Portland, Ore., where I will participate in what can be best described as a cycle of life ritual.

I will bid farewell to my beloved uncle, Jim Phillips. I will be there along with his wife, his children, many of his grandchildren, one of my sisters and virtually all of my cousins on my mother’s side of my boisterous family.

It will sadden me to say goodbye. It also will enable us to rejoice in the full and fruitful life he had over the span of his 93 years on this good Earth. We will gather to remember the richness that Uncle Jim brought to us. I trust we all will in our own way pledge to cling to those memories as we move on through the rest of our lives. Those thoughts will not sadden me. They will make me smile.

These events are part of what all families must endure. Indeed, as I am now well into that stage of my own life, having just turned 70 a little while back, my sisters, along with my wife and sons, realize as I do that the clock is ticking for all of us. The number of our family elders with whom we grew up is diminishing  far too rapidly.

However, it is the inevitable march of time over which no one has any control.

It’s been said many times by many people perhaps over many adult beverages that “Not a single one of us gets outta here alive.”

So it goes … and so it will be.