Sad Loss

Today I heard some news that hit my heart hard....
Sadly Neil Armstrong aged 82, (5th Aug 1930 - 25th Aug 2012) the first man onto the moon, had lost his fight against heart trouble. He had died following complications to heart surgery he had a few weeks ago.

I actually had grief for someone I don't know.

However in a small way I do know him. Or at least I know about him. I have taken an interest in him.
You see back in 1986 my parents moved to America and why to this day I will never understand, we ended up living in a small city in North West Ohio called Wapakoneta (pronounced Wapa kon eta) also known as Wapak.

It is a small city, pop of just over 9000, located on I75 at junction 111.
Its main claim to fame..........it is the birth place of Neil Armstrong. It is where he was born on 5th August 1930.
When we lived there in 1986, his parents were both still alive and they lived on the renamed street of Neil Armstrong Drive and they were lovely people, I know I met them.
Well more like I spent sometime with them holding a hosepipe over a ladder whilst people ran the marathon around the town that was part of the annual Race to The Moon.
We held a hosepipe up because the summers in Wapak are hot.
Just today I checked with the local paper and they were in the 90's (about 32c for all of us) so yes hot, but then in the winter they get cold cold and have snow, so from one extreme to another.

It is a small Indian city, where when we lived there I felt time had forgotten it.
Lima is the closest large place and was the place to go for civilisation!
Although you could survive very nicely without ever leaving Wapak.
Kids in typical fashion would complain about the size of Wapak and the lack of up to date activities however many seem to fall back there to live and raise their own families, so it can't be all that bad a place to be.

I have lived in many places during my life and of all the places I have lived, Wapak is the place I left my heart.

So to all my friends in Wapakoneta, Ohio, you are in my thoughts and prayers, as you go through this sad time.
And to everyone else, the next time you see the moon at night, look at it with love in your heart and show a smile or wink for Neil Armstrong, the man who made history but to this day felt he never did anything special apart from just doing his job.

God bless you Neil Armstrong, you will be sadly missed

Little Visitor

Sadly, I was right.
Our own little Tiggy-Winkle was still in exactly the same place as we left it this morning.
So we put our bags away and then the boys and Steve set about digging a deep hole for it in the back garden.

The boys were not bothered at.
In fact I said to Steve that they seemed so excited about it I was worried about what would happen if one of the cats died? Probably find the boys would be racing to see who could dig the hole first!

Steve got the hedgehog from the front garden and as we put it in the hole, Alex said "Goodbye Hedgehog" and our little service was complete.

M*A*S*H

I don't think there is anyone who doesn't remember this programme.
You either loved it or hated it.
I remember watching it in the late 80's in the US, at that stage you could, if you really wanted to, watch 5 episodes a day, although the 1 shown at 11pm was a repeated the next day at 10.30am, so really only 4 a day.

However, the reason I am having this little walk down memory lane is because sadly Harry Morgan has passed away today.
"Who was he again?" I hear you say.
He had the wonderful pleasure of playing Col. Sherman T Porter.

He was 96 when he died of pneumonia and he had lead a full life.

I looked up M*A*S*H on the computer and found some useless little facts about the show.

• Did you know that all the paintings in Col. Porter's office were actually painted by Harry Morgan.
• Ron Howard, Patrick Swazye and John Ritter all had small parts in an episode at some stage throughout the 11 years of the show running.
• The dog tags worn by Jamie Farr (Max Klinger) were his own actual tags from when he himself served in the U.S. Army in Korea in the 1950s after the Korean War. Alan Alda also served in the U.S Army in Korea.
• The outdoor sets for the show were built in Malibu, California
• The last episode aired on Feb 28, 1983 and was apparently watched by over 125 million viewers.

I am lucky enough to have the complete set of M*A*S*H on DVD at home, and still enjoy sitting down and watching a few episodes.
Now it is even funnier to watch as I am a theatre nurse by trade so interesting to see how they did things in the OR during the show.

Mother Nature

I am one of those people that believes things happen for a reason, but at present I haven't established the reason for yesterdays earthquake in Christchurch.
5 months after the last one and they are just getting things sorted and wham the whole CBD is now flattened with many still trapped in buildings. The sad thing to me is all the old churches that have been destroyed, all that glorious history disappeared and crumbled, I know it is just a building but they are icons of Christchurch.

I discovered it at about 3pm yesterday and did not turn on the tv until 6, since then sadly it has been compelling viewing, even though they are repeating the same thing over and over you just don't seem to be able to resist watching further, waiting for news of wonderous moments etc and trying to comprehend the devestation that has happened.

I was thinking myself lucky in that I know no one down there, well a nephew, that I have not much to do with (sounds sad really) and wouldn't have any idea how to contact him, although his mother will soon let us know if there are problems.
However this morning I was watching some more footage and suddenly on the tv is one of the Doctors (Urologist) I use to work with in Auckland and now suddenly I realise I do know people down there. Not people who live there but unfortunately much worse, people who are visiting the city for a few days to have a conference. People who are staying in hotels in the CBD.
Suddenly it is hitting home a little more, are the Urologists I know from Hamilton there as well, we know one of them very well, seeing as they mentioned on the tv that they were all together, I guess they are all safe but I feel for their families all over New Zealand.

An organisation I am part of is holding its annual conference in Chch this year too, June July time, who knows if it will be held, will the CBD be able to hold it?
Who cares really, a conference is a minor thing and can be rescheduled when everyone is back on their feet and a little more stable.

Unfortunately life goes on, we will not forget this, but in a few days life to us in Hamilton will continue, you will work for 8 hours without thinking about them and you will catch up with friends over drinks the same as last week, but we need to still remember Chch is going through hell and we need to continue to let them know we are here and ready to help however we can.

Death

Last week, as we were driving to collect Steve after swimming, Ben sat in the back of the car and told me he was never having anything to do with daddy ever again! Typical 5 yr old thing and I thought not much more of it.

On further discussion, he listed everything he does with daddy and said he was never doing them again. No sitting next to him, no wrestling, no reading books, no playing etc, you name it he wasn't doing it!
I asked if he was talking to daddy and he said "maybe tomorrow"

I was quite shocked, I wondered exactly what Steve had done to warrent such exclusion from Ben's little 5 1/2 yr old life?

But what Ben told me was the reason for this sudden departure from his life was more of a shock than anything I was ever expecting............he had decided to exclude daddy from everything because daddy was going to die and there would be a funeral.

I was gobsmacked. I felt like someone had just twisted my heartstrings and said 'welcome to the rough side of motherhood'
I had a quick discussion with him whilst we drove across Hamilton to collect Steve, explaining that yes one day daddy would die and that yes there would be a funeral, but that hopefully Ben would be at least Steve's age before that ever happened.

When we collected Steve from work, before I drove off, I told Steve about our little conversation. I got Ben to tell Daddy why he was not having anything to do with him.
Whilst he was telling this, I sat there with tears rolling down my cheeks.
Steve was more concerned with me to begin with, he wanted to know what was wrong, but then I said "ask him why he doesn't want anything to do with you?"

And so Ben told him he was going to die and there would be a funeral.
Steve was a little taken back, but again reiterated exactly what I had said to Ben earlier. Reassuring Ben that he could still be part of daddy's life, as daddy was not going anywhere.

We did decide to mention it the next day to Ben's teacher, as it was obvious it had come from school. Ben said they had discussed it during news time!
The teacher informed us that no it hadn't been discussed during news, but that one of the little girls in the class had sadly lost some family members a couple of weeks ago and she was having a very hard time getting over it and she was still quite angry. She said she would make sure they had a healthy discussion about death as a whole class because she was aware that this little girl was mentioning it to all the children during break time and upsetting some of them.

I know this is something that we can't avoid, and I am happy for Ben to know about it. I know there is never going to be a good time in his life to bring up death. It was just the sudden way he was dropping Steve from his life that got me.

She Died

I do not know this little girl, I don't even know her parents but that is blogging for you.

One of the blogs I follow, in fact several of them, all had a post last Thursday about this charming little girl called Tuesday, who sadly had cancer.

She has been fighting it for most of her 2 years of life, I went on over there on Thursday to see what they were all talking about.

Turns out the cancer was now not responding to the chemo and had doubled in size!

So they were now taking her home to be with her family, she had several brothers and sisters.

So I was very shocked to read on one of the blogs that sadly she died on Friday!

So quick, she couldn't have been home more than 24 hours.

My thoughts are with the family.

I may not know them but no one wants to think about loosing one of their children

Sadly Missed

I found out today that a well known English Artist and TV personnel has sadly died at the weekend.

The following was taken from the BBC News Website.

"Artist and children's presenter Tony Hart has died, aged 83.
Hart, who lived in Surrey, had suffered from health problems for a number of years, including two strokes. His family said he died peacefully.
The affable presenter inspired children to paint and draw on shows like Vision On, Take Hart and Hartbeat for nearly 50 years before he retired in 2001.
Fellow artist Rolf Harris led tributes, calling Hart "a very gentle and talented guy".
"He enthused and inspired a whole generation of kids into creating their own works of art, simple or complex."

Hart's agent, Roc Renals, said the presenter had died in the early hours of Sunday morning.
He said: "I was for many years his best friend, agent, manager and publicist. He suffered two strokes many years ago and his health declined since then."
"Thousands and thousands of young people who are now grown up will thank him for inspiring them to take up art," he added. "

I remember his art shows so well, Saturday mornings and after school during the week were such fun watching the amazing stuff he did with art. As the above article suggests, he made it look so easy that every kid in England wanted to be an artist. He also created the wonderful plasticine creature Morph, who managed to always get himself in to trouble in the little sketches he was in.

I also liked him because back in the 40's he was a pupil at my school. Sure the school I went to was very different from the school he went to, but it is still nice to think he went there as well.

He will be sadly missed.

Goodbye my Friend

Sadly today Steve and I were informed of the death of a friend.
This lady was someone we had both worked with in the past at Auckland Hospital in the Operating Theatres and she in fact was the person that took over Steve's position in Auckland when he left last year.
We didn't know her closely, but we knew her enough to say hi if meeting and to catch up on what everyone had been up to.

She was a wonderful person, full of life and character.
She will be sadly missed.
She leaves behind her partner Tina and their 3 children.

So to Kirsten, you were a bright star so full of life.
We will miss you here.
Take care

Kathryn and Steve x x

Half Full or Half Empty

Half full or half empty is one of those statements that will have people argueing for hours, or at least thinking for a while.

In the post office today whilst being served there was a lady at the other counter paying her car registration. Now you can pay this for either 6 months or 12, your choice.
I heard her say to the guy that yes she was only paying for 6 months because you never know what might happen so why waste your money on the other 6 months when you don't need to pay it yet! She went on to say that if she died then she hadn't lost anything!

I was just like OMG, I had never thought of that, back to the half full half empty thought.
Then she looked around at everyone commenting and said "Didn't everyone think like that?" she knew it was morbid but hey, why not?

I can see her point, but would you really like to keep walking around life only doing things by half just in case you weren't around to see the rest.
'I am sorry I can't pay for the whole year because I might be dead before the year is through!'

I say go with life and have fun, don't worry about the small stuff. Yes if it was a lot of money, think about it, but when you are only looking at a difference of about $60, it just seemed a very morbid thought to live life by....

Where were you?

I can not believe that it has been 10 years since the unfortunate death of Lady Diana.
I think it will always be one of those topics that people will always say 'Where were you when...?" just like 9/11.

So where was I 10 years ago....?

I was in England. It was a public holiday weekend and mum and I had some family friends visiting for the weekend.
I remember mum kept coming into my room really early in the morning, but I couldn't be bothered to turn over and see what she wanted, so I ignored her, although on about the 3rd visit I finally turned over and asked her what she wanted? (It was a public holiday so why did I need to wake up early?)
That is when she said "Lady Diana has died!"
So after informing me of what she knew, we woke our visitors up, mainly because Sky was hooked up in the room they were sleeping in and we needed to turn it on and see what was happening.
And that is pretty much how we spent the rest of the day, with the tv on watching the unfolding events as we learnt she was hurt, to she was critical to she had died, to when she would come back to England to whether Charles would go and fetch her!
You have to remember that England woke to this news, as it had all happened during the night. So spending the day was probably what most of England did that day.

The rest of that following week was quite a blur, so much news coverage, so much planning going on.
I actually worked on the day of the funeral and I was scrubbed in a case right up until the start of the funeral, but then I got to watch the last part and the procession up the motorway to her final resting place on the tv in the tea room.

The whole week was so surreal and something I will never forget, a little like 9/11 (I was in Hong Kong and London, but that is another story!)

So if you have 2 minutes, take the time to remember where you were, what you were doing and look at where you are now?

Me, in 10 years I have moved to New Zealand, had several different jobs within the same company, met Steve, brought a house and sold one too! Had my parents move to NZ and almost my brother (2 1/2 weeks till they get here) had 2 gorgeous sons, Ben, 4 next week and Alex 2 1/4 and now we are about to commence a new part of our family's journey by moving to Hamilton.
So compared to where I was 10 years ago and what I am doing now, a lot has happened.