I lift a martini to the dead this night!

17th Anniversary of my Grandmother's death
10th Anniversary of Zappa's death
9th anniversary of my dad's death
My fraternities' house mother died yesterday
And this weekend, I go to the funeral for the dad of one my best friends

Odd tipping a martini to a woman who didn't drink, two alcoholics who stopped drinking years before they died, and a man/musician/prophet who was against alcohol, but there ya go. My housemother - she liked tequila. :-)

Cheers all, and be well together!

Some celebrate the dead on All Saint's Day, but I have much death from this time, so it's always the beginning of Advent for me that I think of the dead.

Come, we honor our dead!

Rolling Rock here...

:toast:

Honor!

It's also a time to celebrate the living. Besides it's my birthday and the beer tastes good right now. Cheers!

:toast::toast::toast::toast:

:toast:

As the Scandahoovians say, SKOAL!!


Nice art work btw. I'm not much of a judge on art but they certainly show a talent for painting.

And I like Scandahoovian!

I grew up in a somewhat Scandahoovian area of WI, though of course not as Scandahoovian as MN. But we still had churches who did the big lutefisk fundraising feasts every year. :-)

(the thank you was for the compliment on the artwork)

My family has relatives around Wisconsin, primarily the Milwaukee/Green Bay area, and the South-Central part of the state. I just love Wisconsin. I want to get a house along the Mississippi between LaCrosse and Prairie Du Chien. What a slice of heaven!

is the anniversary of my mother's death - and not too many weeks ago, it was my dad's. At some point in time, it dawned on me that life is quite a bit - if not majorly - about loss. I salute you and yours. I hope that your memories are a source of strength and happiness...as mine are.

And aging is also about loss of what we used to be able to do.

But it's also about finding new depths to ourselves and our friends and others, which is also exciting.

Death and life are intertwined - we cannot have one without the other, and they cycle together in an unenging pattern of death from birth (all life), and birth from death (all life gains nourishment only from that which has died). A bittersweet situation, but it is what we are given, and we do our best. The memories drive me forward and inspire me, though there are many times I find myself grabbig for the phone to tell Mom something important, or ask an important question, then I realize I cannot. All those stories, and the two best sources of information about me as a child and a young adult, gone. I have no one to ask so many questions I have - and in many ways, that is the worst part of it all. And I miss bringing my mother presents. And I miss her cinnamon rolls and her rhubarb pie. But I think what I miss most is never being able to understand my father. He had stopped drinking before he died, but even so, it was not until the year that he died that I actually began to trust and respect and want to know him again - and then he died. It's like losing something, a carrot on a stick, that I could see but never knew, and then before I had a chance to catch up, they pulled the carrot away forever, and I'm left with the memory and the two-dimensional image of what I wanted, forever wanting for the real thing.

Condolences on your mother and father.

Why not. My little (well he was bigger than me) brother gave up the ghost last year. I wish him the best.

It was also the day I arrived in Spain for 3 years, in 1975. A watershed event in my young life.