Cast list
This blog’s dramatis personae:
Nephew
S, my darling 19-year-old nephew. Tall, handsome and a talented guitarist. Currently learning Italian. See this post.
Sister
L, a single parent with whom I lived for four years after our mother’s death, raising her son S together, and caring for our brother Philip, who had Down’s Syndrome. We now have separate homes in the same town, five minutes’ walk away from each other. L married for the first time in June 2007.
Brother
My dear brother Philip died in March 2008. He had a mischevious sense of humour, many friends, Down’s Syndrome, and a large appetite for food, dancing and life. In his last years he developed dementia and all those things that made him who he was slipped away. (As people with Down’s live longer it is becoming apparent that they seem more prone to Alzheimer’s and it attacks earlier. Such injustice.) This post is my account of his death. This one remembers happier days.
Other family
I also have two older brothers, T and B, both retired, both happily married to lovely women. We probably don’t see each other as often as we’d like, but email is a wonderful thing.
A small Benedictine monastery housing two communities: one of monks and one of nuns. I spend a lot of time there. OK, allegedly this is a place, not a person, but I defy anyone visiting with an open heart not to feel welcomed by the essence of the place itself, not only by those living there.
Cats
My three furry companions, Lucy, Hazel and Jess. I promise not to write of their day-to-day adventures(!), but imagine them in the background all the time. Since I started this blog, Jess has put on her sparkle suit and gone to cat heaven. I do miss her.
Rich friendships
My close friends without whom life wouldn’t be worth living, and to whom I may refer from time to time in this blog.
Enneagram friends
I teach a system of personal and spiritual development known as the Enneagram. I am in turn a student of Don Riso and Russ Hudson, two of the foremost developers and teachers of the Enneagram sytem in the world. I’ve met some wonderful people on my Enneagram journey, many of whom I stay in touch with.
Bloggers
Last but far from least, the wonderful virtual friends I’ve discovered in the months since starting this blog. Who knew there were so many great people out there interested in the same things as me?
Anyway, this is beginning to sound like Gwynneth Paltrow’s Oscar acceptance speech for Shakespeare in Love, so I’ll stop now.
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I have been exploring your newly renovated website and like it very much. I must comment, though, on your reluctance to write about your cats, Lucy and Hazel. I love reading about your cats. Maybe I have morphed into the proverbial crazy old cat lady, after all.
I teared up reading about Jess. I have never heard the expression about putting on the sparkle suit. I often read about their crossing the Rainbow Bridge. That sounds so melancholy compared to putting on the sparkle suit.
Barbara, nothing wrong with being a crazy old cat lady!
I actually found the sparkle suit expression at BlissChick and really loved it.
Jess died in November 2008. I took her to the vet because she seemed listless. They took blood for tests but the very next night (a Sunday) I found her collapsed at the bottom of the stairs.
It was obvious she was dying but she didn’t seem to be in any pain so I decided not to drive her to the emergency vet. I just put her gently on the bed, curled up round her and held her. After an hour or so she gave a great shudder and that was it. The other two cats came to sniff her and then curled up with each other (which they don’t normally do). I cried myself to sleep every night for a week. I still miss her.
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