Cast
This blog’s dramatis personae:
Nephew
S, my darling 18-year-old nephew. Tall, handsome and a talented guitarist. Recently passed his driving test and now whizzes around town in a little red car (well I already have grey hair…). 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 PJ, who has 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 brother PJ has Down’s Syndrome. Now 50, he has suffered increasingly from Alzheimer’s Disease over the past three or four years. As people with Down’s live longer it is becoming apparent that they are far more prone to Alzheimer’s and it attacks earlier. Such injustice. PJ now lives in a small care home about an hour’s drive from my home; he has people there that love him.
Addendum: PJ died in March 2008. This post is my account of his death.
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.
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.