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Last in my series, Getting to know members better: Our families

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Posted 6/5/2013 3:01 AM (GMT 0)
I never dreamed the positive responses received on my two threads, the one about hobbies, and the one about what we do/ or did for a living.  Between them both, there were 339 replies and 5,420 views, and all of them positive in nature.  My intention was to reach out to members, both new and old, to find common ground, and to get to really know each other better.  Right now, there are a lot of negative toned threads out there, so I would like to complete this series from me, and this time (and it should have been the first in the series if I didn't always think backwards, lol).  Our families, a most important factor in our PC journeys and battles, a subject that is usually first in the hearts of people.

Of course, I believe in respecting people's privacy, so if you don't want to share anything about your family, for whatever reason you harbor, that is completely fine and understood.

I hope with the completion of this thread, we will all have a better appreciation and understanding of what makes all of our brothers and sisters tick here at HW.

Much appreciation for all the positive input on the other two threads, and thanks in advance for this one.

david in sc

Posted 6/5/2013 3:01 AM (GMT 0)
I will go ahead an start first.  I have been married to my wife for 39 plus years now, and its my only marriage.  She had just turned 18 when we got married, and we started dating on New Years Day, 1974.  By Valentine's Day we were engaged, and we got married on April 4th, just 11 weeks and 3 days from our first date.  This may sound lame, but it was the case of falling in love on the first real date for both of us.  I knew her for 3 years prior, right when I got out of the service, but she was only 15 then, so any romantic thoughts were way out of the question for me at that time.  We didn't meet again until that first date, through a mutual friend.

We have three adult aged children.

My oldest will be 36 in July, he will have his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering by next year, and already has a job offer with Duke Energy at our local nuclear power plant.  He is married to a Registered Nurse, and they are the parents of our only grandchildren (so far).  We have a boy named Ansel (after Ansel Washington) who just turned 9, and a girl, Luna, who just turned 11.  Both were born in New Orleans.

My daughter will be 32 in July, and is an accountant/software trainer for a large travel agency in Greenville, but lives in Charleston, SC with her husband.  He is the manager of a really cool restaurant called  "The Glass Onion."  They do not have any children at this time.

Then there is my youngest son, will be 30 in July.  He is engaged to a lovely young woman who manages a Verizon phone store.  My son is the general manager of a Jersey Mike's restaurant in Greenville.

My mother is still with us, soon to be 86, and lives still on her own, in the next town over from us, about 6 miles away,  She is British from London.

I have a younger brother here in SC, a sister and brother in CO, but we really don't have any contact with one another bar an emergency.  My father died 20 years ago this year.

That's really all the family I have.  I have no living grandparents, uncles or Aunts.  Of all my brothers and sister, I was the only American born, being born in Tulsa, OK, though I moved to London at age 6 months.

My immediate family is very close knit, which makes we parents very happy.  My family is the single greatest achievement in my life, and if that is my legacy, I can die content with that.

david in sc

 

Post Edited (Purgatory) : 6/4/2013 9:13:45 PM (GMT-6)

Posted 6/5/2013 3:16 AM (GMT 0)
I am married to the love of my life ....and my High School sweetheart for 45 years this month!! He's a wonderful , caring , positive man who didnt deserve to have this happen to him. but then....cancer doesnt discriminate does it?? We enjoy the outdoors....fishing, hunting, and camping. I am going deer hunting with him in Nov. and this time....I get to shoot !!!! I was with him when he shot his first deer and he will be with me when I hopefully shoot mine !!! We've tested that "for better /for worse....in sickness and in health" clause of our wedding vows a few times now. I was diagnosed with a large brain tumor.....the size of a tennis ball......in 2002. Happy to say it was NOT cancer but I did have to have full blown brain surgery to remove it. Not fun!! He NEVER left my side in the hospital and took wonderful care of me at home as I recovered. So now.....Its MY turn to be there for him wink wink We have one 36 yr old daughter who is married....but no grandchildren so far. I cant imagine my life without my soulmate!!!
Posted 6/5/2013 3:20 AM (GMT 0)
45 years? that is wonderful, you got us beat. my wife is definitely the great love of my life, and we have always maintained a best friend relationship from the start. I could never have a better friend than my wife. Glad to hear that your husband stood by you through your own ordeal, true love is action, not words. Very happy for your family.
Posted 6/5/2013 4:09 AM (GMT 0)
Purgatory.....sounds like you have a wonderful family. Your children are all so successful !! Thats something to be proud of for sure!!

And yes....we are best friends too and I know exactly what you are talking about. Its a very special relationship.

Lost my mom 3 1/2 yrs ago and it seems like yesterday. I miss her soo very much. we were very close. some days are just unbearable. My dad died in 1995. seems like forever ago....
I have one half brother but we have little or no contact . havent seen him since the day we buried mom.
Posted 6/5/2013 4:21 AM (GMT 0)
freaked,

my kids were more of the late bloomer type. kind of took them some years to get their own personal acts together, and as parents, we never tried to force any agenda on them. each of them are very unique, we didn't want them to be cookie cutters of the parents.

in the 20 years since my father's funeral, only seen my CO brother and sister once. Not a good or happy story, but it is what it is. my younger brother here in SC, and I, share in watching over my mother's welfare. As a nurse, my wife watches over most of her medical affairs. my mother still lives by herself by choice, still drives (getting iffy, lol), and is very independent. she has been a hospital volunteer for over 20 years now. she can be mean as a snake, but I think that is what keeps her going.

sorry about your mother.

david
Posted 6/5/2013 4:44 AM (GMT 0)
David...so good to have your RN wife helping with your mom. Im not a nurse....but I do know quite a bit about medical things and took care of mom by myself in that respect. also took care of all business affairs of mom and my mother in law when the time came us to help out. It was stressful.....but wouldnt have had it any other way. its great your mom can still be as independent as she is right now. thats the one thing that was soooo hard on mom......losing her independence.. I guess its a scary thing for all of us to think about . I try not to very often!! haha
I try to think about our trip to Alaska coming up. Ive planned the whole thing...made the reservations....did all the research. Hubby said he just wanted to " show up and have fun" hahaha sooo...thats what we'll do.
and if we have to take catheters........we take catheters!!! could be worse!!
Life is Good!

Diane
Posted 6/5/2013 5:14 AM (GMT 0)
My wife, Sharlyn and I have been married 33 years, have 3 grown sons who are thriving in various places in the world. If I may , I will tell a little story I read somewhere in my travels. A farmer was working on a very sparse piece of land with his 3 young sons in the hot son. A stranger passed by, noticed the sweating farmer and equally sweating young sons on this parched bit of land. " My god man, what on earth are you raising here," he asked incredulously? The farmer, paused, squinted up, wiped his brow and said….. " good men " as he turned his head back to the land.
Posted 6/5/2013 6:12 AM (GMT 0)
Diane, prior to my Urostomy surgery, I spent a total of 1 1/2 years on catheters, you learn to adapt. Now that I have a stoma, for coming up on 3 years, have learned to adapt to that lifestyle too, only part I hate is having to hook up every single night to a large catheter bag. We are on our second cruise in October, back on the Carnival Fantasy out of Charleston where our daughter lives. Going back to the Bahamas, but we don't care, we just like being onboard the ship.

Logo, congrats on another long marriage. And having 3 sons of your own. I actually understood and got your story this time, you should be proud of me, good moral to the story. The one thing I feel I taught all my kids well, is my work ethic. As all of them have great work ethics and are really good at what they do.

david
Posted 6/5/2013 6:52 AM (GMT 0)
My wife and I just celebrated 29 years of marriage at the weekend. We met on the first day at university when we were 18. We paired up a bit more than a year later, which means we are coming up for 34 years together.
We have a son who got a degree at a Dutch university and a Masters a British university; he lives and works in London. Our daughter is just finishing her Masters almost as I type.
Posted 6/5/2013 12:15 PM (GMT 0)
my wife traveled 7000 miles to go to college, I traveled 3000 miles and we met in that college in upstate NY in 1989. She was my orientation leader as she was a sophmore already. We've been together since a week after that.
Posted 6/5/2013 1:46 PM (GMT 0)
Carol and I have been together for over 33 years. She is my partner in every sense of the word. It may be my body that has the cancer, but we are going through this together. I can't imagine my life without her. She is an artist. Our home is filled with her art work, its really quite something to behold.

We are blessed to have two wonderful children, a son and a daughter. Each are grown and on their own. One is an accountant and the other is an officer. We are so proud of them. They don't quite know what to make of this disease, so this has been an opportunity to talk about the journey of life and the reality that someday their mother and I will be gone and they will carry on.

My parents have been gone for a long long time. My in-laws divorced many years ago, but get along well. We see them with some regularity. My father in law and i are regulars at air shows, auto races, and at the shooting range. Carol has a brother and sister and I have four brothers. We are close with all of them except one of my brothers. My cancer has brought us closer (one of my bothers had brachy and beat PCA 10 years ago). My one brother that is estranged has many issues and hasn't reached a point where he is ready to accept help. I pray he gets there before its too late. Add to that 12 nephews and nieces and assorted spouses and children - its a big family.

Finally, we have so many close friends that we consider family. Dan and Lisa and Tony and Chris and Tom and Annette and Mark and Mike and Celeste and Mary and Linda and Zoe.

We are very fortunate. I was sharing with someone yesterday. This gift (my cancer) has taught me much. Most of all it has enabled me to address my relationship with this journey of life and with the inevitability, for every human, of the transition we call death. I have been blessed to have had such wonderful people in my life, and weather it ends today or in 20 years, I will continue to appreciate each and every one of them and each and every moment with them.

David - thank you for reaching out in such a special way to us all.

Pat
Posted 6/5/2013 2:11 PM (GMT 0)
English Alf, congratulations there. And you got to be proud of both those kids of yours.

ms worry, that's why I put the disclaimer about privacy, in some families that can be a big issue. even though we have 39 years, we still consider ourselves aging honeymooners, lol. gee, looking forward to that next cruise.

davidg - if you believe in providence, you are making a good case for it in how you met your wife

pat, my friend, your account really touched my heart, you sound like you have a wonderful loving family. I did not grow up in a loving home, it was full of discord, anger, and violence. I never ever saw my parents kiss or even hold hands, never heard the word "love". so we grew up cold, distant and apart.  Thankfully, my wife taught me to love, and in my immediate family, we are very loving and close. I didn't get to choose my past, but I have worked hard to make the present and the future a better place for my family.  my late father was a brutal violent person, and I still fear him 20 years after his death, and he is the subject  of most of my nightly nightmares even now, my older brother is still very much traumatized by his childhood.  in place, I have taught my children total non-violence and they all live their lives in peace and harmony.

thanks, folks, getting some good stories here

david

Post Edited (Purgatory) : 6/5/2013 8:16:57 AM (GMT-6)

Posted 6/5/2013 2:15 PM (GMT 0)
I sure do, David. When my dad said it was time to leave Rome for me and go to America for college I assumed he would pick colleges in Malibu, Maui, Miami etc for me to visit. Instead it was all upstate NY and MA stuff. How my wife and I ended up in that small town in north western NY cannot be a coincidence.
Posted 6/5/2013 2:22 PM (GMT 0)
davidg - kind of that way with us, but not as dramatic. I had broken up with my last girlfriend only 2 weeks prior. I was living in Tampa, she lived in St. Petersburg across the bay. So that fateful day, drove to St. Pete to see if my ex was in, wasn't real interested in getting hooked up, just wanted to make sure we departed on good terms. She wasn't home, so I visited this mutual friend of my wife and I (my wife still good friends with this other woman, known each other since pre-school).

So while visiting this friend, she casually says, btw, Peggy has been asking about you, if I have seen you. I said, really? So I got braved and called her, then went over and picked her up from her mother's house, and the rest was history. On that first date, we started by playing billiards, then walked the beach at sunset, then took her to the St. Pete Pier, and we sat at the end of the jetty their, and literally talked away the night until sunrise. I won't deny it, by then, I was totally smitten under the spell of this red-headed beauty. Still feel bewitched nearly 40 years later, trust me, I know what side my bread is buttered on.
Posted 6/5/2013 2:24 PM (GMT 0)
that's sweet, David.
Posted 6/5/2013 2:31 PM (GMT 0)
We will celebrate 38 years of a wonderful marriage in August. My wife was a teacher, but stopped to be a stay at home Mom, and that was a great "investment."

We have two wonderful children.

My son loves music. He has been a supervisor at a famous music store. These days, he plays with a successful music group. A few years ago, he decided to pursue going to law school. He took the LSAT and got a perfect or near perfect score, ending up with a full scholarship. He has about a year to go in his law school studies at Ann Arbor, Mi. He is married, with two lovely kids (boy and girl).

My daughter took a media/film production course at her high school and fell in love with it. She became a film major at Umich and graduated with honors. She then went to Hollywood and has worked in the film industry since then. She has worked with Wes Craven and Graham King. That is a strange industry. She has a lot of projects in the works.

Oddly enough, I had both my kids in class when I taught Honors Calculus and Advanced Computer Programming in our local high school. They both did well. They inherited my ability, but not my love for the subject.

I am thrilled that both my kids found something they are passionate about and they have pursued those areas.

Mel

 

Posted 6/5/2013 2:35 PM (GMT 0)
davidg - yes, I have a soft, sappy, lame side underneath all my computer stone cold logic, lol. one reason why I wrote and had 2 historic romance novels published. geez, starting to sound like a pudd.

david
Posted 6/5/2013 2:50 PM (GMT 0)
I've been married for 13 wonderful years to the best woman on the planet.

and I've got two brothers with PC. Both my parents have passed on.

Then there are my wife's three adult children and six grand kids.

Life is great, go live it.

Peace,
Andrew
Posted 6/5/2013 3:36 PM (GMT 0)

Hubby and I have been married for 46 years.  We met at a dance in my dorm at the University of Florida when I was a sophomore and he was a senior.  He stayed on to get his master's degree and we became engaged during that time.  Years before, my Dad had made me promise to finish college before getting married, so our wedding took place 2 weeks after I graduated with my BSN (nursing).

We had our first son before hubby tired of teaching school and decided that he wanted to become a lawyer.  We moved back to Gainesville FL where he got his law degree from UF.  I put him through law school by working as an RN at the VA hospital, and we managed to come out of it without any debt!  Our second son was born shortly thereafter. Hubby became a career prosecutor for the state of FL and retired a few years ago after 30 years of service.

Our older son is now 43 and is the father of our 2 beautiful grandchildren, ages 8 and 9.  He is a registered nurse and works at his county's health dept. as a clinical supervisor.  He also is a major in the Air Force Reserves and completed a tour of duty in Iraq caring for our casualties there.

Our younger son lives in Gainesville FL and is the Executive Director of the Gainesville Juniors Volleyball Club. On top of that, he's just accepted a position as Volleyball Head Coach at a local high school there.  He is 38 years old and still single.  We follow his teams to various tournaments around the country and will be attending the USA Volleyball Junior National Championships in Dallas in just a few weeks to watch 3 of his club's teams compete.

Both sons are also UF grads, so we have 2 generations of Gators already and may have another generation coming up! Our family is very close and I am very grateful for that - Hubby and I are best friends as well as spouses, and we are very blessed to have had so many years together with hopefully a lot more to come!  

Posted 6/5/2013 5:37 PM (GMT 0)
mel, as long as I have known you, never picked up that you had kids, that's why threads like this can be great.

Andrew - wait a minute, I am married to the best woman on the planet, so what's going on here? lol

flbeachgirl - what a beautiful story about your very successful family. you have to be very proud.

----------------------

I don't want to generalize here, but I have noticed over the years, that many of the best and enduring marriages are with couples that embrace the "best friend" notion in their relationship.
Posted 6/5/2013 5:41 PM (GMT 0)
David:

I'm very close to my wife and kids. I guess I haven't said much about that on HW. I'm not sure why. I do know I share a lot of feelings/stuff/frustration here on HW that I don't share in real life.

Hmmmm.... that would be an interesting thread.

OK...I'm on it

Mel

Posted 6/5/2013 6:03 PM (GMT 0)
I have been married to my best friend for two years but have lived with her for the past 12 years. She has helped me through Non Hodgkins Lyphoma and now Prostate cancer. She has put up with my feelings of anger and being scared with all the side effects that goes with treatment including permanent ED and now a second round of no libido. She has done all this without a gripe.

We have a blended family. Between us 6 kids 8 grandchildren and another on the way. Five of the kids live in California like us and one lives in  Oklahoma. All have been very supportive and helpful.

I feel very blessed that I am still around and still get to do the things I want while still fighting this G9 beast for the last 5 years.

Posted 6/5/2013 6:03 PM (GMT 0)
Now I read this post, Mel. Wish I saw it before answering your new thread, because on the new thread, wasn't' positive which david you were addressing. however, I took a shot at it, assuming it was for me.
hope others answer that thread as well.

I have met about 7-9 guys from HW in person, and I believe most of them would agree that I am the same in person as I come across here at HW. I don't have different personalities, lol. What you see is what you get, for good or for bad.

david
Posted 6/5/2013 6:30 PM (GMT 0)
David, And I thought I had a whirlwind romance! My wife and I were married after three months of dating. Oddly it was her mother who fixed us up. We both were coming off failed romances and my future mother-in-law was a secretary at the radio station where I worked. I knew the daughter only from the few times she stopped in to visit her mom. Little did I know at the time she was stopping by to check me out! And I was checking her out too!! After I broke up with my fiancé, my future mother-in-law said I should ask her daughter out. She promised me she would say yes. I guess it was destined since the future mother-in-law liked me in the beginning. Well, the rest is history and we have been married 31 years. We have a grown daughter who lives about an hour away. If there is any good out of this PC, it's that it has brought us closer together. I guess we are no different than many married couples....just kind of drifting along after so many years. With everything I have been through, it has helped us both realize how much we love and need each other. And David, I don't mean to read anything into your comment about your bother and sister in CO but I can't help think it sounds similar to my sister and me. It got really ugly following my mom's death (my dad died 11 years earlier) with her saying and doing things I just couldn't imagine. My family wasn't rich, but the modest estate turned my sister into a true demon. It has been three years and I have no desire to ever to see her again, even though I have forgiven her. Life is too short to allow myself to be consumed with anger and hate. Since then I have heard many stories of families going through the same turmoil and no longer on speaking terms.
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