Here now is my grandson Andrew, who carries our family's traditional male first name, a name originating with my own paternal grandfather.
Grandson Andrew, now a first-year medical student in Texas, appears in the photo below, along with a special lady friend.
My own grandfather, our family's original Andrew, had been killed in the crash of an early airplane he had built all by himself. That crash occurred due to a serious error made by a surviving student whom he was teaching to fly out on an empty stretch of the California coast. The student, who was injured, but not fatally, had later admitted to having caused the aircraft to hit an electrical line that sent it tumbling down to the ground. My grandfather was killed outright then and all the family's savings had been invested in that plane. That tragedy had occurred just before the end of World War I.
Grandfather Andrew Currie, the plane's inventor and builder, had originally immigrated to Canada from Scotland, then chose the California coast as a good place to conduct flying lessons. However, the area also had many overhead electrical lines, such as the one that had caught onto the aircraft that Grandpa Andrew had made with his own hands, causing it to crash, thereby killing him and injuring his student who survived to tell the tale.
So then after her husband's untimely death, my widowed grandmother Florence (herself the youngest of 12 children in a farming family in Alberta) went to work altering clothes for Sears customers in southern California, leaving her 2 boys, Robert, perhaps age 8, and my own father Leonard, just 4 years old then, at home all alone. Florence gave them strict instructions not to venture outside nor did they attend school for quite some time.
My own older son, who had tragically died too young as well, was also named Andrew. After his death, my younger son Jon, with whom I live now, named his first son Andrew, the grandson seen there above. So the name Andrew still carries on, now in the person of my grandson. Lots of Andrews. Can readers follow all of this?
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Mr. Joe, the director of the Center for the Study of Social Policy here, was 64 and had been undergoing treatment for cancer. His family said he died of heart failure.
My late ex-husband had actually died of an aortic aneurysm--would that be considered "heart failure"? It's no wonder that he also had cancer.
Tom had also been a chain smoker of unfiltered Camels all of his life, up to 4 packs a day. He always kept a standing ashtray right next to his favorite living room chair. He lit one cigarette from the burning stub of the previous one. He was very thin and had no appetite, but liked spicy Korean him-chee. Once a tailor measuring him for new suit called him the "razor's edge." He even smoked in bed, dropping ashes, burning holes in the sheets. The children and I all breathed-in secondhand smoke. Our whole house and even our clothes always smelled of cigarette smoke.
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The names of 4 children had been listed in my ex's 1999 Washington Post obituary.
We had been married for 24 years and I was the mother of 3 of his children named the Post obit, with only the 4th born to his second-wife, who had married him about 3 years earlier. Her name was listed as the mother of all the kids, while my own name was missing after 24 years of marriage, which had included the first 10 years when we were really struggling and I was basically the only one working. Years later, his widow of 4 years, the mother of his youngest child, had never even mentioned my existence in his obit that she had submitted the Times. Nor was I invited to his funeral but showed up anyway, introducing myself as his first wife of 24 years, to the evident surprise of some guests. You might even say that I had crashed his funeral.
Do you really think that Tom Joe would have gotten where he was without being married to me and having my help daily for 24 years, as he was totally blind and had never worked at all before and even for some years after we had married? I had put all my energy into helping him become successful, always staying quietly in the background and working only part-time myself so he would get all the credit. I had recognized his potential from the start, one reason I had married him at age 21, despite my family's strong disapproval because of his blindness. I had also raised our 4 children basically all by myself. He had shown little interest in our kids, but when our son Jonathan was in the hospital after a cat had scratched his cheek while we had been sitting out on our front porch in DC, Tom then came to the hospital with a friend to visit him. I was already there, day and night, sleeping on an upholstered arm chair by our son's hospital crib. If I dared leave for even a few minutes to get something to eat, baby Jon stood up in his hospital crib, howling loudly until I returned.
When our older son, Andrew had died, my ex-husband had come to the funeral with his second wife and their baby daughter. My late ex-husband and I had many both good and difficult times in the 24 years before he divorced me, mostly good times, in my opinion. But apparently his office sweetheart had convinced him otherwise. She had helped him empty all our bank accounts and had gone with him to La Vegas to divorce me and marry her, both on the same day. They had invited our older daughter Melanie, still a child then, to go there with them, not allowing her to tell me why she would not be spending that Mother's Day with me, which was the very day they had picked to actually get married.
So is life fair? No it is not. But I'm living now with our younger son Jon, while my ;ate ex-husband's second wife, considerably younger than me, has had some serious health and physical problems that I have been able to advise her about--not directly, because I don't have her contact information. But my advice, based on my many years of experience at the occupational therapy association, was passed on to her via my kids and she reportedly has benefitted.
That woman had enabled my sightless ex to take every single penny from our joint bank accounts, obstructing me at every turn. The kids and I had delivered phone books (remember those?) from a wagon back then just to be able to buy some groceries at the local Safeway. So, were my ex-husband's widow's more recent health problems actually karma for having mistreated me/us? I've never said that. We all know that life is not fair anyway, seeming to benefit some folks (like Donald Trump) in quite random ways, while just devastating others. It is what it is. Is that karma, fate, or just plain luck--good or bad?
I've certainly suffered more than my share in life of hardships and losses, the worst being the sudden death of my first son, also named Andrew, just like my grandfather, and now like my young medical student grandson. The existence now of young grandson Andrew is such a blessing. Yes, all things considered, I'm actually doing OK now. I'm grateful for my life at age 88 and for the son I'm living with today, adopted from Colombia more than 50 years ago. As I've told him, "I chose the right baby."
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So may this mother wolf and her offspring now live long lives. Hunters should not shoot wolves; in fact, it's time give up hunting altogether, something no longer needed to feed humans. Wolves are part of the cycle of earthly life, a vital link in the ongoing balance of nature, also the forbearers of our own pet dogs. Let's now protect wolves and other denizens of the forest.
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