Very soon, it'll be the sixth anniversary of the loss of a good friend of mine, Sgt. John Mason, Army of the United States. He was killed in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq defusing a roadside IED.

Also in September, we lost my grandfather, a retired Command Master Sergeant of the USAF. This'll be the first Christmas without him handing me a scotch on the back porch and just listening to the sounds of the woods around his home in Palo Pinto County.

Draw near to your loved ones, and never let a day go by that they don't know you love them.

RIP, John and Granddaddy. I miss you both.

pfunk

amen to that PFunk

You get X number of days when you're born. Make em' count.

pfunk

And enjoy every one of them! Have fun, do things you really want to do, even if they may sound stupid to the others. Live life at full speed, you'll never know when your day will come.

I understand you on that one PFunk, 12th of december will be the first anniversary of my grandfather's dead, my father's father, and on December 28, it will be three years since I lost my then girlfriend. December sucks.

I know what you mean, PFunk. My dad died three days before Christmas last year. It's strange how certain dates really make the loss feel greater than other days. His birthday, mine, and my mother's are all in October, so last month had a lot of those days where things just seemed surreal without him being there.

And you know, it's not a sad thing, it's just one of those things that you recognize as a sea change in what you remember. The loss does feel a little magnified, or maybe it's good things about those folks that gets magnified. The funny thing, Granddaddy and I NEVER talked about much when we sat out there sipping scotch in the cold air. We just sat there and listened. Zen drinking, ya'll think?

The real joy, I think, is acknowledging how much better and richer your life was for certain people being in it. Had they not been there, your life would have been different. Maybe no worse, but definitely no better.

I suppose that I'm not sad at all, really, but grateful for those memories of sipping a scotch on his porch, grateful for a lot of things. Grateful to God for a good wife, good children, good health, and a relatively decent fortune. Simple stuff. Thanksgiving's coming up, and I'm quite sure I know what I'm thankful for.

One of these days, I know I'm going to hand my grandson a scotch and we'll sit on my porch and listen to the sounds of the lake.

Amen to that PFunk. Your words are really moving me there, I really like the look you have on those events. I wish I could do it your way, and see them only as good memories for the past, and not miss them. Ideally, that's how things should be, you should be able to look at your past only to remember the good times and be grateful for them, and not fear the future will never be as good, but it's not always easy.

Dad died on May 15th last year. As he was the one that got me interested in airplanes and flying (he was just as big an airplane nut as me), and he loved hearing about my flights when I got back home, I still catch myself every once in a while thinking for a microsecond when I'm up there having a good time that Dad will love hearing about this when I get back home.. Then it hits me.

Still, I guess flying is as close I'll get to visiting him for the time being.