Day 14 (11): Someone who has made your life worth living.

I've never been a mush and gush kinda girl except for how I feel about cats, so it's hard for me to really identify anyone in my life that I can say "makes life worth living". Even during the worst of times, when I felt completely alone and friendless, I knew that life was worth hanging around for. However, there are a couple of people who have made a world of difference in my life. 


The first one would be my daughter, Debra. I can't explain it and there's no real reason for it, but the day she was born, I fell in love with her instantly. I bonded with her in a way that I hadn't been able to with my son. (That in no way means I love my son any less - it's just that the connection is different.) They laid her on me and I spoke to her. As soon as I did, she lifted her head up and looked me straight in the eyes. And, I cried. Nothing in the world like it.

The second one would be my friend, Tom. He wasn't a friend I would have normally pursued. He was a recent graduate of Villanova when I met him, younger than me by almost two decades. But, he looked so alone and out of his element when he first began working where I worked that I introduced myself to him and welcomed him to the office. Beginning that day, our friendship grew, somewhat comically at first, but to a level of trust and acceptance I've never had with any other friend. It is because of Tom that I got to see Paris. It is because of Tom that I was able to go to where my Irish immigrant family lived and married in County Derry. I got to see San Francisco, Quebec, Montreal, Cape Cod, Frankfurt & Munich, Germany, a castle in Heidleberg, the cloisters featured in the Sound of Music in Salzburg, Austria. I am still amazed by all of it.


So, I guess you could say that these two have made my life worth living, although I somehow knew early on that it would all be worth it. Obviously, it was!

Day 13 (10): Discuss some of the things on your bucket list.

I don't have a bucket list. To have a bucket list is to think about the day I'll die. I try not to do that. I may know it will happen, but I'd really rather not think about it, so I live each day as though I have all the time in the world.


However, I have already been able to do some things that others might consider bucket list items. Like getting to see Paris. In Springtime, at that! My very first trip to Europe was over Memorial Day weekend in 2001. It wasn't a long trip, but it sure was a great trip! I want to go back, but things have taken place in the meantime that make that more difficult, the least of which is that neither he nor I are working at the moment. 


I also got to go to Northern Ireland and saw the church where my mother's great-grandparents were married. She had always wanted to go to Ireland. It was her dream, but it didn't come to fruition. My aunt and her husband got to go, but they didn't know what part of Ireland the family was from. Still, Mom's sister got there and she didn't. However, by the time I got to go, I had discovered where Robert and Catherine were married and where their three Irish-born children were baptized, so I was able to actually go to the locations and when I came back, could tell my mother what I saw. By the time I went, she had lost her eyesight, so I became her eyes. She wanted to know if it looked like she saw on television (she had limited peripheral vision, so she could see large images) and, thankfully, I was able to tell her that, yes, the area where her family lived did look like the images she'd seen on television.


So, I guess if I were to have a bucket list, I've already crossed several items off. I'm happy I was able to go and would like to go again (I have some of Mom's ashes I want to place in the graveyard of the church over there), but I'm not trying to cram every single thing that would be nice to do into a short period of time.


Neither do I have any remote desire to skydive, mountain climb, scuba dive or any other potentially dangerous thing. Accelerating the process just isn't on my itinerary.

June 3 - TGIBBF "Perils in Paris"

The Assignment by Lisa Ricard Claro:

Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book.

Below is this week's "book cover," generously offered for our inspiration by the lovely and talented Kay Davies :

The area near the Eiffel Tower wasn’t known for violent crime. Pickpockets were numerous, but crimes as vicious as this, no. So, when Mdme. Amelie du Bois, sister of the local commissaire, was found dead of very unnatural causes in her private flat directly across from the local police precinct, it sent shivers of fear through all who lived and worked here.

Because of the victim’s relationship to the commissaire, investigative duties would have to be handled outside the district. The call went out to Jacques Gendarme, former head of the Latin Quarter prefectorate. No longer with the force, Jacques was a well-known private investigator who had helped solve some very high profile crimes. If anyone could find Mdme. DuBois’ killer, he could. But even he couldn't suspect just what he would find once he began looking. Or what danger he would be in.