Yes­ter­day was Karen’s birth­day. While we are liv­ing here in Osgood, Liz and I have become closer friends with Karen. Liv­ing next door, we get together from time to time and play games or grill out. Karen is the bal­ance to Ed and it’s inter­est­ing to watch. I can see the wis­dom in the attrac­tion of oppo­sites.

Karen has a deep, com­pas­sion­ate heart. One night, while we were enjoy­ing a fire-​​side chat, a dog was hit by a car right in front of the truck deal­er­ship next door. While Liz and Ed were run­ning round mak­ing calls and get­ting flash­lights, Karen stood in the dark and cried, keep­ing watch over the dog. We prayed that it would die soon or recover mirac­u­lously. Within 15 min­utes, the dog passed away.

I knew com­pas­sion was one of her strengths, but never saw it like this before. Fur­ther­more, that doesn’t make very good mate­r­ial for a birth­day card. “Hey, remem­ber that time when the dog died? You have a real com­pas­sion­ate heart.” Yeah. Not so much. So I decided to go another route.

Karen and Ed have been work­ing out and so we took some ideas here. Her gift this year was going to be a pho­to­shopped, buff, Ed New­man as her attrac­tive inspi­ra­tion of health. I took it from the cover of Men’s Jour­nal and the inter­view of Bruce WIllis. She got a great kick out of it and it was the best idea we had. Enjoy.

Star­ing off in the liv­ing room of my par­ents house, I sit here stunned. The week­end visit is so sim­i­lar to every other visit but deeply different.

Janet Carey, my lov­ing grandma, passed away early Fri­day morn­ing in her apart­ment in Ket­ter­ing. Since the pass­ing of her hus­band, William Carey, she’s been liv­ing One Lin­coln Park, a senior liv­ing retire­ment com­mu­nity that facil­i­tated her inde­pen­dent liv­ing with a staff to care for the aging. While some of her neigh­bors were slowly fad­ing, requir­ing spe­cial atten­tion, Janet was sharp and mobile. Her hip injury was her only phys­i­cal set back that I remember.

Liz and I were tak­ing our lunch break when I got a call from my dad. When I answered the phone, he said that he didn’t have good news. I thought it was some­thing about work. If I would have noticed the change in his voice or the sound of tears held back, I would not have been stunned to hear that his mom, grandma Carey, passed away.

Late in the night Thurs­day, or early Fri­day morn­ing, she went to go to the bath­room and her heart gave out. When morn­ing came she did not push the but­ton in her apart­ment, sig­ni­fy­ing she was up and awake. The staff came to check in on her. They knocked, called for her, opened the door and found her in the bath­room. Mar­i­anne was the first to know and called my dad. My par­ents got off work and headed over to the apart­ment. When they got there, the coro­ner and police offi­cer were just leav­ing the apart­ment. The coro­ner men­tioned that she did not have a heart attack or seizure. No suf­fer­ing. Her heart just gave out. She was 88 years old.

This week­end, we pre­pared for the view­ing and funeral. For the view­ing, I was able to serve my par­ents by assem­bling a scrap­book of Grandma through the years. I used that project and many oth­ers to focus away from the sor­row. At the view­ing, I started to feel the sad­ness catch­ing up with me. It wasn’t until after my read­ing at the funeral that I was be to fully weep. So many mem­o­ries were good. I wish I had made more. So many times I thought about vis­it­ing. I wish I had vis­ited more. We moved to south­ern Indi­ana to be close to our fam­ily. I hope it wasn’t too late.

I under­stand most peo­ple who read this, which isn’t many any more, may not be able to con­nect with my grandma’s pass­ing but I urge you: spend time with your fam­ily. You never know how much time you have.

Media

To honor my grand­mother, I will be attach­ing media com­mem­o­rat­ing her life from the infor­ma­tion I have. This is a video of their wed­ding in 1951.

It’s Mother’s Day today in the U.S. We all take time to cel­e­brate our moth­ers and their role in our lives. My mother, San­dra Alli­son, was mar­ried to my father, Paul Carey, in 1975. In two years, I was born in Feb­ru­ary of 1977 — the first of seven kids to fol­low. As the Lord mul­ti­plied the chil­dren in the house, my mother took every change in stride. With more kids, the days were more full of activ­ity and ruckus. Here’s a fam­ily shot when we were just a fam­ily of four. My father was a self-​​employed painter and she stayed at home to look after us. We all grew up under her care and were taught the fear of the Lord and His lov­ing kind­ness. She was, and is, an excel­lent exam­ple of a godly woman in my life. Her ten­der­ness and firm stance in truth gave all the love and dis­ci­pline a lit­tle squirt needs to grow up well.

In get­ting ready for the move from Char­lotte to Osgood, Liz and I were going through old files to do some late spring clean­ing. We came across a bankers box full of old tapes. In it was a record­ing from the sum­mer of ’79 when I was 2 and a half years old. My mother recorded one of our times read­ing the story of the three lit­tle pigs together. She would start the story and I would jump in when I knew what to say. Most times I have the basic words together, but when it slurs together, you get the idea. I love my mother and it makes me smile (and almost choke up) to hear this lit­tle record­ing. Her ten­der­ness made me great.

So this is what I found. The record­ing starts with me try­ing to iden­tify char­ac­ters from Bambi — George the Gopher, Flower the Skunk and so forth. I think it’s cute and I hope our lit­tle twinkies are cute too. The hiss is louder in this one so it may be more dif­fi­cult to hear. Enjoy!

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Run­ning through old boxes, I’ve found a bunch of old tapes. One of these tapes was a record­ing of Liz at a record­ing stu­dio singing 6 songs when she was about 6 years old. Take a look at this photo and make your selec­tion. They’re all cute. She’s singing with a cold and doing the best her lit­tle voice can do. Makes me smile every time.

Sunny Days

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Get That Lucifer

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Jesus Called Me By Name

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Lis­ten Please

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Satan On The Run

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Stand For Jesus

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Pho­tog­ra­phy. It’s really a sub­jec­tive sub­stance to grade. Recently, I’ve had the priv­i­lege of shoot­ing in Las Vegas, Red Rock Canyon and Sedona. Its an amaz­ing feel­ing to be in the spaces and see every­thing first-​​hand. So dis­ap­point­ing when you can­not con­vey the majesty or moment with a cam­era. Sounds like a downer, but this dis­tance between real­ity and the cam­era dri­ves me toward perfection.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas is depress­ing in many ways. Its glim­mer is allur­ing but the dark­ness and poverty within it is a rude awak­en­ing for the unpre­pared. Inside the casi­nos, many play the slot machines over and over again with­out even look­ing at the results. Lots of card tables were empty while oth­ers looked depressed while eat­ing at the local buf­fet. Some were hav­ing a good time but it seemed like only the wealthy. The vast major­ity appeared to be poor and depressed. If there is an upside, the old Vegas strip, Fre­mont street, was an inter­est­ing dis­play of old neon signs. This was Sinatra’s Vegas and I’m sure it was classier. I just focused on the lights.

Red Rock Canyon

Out­side Las Vegas lies the Red Rock Canyon con­sist­ing of the red rock for­ma­tions and sand­stone. Away from the lights and influ­ences, you land your­self smack in the mid­dle of the desert again. This morn­ing we got to arrive before the sun­rise and take some great pho­tos. Our planned hike was cut short due to unclear mark­ings on the trail. Nev­er­the­less, some shots came through.

Sedona

You can stay here for a while to find the great­est shots. In fact, the drive south from Flagstaff on 89A is the most beau­ti­ful route to Sedona. Here most of the red rock for­ma­tions have signs of civ­i­liza­tion all around them. Cathe­dral rock is the most secluded for­ma­tion that I saw dur­ing the trip. When I get back there again, I’ll try some new things but for now, here’s what I got.

The Hoover Dam

The Hoover Dam was an engi­neer­ing mar­vel. While tak­ing a break from shoot­ing, I wan­dered into the store. In the back far cor­ner they had a DVD play­ing of the con­struc­tion process to cre­ate the dam. I didn’t think it’d hold my inter­est but I spent at least 20 min­utes watch­ing before a clerk passed in front of me and I snapped out of it. It’s really incred­i­ble. These are just my snap shots.

All in all, it’s been a great trip. We have New Years Eve in Albu­querque, NM and then we start the trek back. With a stop in Kansas City, we’re hop­ing to see our friends who are in or around IHOP-​​KC. Hope­fully I’ll be able to pub­lish the post before I have to tack on other venues.

We left Char­lotte last Fri­day morn­ing and arrived in Ohio that evening. We saw our first snow­fall of the year in West Vir­ginia and one of us loved it while the other one didn’t (We’ll let you guess who was who). Time spent with the Carey fam­ily was great and here are some high­lights of the first leg of our journey.