Three years later

Now it is 2015 and I am 77 years old.  Betty will be 77 in September, to join me for a few weeks at the same age.  The doctor told her this morning to "Send the old fellah in next!"
I had forgotten I had this blog started so long ago!  Time to resurrect it!  Thanks to Google and Blogspot - this is so easy to use.  Why did I forget to go back to it????
We must have made a few changes since 2012.  Addison is still our eldest great grand child, but she has been joined by Carter Ross - soon to be 1 yr old, and down south Jacob and Michelle had produced a Garrett surnamed descendant named Hudson.  I have given up remarking on the tendency to provide erstwhile surnames as given names for our descendants!  He is a bonny lad with loving parents, like the Junior Rosses here.  Jacob is on the beat as a Constable in Invercargill, and Damien is now workshop manager at Parkes Auto.  Emma married her Bill, and is now Mrs Emma Graham - now there is a reversal!  with Graham also employed as a first name elsewhere in the Garrett-Sim family tree. They have interesting jobs in Wellington. Victoria starts work at Specsavers in Nelson today, after a long stint working for her parents at the Golden Bay Pharmacy in Takaka.  She has an interest of the male kind in Nelson which explained the switch!
Rob and Vicki have shifted from Dunedin and Mosgiel to allow Rob to take up employment with The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.  He is to be a team leader in the field of copyright patents protection etc, or so I understand.  They have already shifted to Blenheim from where Rob plans to fly into Wellington for the week and home to Blenheim for the weekend!  He starts on Tuesday! 1st June.  I haven't yet told Rob that a cousin, Lee Robinson also works for the same Ministry, and I must let her know too, in case they can meet up at some stage.

I heard that Helen Kelly, at present head of CTU, is suffering from cancer. It may be serious.  This fine lady deserves all our support. She has been a rock in the path of the Captains of Industry since she took up her post.  I dedicate this quote to her, and all others who are facing the possible end of their lives through illness:

The Light at the Edge

The cynic might dismiss the evidence for what really matters in life from a man who thought he was about to die, but I have more confidence in the feelings of people placed at the extremities of life than in those who are drugged by the comforts of the cosy and familiar.  There is a kind of light shining at the edge of things.  When we place ourselves at the centre the light goes out.  Our egocentrism is a great darkness.  Something moves in me when I come to the end of my rope, when I have exhausted my bag of tricks and have nothing left with which to negotiate.  New life stirs in me when my manipulative skills cut no ice.  A new light burns and shines in my soul when I am pinned to the wall.  It is in such moments that I know that “to love and to reconcile and forgive, only this matters.” It is in such moments that things begin to happen in new and unexpected ways.  When I find myself in extremis, a new light begins to dawn.  What I thought was the end is not the end after all.

Alan Jones

Passion for Pilgrimage (Harper-Collins)