Tag Archives: death

31 May 2011

Minutes to Live

By Nicki

I am participating in #Trust30 which is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.  Today’s prompt, on top of being a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, is imagining you have 15 minutes to live.

15 minutes?  This type of timeline makes me think of Joplin right now.  Yes, there were warnings of the impending tornado touchdown.  Does that mean the warning is enough?  We are all dying a bit each day.  A sad statement but entirely true.  I think I would prefer to not know when death is coming, just that it is.  To know that it is happening is not something I can pull into the way I live.  I like to see the half-full glass, not the cannot fill up glass.

After I got over the initial shock of writing about death – my own as I know I have written about others who have died, I realized that my attitude that I live by would carry through to dealing with my own death.  I would not worry about what was going to happen in 15 minutes.  I would worry about what would happen after that time.

My thoughts went to my children.  Granted all of them are in their 20′s now but one, yet I still wanted to tell them all the things I would as they grow older and have the major changes that happen in life.

  • Move a lot when you are younger and do not have family or other ties to bind  you to an area.  See what is out there.
  • Enjoy people.  We are all humans and to sustain our life we need human INTERaction.  We NEED more people in our lives – real, live people.
  • Enjoy what you do.  If you are working doing something that you do not enjoy, this job is going to become an issue in your life.  Find what you love and do it!
  • Document your life as much as you can.  You all know I do it.  I have tons of words and photos that have been a part of my life and will continue to but you need to document your lives.
  • Take the faith that you were taught as you were growing up and make it yours.  I did as a 20-something.  You need to.  Faith will sustain you through the bumps in life.  I am not saying you need a faith that is like mine.  You need your own faith so take what you have learned as a foundation and find your faith.
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

1 comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Family, Just my Thoughts, Religion

3 March 2010

A Year Gone By

By Nicki

I purposely hoped today would be a day full of things to do.  I want to stay busy.  While I may not think often that the last year has been different, it has.  A year ago today, my father died.  While it was unexpected, it was also not unexpected.  He was not all that old, having turned 71 two days previous.  He was, though, in bad health.

The hardest times have been those times when local news has happened – not the day to day news, the big local news stories.  You see, my father was a newspaperman.  The first hit came – literally – at the beginning of April when Binghamton made national news with a mass shooting at the American Civic Association.  I cried.  I cried for the dead.  I cried for their families.  I cried because I thought of Dad missing the story.

There were other stories that made me miss my father.  Binghamton has been rife with shootings and stabbings this past year.  The other thing that has really hit hard is the local sports seasons.

My father was huge hockey fan.  He had a season ticket to the local AHL team’s games.  From all I can tell, he was on a first name basis with the ticket and parking assignment people.  He went to NCAA hockey every chance he got.  My oldest daughter is heading to the College Hockey America conference tournament next weekend.

I also can imagine my dad’s disappointment in the scandal surrounding Binghamton University’s basketball program.  He had season tickets to both the women’s and the men’s games.  He would have been furious about the recent decision to not allow the men’s team to play in the conference tournament.

Then, there are the personal, family things he missed.  I had a son graduate from high school and start college.  I had a daughter graduate from college.

17 comments   |  tags: , | posted in Family, Just my Thoughts

1 January 2010

2009 in Personal Review

By Nicki

The last year of this decade was a huge one for me personally.  I did not sit down at the end of December 2008, as I normally would, and review the past year and set expectations for the year to come.  I let 2009 roll in and through on its own.  Parts of that were very good.  Parts of that were not so very good.

I lost my art drive.  I have seen a lot of art but have not created much in 2009.  I took what I thought would be a brief hiatus as I was leaving town to go to my daughter’s college graduation.  When I came back, my life was in full swing here with other things going on.  I kept saying I would get back to my art but never did.

I lost my father this year.  He had health issues.  They had come to light more in the last few months of 2008 and then again in the beginning of 2009.  He did not like or want to face these issues.  I know, through my faith, that he is in a better place now and that his life, had he lived, would not have been what he wanted.  This provides some solace.

I made many new friends this year.  These people may be people around the corner or in town or across the Atlantic Ocean.  Some of these people are ones that I turn to in distress and in happiness.  Some of these people are artists.  Some of these people are like family to me.  If you are someone I did not know in 2008 but do now, please know that I am happy we met.

I rediscovered my life in 2009.  As is often the case with single parents, my life had been my kids’ for many years.  I went out, had friends and did some things that were mine but most things were just for my children.  I found, and how I didn’t realize this sooner, that my children are happier if I am happier.  I found my life in 2009.  I did things for me.

I rediscovered how much I love to write in 2009.  I have written a huge portion of a novel that I will finish up by the end of February.  I have also taken to writing here more frequently.  I have additional poetry that I have written in 2009.  The last poetry I had written before this year was at least six or seven years ago.  The best of my poetry before 2009 had been written in 1999.  Is it a decade cycle?  Let’s hope not.

Had I been asked near the end of December 2009 how I would rank the year, I would have definitely said the good outweighed the bad.  As a matter of fact, I did say so in comments on Little Big Wolf’s “Scoring the Decade:  Your 10 Years in Review…” Then, I turned my year topsy turvy without thinking.

Was 2009 a good year?  I still have to say yes.  The good times, the good friends, the good things that happened by far outweigh the bad.  Unfortunately, the stupidity of me and the bad that happened was close to the end of the year and that is weighing heavy now.

6 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Art, Family, Just my Thoughts, Poetry

20 November 2009

Quotable

By Nicki

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

- excerpted from The Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

 

The Gift from the Sea is a book my sister has read many times.  It is, unfortunately, not a book I have read.  I have read snippets of it from various friends and various web sites.  Sister has told me many times to buy it but I never have it on my list when I head to the book web site or to the actual mortar and brick bookstore.

 

I stumbled upon this snippet yesterday.  These words ring so true that is it just another reason I am putting this book title and author in my purse today, this morning.  I want to be sure the next time I am at the bookstore this is in my cart.

 

As I have grown older, I have seen more how Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s view of relationships is the right one to have.  Relationships are not all us so we have no control over the way the combine “us” goes.  We have to be willing to enjoy the ride, the here and now as “us” moves from one stage to another.  If we are constantly looking for what is to come, we miss what is here.  If we are constantly remember what has been, we miss what is here.  Here is what is important.

 

In two separate incidents recently, I have been reminded again and again about the present.  First, a week or so ago, it was a young child dying in our community.  As a person, any death makes you stop and think.  You think about life, possibly about death and mortality.  As a parent, the death of a child, one who may be the same age as your own child, makes you hug those you love a little longer.  You want to spend more time with your family.  You want to pray that the family that is suffering finds peace somehow.

 

Yesterday, a member of the blogging community, a young mother, suffered a stroke.  This also made me stop.  I wanted the world to spin slower.  I wanted to spend time with my children, with my friends.

 

Please pray for the family of that young boy.  Please pray for the family of that young mother.

 

 

6 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Family, Just my Thoughts

3 November 2009

Mass of Remembering, Healing and Hope

By Nicki

Most people who know me know that I tend to rely on my faith to help me get through all those trials and tribulations that occur in my life.  I have relied on my faith to get me through the break up of my marriage and through several relationships that I thought would last but didn’t.  I know that I can always fall back on God as I talk with him daily and know that regardless of what I do he is there for me.

program

 

Last night I attended a Mass of Remembering, Healing and Hope at my church, Church of the Holy Family, in Endwell, NY.  November 2 is All Souls’ Day in the Roman Catholic church.  This is a church that has been around since the late 1960′s but, in August of 2008, merged with a neighboring parish in a “redistricting” of sorts in the southern part of the Syracuse Diocese.  The Mass last night was in memory of all the parishioners and family and friends of parishioners who had died in the past year.

 

My father died in March of this year.  I had been to these masses previously but never with a death being so fresh to me personally.  I found the readings and homily so pertinent.  The music was amazing!  I did shed some tears.  I cannot imagine anyone who was there that was in my situation who would have been dry eyed.

 

Special thanks to all who helped with the mass in any way – Father Clarence, Deacon George, the bereavement ministry, the music ministry.  Words cannot express how much I appreciated the Mass.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Family, Just my Thoughts

8 March 2009

March Madness

By Nicki

Several years ago, I wrote a post about March Madness and was referring to the start of my daughter’s Region I soccer season.  This year I am again not referring to the NCAA basketball tournament.  I am sure “The Big Dance” will make its way into my blog in the upcoming weeks but for now I am referring to the last week of my life and the craziness that has ensued.

 

My father died on Tuesday.  Sunday had been his 71st birthday.  I had, after much thought as I was coming down with a cold, made the trek over the hill through Whitney Point and Greene to Norwich.  While I did not bring the birthday cake I had thought I would have had time to bake – you see, Dad was a diabetic so I was playing with some recipes so he could have his cake on that Sunday, I did bring potato soup (no salt but a little turkey bacon in it) and vegetable noodle soup made with turkey broth.  I also baked some chicken breasts, breaded with mustard, cayenne and a few other spices, and made a mild chili while visiting.  Dad was holding court in the living room with the SU basketball game on television throughout the afternoon as my sisters and I did the daughterly chore of cleaning out the cupboards of all the foods his recent hospital stay had left him unable to indulge in any longer.

 

After my oldest son – no child on his own at 24 and home to help me out with getting to Norwich – and I left Norwich, Dad refused to eat much but Jan said the chili was perfect.  I’m glad she liked it because I normally make it much hotter than I did last week but I eat a lot of spicy foods.  Little did I know that day would be the first of several with me travelling over that set of hills daily – to Norwich and home to Union Center.

 

I don’t know where to go from here.  My father, as I said, died on Tuesday.  By yesterday afternoon, I had met, hugged and shaken the hands of many whose lives he had touched – from reporters to firefighters to police to authors, from residents at the Firemen’s Home he so relentless voluteered for to employees at the same Home to the other trustees for the Home, from people I knew at least from their bylines, if not in person already, to those I had heard him mention in passing.

 

While my children and my siblings and my stepmother and I grieved, we were surrounded by other “families” that my father belonged to.  We were saved having to make all of the minute decisions of the funeral service and calling hours by a dear friend and fellow firefighter.  When I was trying to get additional copies of the newspaper comments, the family there came through with a simple message regarding my printing inabilities.

 

As yesterday drew to a close, I know that the celebration of my father’s life had been just as he would have wanted it.  He had his reporter friends in one corner and his firefighter friends in another – both surrounding his family.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , | posted in Family, Just my Thoughts

4 March 2009

Crying in Front of the Computer

By Nicki

I am reading the paper this morning – the way I always read it, online.  That would make my father cringe.  He liked the ink and newsprint but, then, he had been a newspaperman since I was five.  Actually, he was a newspaperman before I was a “glimmer in his eye” but I remember him as a reporter for The Evening Press and its current re-birth The Press and Sun-Bulletin.

 

The paper is full of its normal news this morning – construction to soon start on a new Wal-Mart in the area, the expections of second time state competition diver from Johnson City.  It is also full of news of my father’s death.  Yesterday morning, my father died.  While I know how much this has devastated my family, I am seeing – as I did yesterday as I called people I didn’t know to inform them of the news – how my father’s life, and ultimately his death, has affected other people’s lives.

 

Having spent a good deal of his free time speaking at various firefighters’ events, my father had two different sets of biographical information on his computer.  I have pieced the various files together into the obituary below.  Look for some version of this soon in the local papers.

 

James W Wright, 71 of Norwich, New York, passed away after an illness the morning of March 3, 2009.  Mr. Wright is survived by his wife Janice Kenyon Wright and four daughters – Nicki Conroy of the Town of Union in New York, Beth Lynne Wright of Somerset, New Jersey, Wendy Sue Wright and David Burdick of Norwich, New York and Jamie Lynn Moore and her husband Gary of Norwich, New York – nine grandchildren – Edwin, Andrew, Elise, Susan, Benjamin and Daniel Conroy, Logan and Noah Bufalini and Dustin Moore – and one sister, Kathryn Vona.  He was predeceased by his parents, James Lowell Wright and Katherine Greene Wright.

 

Mr. Wright was born on March 1, 1938 in Sayre, Pennsylvania.  He lived in in Hornell, NY until moving to Owego in the mid-1940’s.  He attended Owego Free Academy and was a member of the graduating class of 1956.  While attending school, he served as a full-time sports reporter for the Owego Times and Gazette.  Upon graduation, Jim attended Temple University and wrote sports for the Temple Owl.  He left school to become the sports editor of the now defunct Endicott Daily Bulletin.  Shortly after becoming the Tioga County Bureau Chief for the Endicott Daily Bulletin, Jim was greeted by the now infamous Apalachin Gangland Convention at the Joseph Barbara estate.  He covered the trials of many arrested, including Joseph Buffalino.

 

Jim served as a disc jockey, news director and play-by-play sports commentator for WEBO in Owego.  After working as an interim Tioga County Bureau Chief for the Binghamton Press, Jim left Owego to become the Chenango County Bureau Chief, headquartered in Norwich on July 11, 1966.  He covered all aspects of news including courts in Chenango and Delaware Counties and parts of Madison and Cortland Counties until the early 2000’s when the bureau was closed.  At that time, Jim was shifted to the main office in Broome County to cover police and fire beats and serve as a secondary courts reporter.  During his forty years of exclusively covering Chenango County, he covered scores of murder trials, including the Cynthia Raymond trial in Greene, NY.

 

In May of 2008, Jim was honored by the Chenango County Bar Association for his contributions to reporting in the courts.  He received the 2008 Liberty Bell Award at the Law Day Celebration on May 2 at the courthouse where he covered many trials.

 

Along with his reporting, Jim was an avid volunteer in the fire service both in Chenango and Tioga Counties and statewide.  He served as the Norwich Fire Department’s treasurer, secretary and vice president.  He was also a Chenango County Deputy Fire Coordinator from 1976 until his retirement from that position in 2006.  He was the secretary of the Chenango County Fire Chiefs Association at its inception.  He served as secretary of the Chenango County Firemen’s Association for ten years.  In 2003, Jim was named Norwich Firefighter of the Year.  He was also presented with the Chenango County Fire Coordinators’ coveted Howard Bartlett Award for meritorious service to the fire service.

 

Jim has served as secretary to the New York State Fire Safety Educators’ Association, having held the position for more than ten years.  He also served on the New York State Fire Chiefs’ Public Education Committee, serving several years as chairman. 

 

Jim was currently serving his second five year term representing the Central New York Firemen’s Association as trustee at the Firemen’s Home in Hudson, New York.  During his first term he served two years as secretary of the Board of Trustees.  At his death, Jim was serving a two year term as president of the Board of Trustees.  He also has served as one of the directors of the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York’s Museum of Firefighting, having spent three years as secretary.

 

Jim enjoyed spending time with his grandchildren and attending sporting events from Syracuse University football to Binghamton University basketball to Binghamton Senators hockey. 

 


3 comments   |  tags: | posted in Family, Just my Thoughts

29 April 2008

High School Friends

By Nicki

Okay – I know I don’t want to be the person I was in high school, but I miss my high school friends.  We had so much fun when we were in high school.  With few exceptions, since college, I have not seen very many of them.  I went to my ten year reunion but the people I knew didn’t necessarily come.  I had four kids by then and was thinking about number five.  Most of my classmates didn’t understand.

The one person I have tried to keep up with is my friend Beth.  She moved in high school so was not there our senior year but in New Jersey with her mom.  We kept up as best we could through college, and then her to law school.  We both got married.  We have kids that are similar in age but I have a couple extras.

Last year, her father died and we saw each other for the first time in literally years.  Why is it death brings us together so frequently? 

Today, she called.  She and her oldest, Ashley, are on their way up to New York from the Richmond, Virginia area for the weekend.  They are leaving early evening Friday so won’t be here until Saturday morning early.  She is coming to get items from her father’s estate which is finally almost settled after a year.  We are going to get together.  I can’t wait to see her and Ashley.

2 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Just my Thoughts

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