Dear Dad, Your granddaughter just threw up for the eighth time tonight (I think; I've actually lost count). At some point this evening, she looked at me miserably and said, "I miss Giempa." I agreed wholeheartedly. It's of course a general missing, but also specific to the situation: the Cricket gets sick or hurt; the Mommy reassures, knows and does all the right things, but secretly worries; the Giempa (because he is a doctor and therefore Knows About These Things) gets call

There are things related to my dad that I think I'll never stop doing. Taking photos of sunrises over the Mississippi River on my morning commute and wishing I could share them with him is one of them. But I'm starting to realize that mourning is probably not. You'd think this realization would come as a relief, but it actually threw me into a mild panic when I figured it out the other day. A friend of mine, after reading my blog post about the photo of Mom and Dad in the mus

My mom sent me this photo today. She received it from her friend Shel, who, with his wife, was a travel companion of Mom and Dad's. They met (I believe) on a tour of China and have taken several tours together since. Shel is a very talented amateur photographer and is still making his way through the many, many photographs he took on their tour of England, Scotland, and Wales in August--that tour, of course, being the reason Dad was in London when he was diagnosed with leukem