This is the very first photo of Gee and I together that I e-mailed out to our friends back in September of 1999. This was taken in her new apartment when she first moved to Seattle for grad school. We had just gotten engaged when this photo was taken on September 19, 1999, two months [...]
In many ways, the past 22 months reminds me of the time I was waiting because Gee was in a coma about a week before she died. Gee had nearly died from an eroded vein. The vein was one that had been transected during her Whipple operation over a year earlier and when it ruptured, [...]
It was Easter Sunday in 2000, 13 years ago, when Gee was diagnosed with the Pancreatic Cancer that eventually killed her. We were at Maryview Hospital, down in Portsmouth, VA, where her parents live. A week and a half earlier I had asked her to go down to see her father, who is a physician, [...]
“These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship. I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important. Many of us these days, [...]
Looking back… as the 12th anniversary of one of the happiest days of my life approaches, I was just reading some of the posts I made both here and on Facebook back in June 2011. They were some of the happiest posts of my life… because they were about some of the happiest events of [...]
Nicholas Kristof writes about Scott Androes, a college friend of his that had taken a gamble and is paying the price. You can read the two columns about Scott here and here. The story of Scott Androes hits home for me. In many ways it would have been Gee’s story had she and I not [...]
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the day my identical twin brother David was killed by a drunk driver on his way back to UCSD in California. He was driving from Boston to San Diego. Fifteen minutes before he left our childhood home for his long trip back to school I had a bag in [...]
This was posted by my friend Pam as her status on Facebook today. “On this day we are reminded of how fragile life is. Cherish and love your family and friends. Tell them you love and appreciate them every single day. You never can know if you will ever see them again.” Eleven years ago [...]
Though this song is specifically about breast cancer, I think it applies to so much more…it applies to anyone who loves someone enough to stand by them in spite of whatever illness they have and being there for them to help them–whether they recover, just fight or even lose to their illness. I think it [...]
A year ago today, I asked one of the most amazing women I have ever known to marry me. Ellie is one of the smartest, strongest, most beautiful, most stubborn and feisty spirited women I have ever known. She is the woman that I believe my late wife Gee asked me to seek out after [...]
I watched this and thought to myself how Gee and I had basically said everything this man had said to his wife to each other. Gee never gave up. She is the strongest, most stubborn and most gracious woman I have ever known. I was very lucky to have shared my life with her for [...]
A friend of mine was talking about his upcoming retirement. He mentioned that his father worked for the government for 43 years and retired on a full pension, but only lived to enjoy retirement for four years. He was thinking that if he continued to work for four more years, he’d get almost 40% more [...]
Eleven years ago today I said goodbye to my beautiful and gracious wife Gee. She had finally lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. She was diagnosed with stage three metastatic pancreatic cancer six months after we got engaged. The day after she was diagnosed, her father came to me and asked if I wanted to [...]
Eleven years ago today, I brought my beautiful wife Gee home for the last time. She had been in the hospital for the almost 12 days and we knew these would be her last few days. Earlier in the week, I had rented an oxygen concentrator and bought a medical recliner and other furniture and [...]
It is funny, the most painful memories aren’t the ones of loss or bad things happening—at least not for me. I look back on the death of my twin brother at the hands of a drunk driver as sad, but not really painful any more. The same goes for the memories of Shelley’s and Gee’s [...]
Gee used to ask me this when we were dating. My answer took her a long time to figure out. I would reply, “Because you’re you”. It took her months to figure out that I meant I loved her unconditionally and always. It wasn’t based on who her parents were, how much money she made, [...]
Twelve years ago today, I was asked if I wanted to cancel my engagement to Gee by her father. Gee had been just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer–and though we did not yet know it, it had already metastasized through her lymphatic system. I looked at my future father-in-law and said, “Gee’s illness doesn’t change how [...]
Salon.com has a really great article on scars, imperfections and differences… My favorite part is the concluding paragraph where it says: “I know life for Abigail – and Natalie and Johan and Frank and everybody else wounded or scarred or born different — is more complicated than that. The things that make us stand out [...]
I’ve been thinking about Gee and Ellie a lot recently. It is strange to think about the two women I love most. In many ways, the relationships I have with them are very different—yet in some ways they share a lot of similarities. When I first spoke with Gee, I knew I was going to [...]
“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.” —Denis Waitley I guess this explains why Gee was such a happy person, in spite of all that she went through. Brad was right when he said, “There are some days [...]
This weekend, I was thinking of Gee and Ellie, the two women I love most…and decided to watch a movie that reminds me of them both for a lot of reasons. The movie, Message In A Bottle, is one that Gee and I saw in a movie theater when it still playing. The second time [...]
Someone recently asked me if I love Ellie because she reminds me of Gee. That was a question I hadn’t heard before. The answer is no. While there are some things about Ellie that do remind me of Gee, I would say that they are more the common denominators of all the women I love. [...]
Wishing all my blog readers a Happy Valentine’s Day. More importantly, I want to remember the beautiful woman I married on what would have been her birthday. To me, today will always be first and foremost Gee’s birthday, and then Valentine’s Day. Remembering Gee’s birthday was always easy—since Madison Avenue makes sure I have six [...]
As Valentine’s Day approaches, two women are on my mind. They are the two women I love most of all, and both are in my thoughts every day. One was born on Valentine’s Day and I was lucky enough to marry her. She passed away over a decade ago and I miss her every day. [...]
There are times when you make decisions and the results make you ask “What if?” Those “What Ifs?” can drive you crazy. One such decision for me happened nearly 25 years ago, when my twin left on a drive back to San Diego, headed back to school. This is the first time I am writing [...]
Two symbols of commitment—the wedding band that Gee gave me and the turkshead bracelet I made for Ellie. I wear them both to honor the memories of these two amazing women and to show the life-long commitment I made to each of them. Last summer, before I realized the extent of Ellie’s addictions, I promised [...]
The Serenity Prayer or Neibhur’s Prayer starts with an almost universally recongized: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. My friend Grant wrote that being a twin isn’t always easy, but he wouldn’t trade it [...]
I will show you fear in a handful of dust —The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot I don’t think that most people actually fear death, I think we fear that no one will notice our absence—that we will disappear without a trace. Ellie need never fear this, because she will always be missed by me. Though [...]
Etta James, probably best known for her song At Last, just passed away. It’s sad to hear for me because Etta and At Last were what Gee and I picked for our wedding 12 years ago. We didn’t even have to discuss it…it was the first choice for both of us. Even today, over a [...]
Today, I had cheese stuffed tortellini for the first time in over a decade. It is strange, but I didn’t realize that I hadn’t bought or made this type of pasta in over ten years, even though it was always one of my favorites. It was also a dish that I cooked a lot for [...]