Our family was broken when my mother died suddenly when I was 6-years old in 1954. We struggled through my dad's attempts at being a single father which was made immeasurably more difficult because he was an an immigrant who never adjusted to America. Our aunts on both sides provided some loving support when we were young but they are all gone now so it is just 'us kids' (I email them occasionally - just yesterday as a matter of fact).

I have quite a few photos of our youth (my dad was amateur photographer - I can still smell the fixer when he was developing film). I also have photos of my dad and his sister from their youth Germany more than 100-years ago on my aunt's cedar chest she brought with her when she emigrated in 1925.

We all left our Long Island, New York hometown and never looked back - my older sister to Portland and myself to the SF Bay Area - my middle sister to upsate. Beyond one cousin in town I have no connections there any longer having left fifty-years ago. At seventy-four I no longer am surprised by my contemporaries dying - I am mostly over the shock of 'youngsters' in their sixties dying 'before their time.

We each reconciled with my Dad before his death (again suddenly - this time when he was in his seventies and we were each in our mid-thirties). He made marathon trips to visit his far flung children almost every year - one year with his only grandson, one year with a detour up to Mount McKinley). His last trip was cut short with his heart attack on a walk to the store near my sister's home in Oregon - he died happy with a speeding ticket from Ohio is his car's glove box.