Four years ago today, my strong, sweet, beautiful cousin Kathy lost her long-fought battle with brain cancer. We lost her far too soon and still miss her every day. This picture of Kathy and me was taken in the spring of 1972, over 40 years ago. Yikes.
Been thinking about her a lot over the weekend, about cancer and illness and how many people in our life are fighting right now.
In Kathy's honour, I'm trying to focus on the good times and remember all of the goofy stuff we did as kids together. Usually we would see each other at my nana's house on Jasper Avenue in Smiths Falls. Nana is gone now too, almost 15 years this fall. It's hard to believe how quickly time passes sometimes. Sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday that it happened. I don't think that you ever get over a loss like that.
Best we can hope for is to laugh more often than we cry when we look at back at those we've lost.
Showing posts with label kathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kathy. Show all posts
Monday, August 13, 2012
Saturday, August 13, 2011
first friends
When you are the first born child in a family, your first real friends are your cousins. My first friend was my cousin Kathy Forbes. She was two years older than me and she was also the first born child in her family. Eventually, we would both become big sisters to younger brothers named Patrick.
I've been thinking about Kathy a lot this week. She passed away 3 years ago today, after a long, hard-fought battle with brain cancer. She was 43 years old.
This morning when I got up, I poured a coffee and started going through some photo albums my parents had put together for me a few years ago. I had a good time looking at the old family pictures of us kids. All of us look like kids, children and parents alike.
I scanned the first of what I expect will become many batches of photos from those albums and put them on flickr. I plan to share them with my cousins because I'm sure that some of them have either not been seen in a while or not seen at all by them.
In other news, today is Gracie's birthday. She's 4. Sam turns 4 on Monday. They got to have chicken for dinner and a fancy organic dog cookie for a treat earlier today. It's a dog life around here for sure.
Via Flickr:
me and my cousin Kathy, hanging at Grandma Forbes' house during the summer of 1968.
I've been thinking about Kathy a lot this week. She passed away 3 years ago today, after a long, hard-fought battle with brain cancer. She was 43 years old.
This morning when I got up, I poured a coffee and started going through some photo albums my parents had put together for me a few years ago. I had a good time looking at the old family pictures of us kids. All of us look like kids, children and parents alike.
I scanned the first of what I expect will become many batches of photos from those albums and put them on flickr. I plan to share them with my cousins because I'm sure that some of them have either not been seen in a while or not seen at all by them.
In other news, today is Gracie's birthday. She's 4. Sam turns 4 on Monday. They got to have chicken for dinner and a fancy organic dog cookie for a treat earlier today. It's a dog life around here for sure.
Via Flickr:
me and my cousin Kathy, hanging at Grandma Forbes' house during the summer of 1968.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
the photographers
This photo is a few years old, I guess it's five years old now that I think about it. I took it on Easter Weekend 2003 at my Aunt Mary's home. My Aunt Karen & Uncle Mike were home from out west and as much of the family as we could muster were gathered at the Cooks' for Easter Dinner.
The story behind this photo is that everyone was taking a photo of my mum and her siblings (from left to right, the photographers are Meg - daughter of Mary - my mum's sister; Karen - wife of Mike - my mum's younger brother; Kathy - daughter of John - my mum's older brother; and my dad). I think that this was the last photo I had taken of Kathy and it's always made me smile because when I turned around, it was like looking at some paparazzi.
Kathy died earlier today. She had fought a very long battle with a malignant brain tumor. I think it was about 10 years ago now that she was first diagnosed. Kathy, her husband Jeff and her parents (my godparents) went to hell and back with this disease but the fight is now over for them.
Kathy was my first, first cousin. She was the oldest grandchild on my mum's side, I was the second oldest. This morning, I went through old family photos of us when we were kids. Looking at the pair of us in so many photos, we couldn't have looked more different: Kathy had gorgeous, long dark hair, I had my little blond pixie cuts. Most of the time, I was in a yellow dress and Kathy was in a purple dress. In a few of the photos of the two of us, we were up in a tree in our Nana's yard and I have to say, those are my best memories of my time spent with Kathy as a child... climbing Nana's tree and colouring the bark with our Crayola 64.
Tonight I talked to my cousin Meg on the phone for a while. We were talking about Kathy's love of all things purple and we've both decided to not wear black to Kathy's funeral on Saturday. We'll both be wearing purple, for Kathy, and if anyone has a problem with that, well, they can just suck it.
The story behind this photo is that everyone was taking a photo of my mum and her siblings (from left to right, the photographers are Meg - daughter of Mary - my mum's sister; Karen - wife of Mike - my mum's younger brother; Kathy - daughter of John - my mum's older brother; and my dad). I think that this was the last photo I had taken of Kathy and it's always made me smile because when I turned around, it was like looking at some paparazzi.
Kathy died earlier today. She had fought a very long battle with a malignant brain tumor. I think it was about 10 years ago now that she was first diagnosed. Kathy, her husband Jeff and her parents (my godparents) went to hell and back with this disease but the fight is now over for them.
Kathy was my first, first cousin. She was the oldest grandchild on my mum's side, I was the second oldest. This morning, I went through old family photos of us when we were kids. Looking at the pair of us in so many photos, we couldn't have looked more different: Kathy had gorgeous, long dark hair, I had my little blond pixie cuts. Most of the time, I was in a yellow dress and Kathy was in a purple dress. In a few of the photos of the two of us, we were up in a tree in our Nana's yard and I have to say, those are my best memories of my time spent with Kathy as a child... climbing Nana's tree and colouring the bark with our Crayola 64.
Tonight I talked to my cousin Meg on the phone for a while. We were talking about Kathy's love of all things purple and we've both decided to not wear black to Kathy's funeral on Saturday. We'll both be wearing purple, for Kathy, and if anyone has a problem with that, well, they can just suck it.
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