A Long October

It's been a long and sad October for my family. 

At the beginning of the month my parents' neighbor, Sue, passed away after a short battle with Leukemia.  Sue has been our neighbor since we moved there 30+ years ago.  Sue was like a second mother to my sister and me.  She was our regular babysitter.  I remember good times of eating spaghetti-os, playing with all her cats, and having the bajeebers scared out of me watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Walking past her house tonight while trick-or-treating with Anderson made me sad.  Her funeral is this weekend.  She will be missed greatly by my family.

Just two weeks ago we lost my paternal grandmother.  My grandparents live in Kentucky, about 5-6 hours from home, so we don't get to see them very often.  Therefore, I am not as close with my paternal grandparents as I was with my maternal grandparents who just lived a few miles from us and we saw all the time.  Saying goodbye, however, was not easy.  The funeral was filled with tears and great stories.  Mostly, I'll miss my grandmother's laugh.  She had a great laugh.

Yesterday, two years to the day that my beloved grandmother left us, my uncle passed away.  It wasn't unexpected; he has been sick for quite a while.  My mom and her sister are very close and I spent a lot of my childhood with my aunt and uncle.  They are big sports fans.  They used to take me to many Cincinnati Reds games when I was really young.  Then in high school they would take me to the summer league basketball games where I got to see many college and professional basketball players play on small high school courts.  The last several years my aunt and uncle had a seat license at the Schottenstein Center and would invite us to many Ohio State events including all of the women's basketball games.  We will say our final goodbyes this weekend.