So much has happened . I was so busy I did not record any events. This blog is a "catch up" on family news.

Last summer, my sister in law died. She was a life long smoker. She developed emphysema and lived the last years of her life connected to a machine. Carol and Phil moved out of Buffalo ...to Kentucky where her son lived. She needed to be closer to family for the care she needed.. I got the call from her daughter in law that Carol died of a heart attack. I felt sad for all that We had missed. There was no socializing between us. We were very different people and lived in different parts of the country. Carol was the most beautiful person I've ever seen. She looked like Elizabeth Taylor...only more beautiful. All her beauty was lost to cigarettes.
I can't figure out the person she was. She never learned to drive. How does one function like that in a civilization based on roads and cars? Perhaps she used her own mother as a model. Her mom never learned to drive either, but that was in an earlier generation when people could walk to where they wanted to go...or take the bus.
Carol never held a job . She didn't graduate from high school, but got her GED later. She never did volunteer work that I know of. She spent her days in front of the television, watching CVS and buying clothes from the program....and smoking.
I am tempted to write that her life was useless, but that isn't true. She was deeply loved by her husband and her family. Her family was everything to her. She raised two very successful children...a son and a daughter...my niece and my nephew...both with graduate degrees, good emotional and physical health and contributing to our society. She was an artist and a gourmet cook. Her husband loved her very much and was devoted to her, even in the last difficult days of her illness..
Her mother, my mother in law was a stay at home mother. She was superstitious about writing a will. She put it off, reasoning that if she did write one, she would die. But reasonable persons convinced her that since she had property and some assets, she needed to write her will. She finally did so. She got the call from the attorney that it was ready to be signed. She died a day before signing the will. That ment that her assets were divided according to the laws of the state and not according to her wishes as stated in her will.
Carol was the executrix of the estate. Carol told me that she gets half the estate and the other half goes to Richard's heirs...her brother's children...my daughters. I get nothing. That was OK with me. I understand the rules. Carol told me that her mother's will gave something to her children.my niece and nephew. The new system does not. Carol called to ask me to convince me to get my daughters to turn over their half of the estate to her children...as Oley wanted that. I was stunned. I could not convince my sister in law, that her own children will inherit from her...if she conserves the assets. I asked her to contact her nieces directly, as I was out of the loop. She did not speak to me again from that day forward to the day she died.....not a post card or a Christmas letter. Go figure. I guess I do not know as much about being human as I thought I did. Her daughter in law stayed in contact with me...bless her...so I kept up with the Kentucky branch of the family. Last fall, there was a memorial service for Carol in Buffalo. It was a long delayed reunion and wonderful to see how the children had grown up into successful people. There are new grandchildren and in laws. The clan has grown. My daughter and her husband and I went to that memorial service. There were pictures of my sister in law as she was...in good health and as beautiful as ever. My feelings were Carol's life didn't accomplish anything. But I am wrong. ..and I am not her judge.