I have Tim’s school bag. The strap is torn from the impact and heavy from his school books.  I don’t know exactly what happened to his jacket that he was wearing.  It was my jacket which was my platoon jacket from when I was in the Police Academy – my name and class number and platoon designation of “A”.  Over the years it became a ratty thing that Tim took to wearin…

When I got home that evening, Tuesday, May 17, 2011, about 7:30 PM, I found people assembled at my home.  There were representatives from the Fraternal Order of Police, folks I had worked with and folks that I knew by reputation, and few co-workers.  The FOP set up a table of food, treats, and beverages in the living room.  Tasha, Jun’s wife, went to-and-fro picking after the kids and playing with my daughters.  Condolences were offered with hugs, hand-shakes, man-hugs where the arms are…

I see your smile,

I see your face,

I hear you laughing in the rain.

I still can't believe you're gone.

                                                                                                          ~William Luther & Aimee Mayo

Who’d You Be Today?…

Changes

I watch the ripples change their size

But never leave the stream

Of warm impermanence and

So the days float through my eyes

But still the days seem the same

~David Bowie

After Timmy died, I found it hard to go into his bedroom.  I could still smell his scent – the body wash, deodorant, and even his musk and sweat on the sheets.  I could almost hear his laughter from…

I choose to pursue solace, seek it out every day with each breath I take.  If my pursuit takes me to helping another grieving parent or saving a life so be it.  It is part of who I am. 

This is my own personal declaration to find peace because it is who I was before my son was taken, and it is who I am since.  I cannot afford to torment myself, family, friends,…

In the fall of 2005, we were in to the second trimester of Gi’s pregnancy with Alaina; there were ultrasounds ordered at Pennsylvania Hospital.  We didn’t know if Alaina was to be a boy or a girl.  The doctor reviewed the images and asked if we wanted to know the sex.  We decided we did and we were told that we were to expect a girl.

“I can tell you that I am…

Friday, December 14, 2012 has ended, the sun has risen and a new day begun.  It’s now almost twenty-four hours since a gunman walked into a school in Newtown, Connecticut, and slaughtered twenty-six human beings; one being his mother, the majority children - babies!  He is identified as Adam Lanza.  Of course the media tells of his sordid past – giving him a character…

In November, 2010, my buddy Kenny posted a picture of a kitten on his Facebook page explaining how his daughter Samantha saved a kitten from some kid threatening to hurt it; Kenny’s cat didn’t take to the kitten being in her domain and she had to be kept at his sister-in-law’s home.  I wrote to Kenny, telling him that I would take the kitten in, provided that no one else had already.  Later that evening I, along with Gi,…

This Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 22, 2012 marks the beginning of the second holiday season without Timmy.  As melancholy as it is without my son, I am grateful for the memories and love I have of my son, as I am grateful for my surviving children.  I am grateful for the support I had received from family and friends during the course of the past eighteen months since Tim’s death; without that support I would have fallen into an abyss which may have been a struggle to climb out of and…

By the summer of 2002, Timmy had developed an interest in spies and spying equipment, in part due to the Spy Kids movie directed by Robert Rodriguez that came out in the spring of 2001 and DVD and VHS by September 2001.  Timmy was fascinated by the idea that kids were the heroes who were tasked with saving their parents whom were spies and from a long family line of spies on each side of the family.  Other media bolstered his fascination – Max Steel, Johnny Quest, the Power Rangers – shows…

The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.

~ A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens, 1843

The Holidays are soon to be upon us.  To some of us it is a time to remember those we lost; those that left us either through…

While I stood over Tim, as he was laying on the gurney, I turned to see a priest and an older woman standing off to the side behind me.  The priest, a short man, about my height of five foot-six inches, dressed in black with the exception of his collar.  The woman, dressed in professional attire, appeared to be out of place in the Emergency Room.  I didn’t know them.  I didn’t care to know either of them.  I assumed the…