These are the stories of my life told through the lens of 50 years of experience living it.
As I enter what I hope will turn out to be the second half of my life, I want to leave some things behind… for my family and friends and the people that matter to me. This is my gift to you on my 50th birthday.
These remembrances won’t be in any particular order. I chose to put them in a blog so that they live on. Most are long past, but some will be from the supply of new memories made every day. I invite you to comment and share your perspectives and similar memories so that this is a rich resource for future generations to know what we were about in this time.
I’ve read memoirs and biographies that seem to dwell on negatives, and I won’t do that. Yes, there have been heartbreaks and hurts and mistakes. But when I tell those stories, they’ll have a happy ending. Because I really have a blessed life. These stories are the lessons I’d like to pass on, the things that have defined me (hopefully for the better). They are the stories of a happy life, and the stories of loved ones who have made my life happy.
I love you all… — Cathy
People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.
– From The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield