peterCooper
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It's a long story. It's also been a bit of a rough ride over the last couple of months. I'm going to apologize now for unloading on you all but I feel like you are friends.
To start with, my brother Ian passed away in April. He was 52 years old, an ex RAF and airline pilot. He started off by having numbness in his arm, apparently caused by an old bicycle injury when he broke his collar bone. As a result he was grounded until it was sorted out (as you would expect). The surgery to remove some built up tissue pressing on nerves was not successful, leaving him with reduced mobility in his arm and a lot of pain.
The combination of pain, pain killers and way too much alcohol (like a couple of bottles of scotch a day) caused some seizures which left him permanently grounded and very depressed.
He split up from his wife (not his decision), was medically discharged from British Airways, lost his drivers license and was pretty messed up. In March he had a heart attack, scheduled bypass surgery and went in for the operation. He had severe withdrawal problems from the alcohol after surgery and died of an unanticipated blood clot almost a week later. His last words to me were "don't you worry. This is quite routine nowadays".
He tried to phone me about half an hour before he died but couldn't get through.
He was just 11 months younger than me. My mum called us Chinese twins, we were so close. That's probably not politically correct in this day and age but I don't think my mother cares too much about that. Ian and I were the stabilizing force in the family. When we fought it was pretty vicious but we had everyone else in the family sorted out. We knew how we were going to handle Mum and Dad when they got too old to manage themselves (they are 79 and 76 and still going strong). We had the wills in place to help the next generation. WE were the ones to help out when things got rough for the other three boys. (Yup, five boys!)
In April I attended the funeral. If you think it hard to lose a brother, think how hard it is to lose a son. I sat there not thinking about him, but about my parents who had put their hearts and souls into helping him for the past two years while I sat 5000 miles away unable to do anything and often not being told about how serious things had gotten.
I have one daughter who is getting ready to go to college. She is going to Royal Holloway, University of London. SHe would have been an hours drove away from Ian. I had told him that she would be visiting every weekend, mostly for food!
So we have more house than we really need. Our house was an older 2-storey house around 2800 sq ft. I used to have a link to some good picture but they are gone now.
My second daughter, Kate, is horse mad.
A friend of mine, Buddy Feazell, strong Christian and a wonderful man, passed away in December. He had been hospitalized after a stroke in september. Kate looked after his horse Saba, a fourteen year old arabian stallion for the three months he was in hospital, just out of her love for horses and her friendship with Buddy.
As a result, another friend of mine, a local lawyer, offered Kate one of hi horses for her own. Billy is seventeen, an ex prison horse and a bay quarter horse. Kate dotes on him. For the last four months we have been stabling Billy locally, at some expense. Horses are money pits, kind of like boats.
Last month, my wife Carol said she had a friend who had some land north of town that we might be allowed to put Billy on to reduce the cost. I didn't know where she meant so we took a Sunday afternoon drive to see. While we were out driving, we cam across a house on five acres for sale.
In that month we have sold our house, bought this one and have moved in. I loved my old house. It had the capacity to be grand, a house that you can entertain in. Lob Lolly pine floors, high ceilings, graceful spaces. My new house however is peaceful. At 5:30 (I don't sleep too late any more) I can walk outside with a cup of tea and hear the breeze, a couple of birds and the horse. That is an overwhelmingly peaceful sound. I'll post pictures of the house and acreage in the next day or two.
To start with, my brother Ian passed away in April. He was 52 years old, an ex RAF and airline pilot. He started off by having numbness in his arm, apparently caused by an old bicycle injury when he broke his collar bone. As a result he was grounded until it was sorted out (as you would expect). The surgery to remove some built up tissue pressing on nerves was not successful, leaving him with reduced mobility in his arm and a lot of pain.
The combination of pain, pain killers and way too much alcohol (like a couple of bottles of scotch a day) caused some seizures which left him permanently grounded and very depressed.
He split up from his wife (not his decision), was medically discharged from British Airways, lost his drivers license and was pretty messed up. In March he had a heart attack, scheduled bypass surgery and went in for the operation. He had severe withdrawal problems from the alcohol after surgery and died of an unanticipated blood clot almost a week later. His last words to me were "don't you worry. This is quite routine nowadays".
He tried to phone me about half an hour before he died but couldn't get through.
He was just 11 months younger than me. My mum called us Chinese twins, we were so close. That's probably not politically correct in this day and age but I don't think my mother cares too much about that. Ian and I were the stabilizing force in the family. When we fought it was pretty vicious but we had everyone else in the family sorted out. We knew how we were going to handle Mum and Dad when they got too old to manage themselves (they are 79 and 76 and still going strong). We had the wills in place to help the next generation. WE were the ones to help out when things got rough for the other three boys. (Yup, five boys!)
In April I attended the funeral. If you think it hard to lose a brother, think how hard it is to lose a son. I sat there not thinking about him, but about my parents who had put their hearts and souls into helping him for the past two years while I sat 5000 miles away unable to do anything and often not being told about how serious things had gotten.
I have one daughter who is getting ready to go to college. She is going to Royal Holloway, University of London. SHe would have been an hours drove away from Ian. I had told him that she would be visiting every weekend, mostly for food!
So we have more house than we really need. Our house was an older 2-storey house around 2800 sq ft. I used to have a link to some good picture but they are gone now.
My second daughter, Kate, is horse mad.
A friend of mine, Buddy Feazell, strong Christian and a wonderful man, passed away in December. He had been hospitalized after a stroke in september. Kate looked after his horse Saba, a fourteen year old arabian stallion for the three months he was in hospital, just out of her love for horses and her friendship with Buddy.
As a result, another friend of mine, a local lawyer, offered Kate one of hi horses for her own. Billy is seventeen, an ex prison horse and a bay quarter horse. Kate dotes on him. For the last four months we have been stabling Billy locally, at some expense. Horses are money pits, kind of like boats.
Last month, my wife Carol said she had a friend who had some land north of town that we might be allowed to put Billy on to reduce the cost. I didn't know where she meant so we took a Sunday afternoon drive to see. While we were out driving, we cam across a house on five acres for sale.
In that month we have sold our house, bought this one and have moved in. I loved my old house. It had the capacity to be grand, a house that you can entertain in. Lob Lolly pine floors, high ceilings, graceful spaces. My new house however is peaceful. At 5:30 (I don't sleep too late any more) I can walk outside with a cup of tea and hear the breeze, a couple of birds and the horse. That is an overwhelmingly peaceful sound. I'll post pictures of the house and acreage in the next day or two.
