my uncle chuck

My cousin Mike posted this photo of his father, Charles Tyrone Flintroy, on Facebook yesterday and it brought back a flood of happy family memories. This photo is part of a collage that my father, Gordon Franklin Bower, made for his sister (my Aunt) and it now resides in their family room. Both my uncle and father lost their battles with different forms of cancer years go. They are gone but in our hearts and thoughts daily. 

I have been having a lot of thoughts about death lately. Not in a dark, scary way - just in the way that I really hope that I am not forgotten when I am gone. I have lost a lot of people that are close to me in my life - my grandfather, my father, my uncle, my grandmother to name only a few. I am amazed (and ashamed) at how little I think about them. But then I realize that I am LIVING with them every day. The times I spent with them are engraved into my soul and if not consciously, unconsciously they are a part of my heart every time it beats - they are a part of me.

Most of my family on my dad's side lives in California. Chuck worked for the trolley system in San Francisco and he was working all the time. I didn't see him much - he didn't visit Vancouver many times and when we visited them he would be working - but I would always speak to him on the phone and he would always say, "Hey Baby Girl - How's my girl?". Oh my heart melts just thinking of his dark, sexy, southern voice.

Thinking of you today Chuck ... thinking of all of you. xoxo