Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Luck
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I went to Bakersfield for a one-day visit with Leonard. We attended his grandmother's funeral.
Rosalie was such a wonderful woman. She treated me like another grandchild as soon as she met me, and was the smartest, sweetest hostess I've ever known. I am so lucky that I got to know her, as well as her husband Dalton, over the last few years. Now they are both gone and all we have is our memories, just as after we die all our survivors will have is memories of us.
Leonard spoke at the service and said that we would all be lucky if our lives we as rich and full of love as Rosalie's.
Yesterday and today, I got to talk and visit with Leonard, Frances, Susanna, Rachel, John, and people in Leonard's extended family whom I don't see as often, like his aunts and uncles (Pat, Don, Garry, and so on) and his cousins, like Shannon, Brett, etc. And I got to see Joel and Leah, Shannon's toddler and baby, who are tiny and very sweet.
We ate and shopped and talked and drove around, and I saw The Music Man for the first time ever (what a great musical). And this morning we ate Frances's great French toast, made from Leonard's perfect bread, inside a warm house as the rain fell on the garden behind.
On the way to and from Bakersfield, Leonard and I played the XM radio, and he tried to guess the bands playing the songs he'd never heard, and we ate at Pea Soup Andersen's.
I am so lucky.
