Goodbyes

This last weekend was one of goodbyes. On Saturday our family joined the rest of the old neighborhood to say goodbye to Kathy, a neighbor of 30+ years who passed away from cancer a couple weeks ago. She'd fought for several years, and held on to meet her first grandchild before letting go. So family, friends and neighbors celebrated one last backyard party in Kathy's honor. It was good to see people who have moved on to other places, and to remember other celebrations we'd all been a part of.

The second goodbye was different. The story goes back many years. One Christmas we gave my grandmother a birdhouse. She hung it outside her kitchen window and for years would watch the house swallows arrive, raise their babies and then they would disappear. When my grandmother passed away, my parents took the birdhouse to their home and for years we've repeated the cycle. This year, we finally got to see the babies leave the nest. It was an event my grandmother never witnessed since once the birds can fly, the whole family just disappears. It was kind of cool to see this year's babies take their first flight.