John William Hickey — In Memoriam

On Memorial Day weekend 2008 I laid my brother's ashes into the ground as a gusty strong late-Spring breeze made Johnny's presence known to all of us, family and friends, gathered together at Sandy Lake Cemetery near Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. John William Hickey, born July 28^th, 1941, was my only brother — a trusted friend, someone I looked up to for my whole life. A decade my senior, Johnny had a very serious bout of throat cancer in 2000 but recovered, moved from Ontario where he lived most of his life, and retired in New Brunswick Canada with his beloved partner, Lorraine Ault (bottom right). Eulogies during the graveside service were delivered by Nanci (in her blog) and I (Johnny's siblings) and by Johnny's daughter Karina (bottom left and top right). We also had a poetry reading done by Keegan (Johnny's grandson) and a very moving song sung by Amber Phelan (on YouTube, lyrics), Johnny's niece (Nanci's daughter).

Karina (daughter) and Kevin

Nanci, and Lorraine (beloved partner)

The YouTube video clip (center icon, above) features our long-time family friend, Don Gordon, playing the euphonium as we all sang the immortal "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound "…

I am grateful for such a genuine, moving, service — a heart-felt tribute to my beloved brother from all of us. I will never forget… when I reached 3' down into the earth to lay away the wooden box Johnny made, containing his ashes; it brought tears to my eyes as I realized this would be my very last goodbye. See my "fond memories of Johnny" blog for pictures from his lifetime, and this Flickr album for snapshots (or SlideShow) from our trip to Canada for his Memorial service.

Mother's Day — picnic at the Stone Quarry in Rockport

 
What a fabulous Mother's Day the four of us had at the rock quarry in Rockport yesterday !!!

See my Flickr album "Mother's Day at Rockport's Halibut Point" for the snapshots (or SlideShow) of the Pammett family outing on a glorious day in May. We had a picnic right on the very edge of the rock quarry followed by a jaunt around the site and we couldn't have picked a better day for it. It was the girls' and my present to "Mom" to pack a sumptuous basket of delectables, and without any agenda other than having a nice, relaxing, day… we were all in a space to enjoy one another's company to the max.

Above, my youngest daughter (eJP) soaring in the warm May breeze. Right is a panorama I made of the rock quarry itself. If you zoom in closely you see a tiny person who scaled down the rocks to be near the water level, exactly like Jilli did, here.

It's impossible to do justice to this place with pictures. This and this one show you that the quarry is right beside the ocean though you don't get a sense of how high up it is. The view is breath-taking magnificent !!

Here you see our actual picnic site, about 30' up from the water level. Below (left) is Lynnie standing on the precipice right beside where we ate lunch. This wild one of me — blown in the wind — is from practically the same vantage.

Jillian, shown on the right, is one of the few close-ups I got because mostly she was off climbing walls or falling off the picnic space — when she wasn't just flat out relaxing 50' below us.

Alas… these days are so precious. I thank my lucky stars that my family is in a space where doing this kind of "family outing" does constitute a really special Mother's Day — for all of us  !!
 

Mom's Flowering Pear Tree, Spring 2008

Every April I look forward to Mom's Flowering Pear Tree coming to life and filling our yard with her energy. And this year I got a huge dose of it because I spent 2 days this weekend rebuilding the wooden trellis that holds up our Concord grapes. The panoramas below show you the "before" and "after" version of that effort. To see the trellis in both pictures, look to the very far right, about half way down the picture. The left-hand one is "all gray" because it was totally overgrown with stems from last year's grapes. The newly-rebuilt one looks "naked" and you can see the new 2x4s that I used to rebuild the holding structure. Click thru on the panoramas to get a much better view of the beautiful flowers and/or the trellis structure.

Mom died of cancer on August 12^th in the year 2000. So on her birthday — Nov 5^th of that year — I planted this flowering pear tree in her honor. You can see that it's little more than a stick in the ground in these pictures when we planted it. I chose that type of tree primarily because Mom loved flowers and I knew that these beautiful flowers every Spring would remind me of her — especially remind me of visits that she made to see us when we lived in Alabama where "everyone" had these types of ornamental pear trees. See Mom (Jean Audrey Pammett), or in her maiden years.

Music In My Soul

This year my sweetie told me about my Fathers' Day present early, so that I could get psyched about it — to anticipate it for long enough that I'll be ready when it happens — a musical retreat led by Paul Winter at the Rowe Camp and Conference Center in the middle of nowhere (OK, it's in Rowe) in Western Mass.  Yeah !!  I'm already psyched !!
In anticipation of that, today I gathered up all my musical instruments and brought them out into the natural glory of our Groton backyard in Spring — right beside our weeping cherry tree at the peak of its glory, and I communed with my instruments telling them of my plans to escape with them for a weekend in early June… listening for them to tell me which ones I should take along with me on my pilgrimage.

This June 13-15 workshop called "Sound-Play: Music as Life" really has me psyched. The brochure says "The experience of making music and of communing with others, and with the Earth, can be one of the most deeply satisfying rewards of human life". It invites each participant to bring their voice and any other musical instruments "whether you can play them or not". So I am potentially bringing all of the instruments you see me with on the right — my pan flute and midi keyboard, the fabulous djembe (drum) recently gifted to me by my dear friend Austin, Jillian's flute and the guitar she got from Teddy, and eJP's clarinet and recorder.

Click on the image to the left for my YouTube show-and-tell about the instruments I'm taking to the workshop. Time will tell which of them I'll actually use in "the process of discovering the wisdoms we already have, deep in our being, that are awakened by the resonances of vibrations from our sound-making and deep listening". Yes !! More of what grabbed me from the brochure: "We rediscover what we loved as children: being spontaneous together". Being someone who is well known to carry a song in my head pretty much all the time, I totally identify with: "Sound-making is as natural as breathing — it's our birthright". And the ultimate promise: "It's about weaving whole the puzzle of your life, hopefully catching glimpses of the 'song' of your unique life journey."

JOHN — Undeniably Written in Stone

Today Lucky and I drove over to the cemetery monuments place in Hudson, NH, to pick up Johnny's "flat marker" that I had ordered a month ago. And when I picked it up, cold and heavy, it hit me like a ton of bricks — "JOHN", now it really is written in stone. Johnny's flat marker is not the grave stone or head stone that most people associate with what's in a cemetery, but rather the carved granite — typically visible only at ground level — that marks the actual spot of the burial. We chose "JOHN", even though most of his birth family members always called him "Johnny", as a compromise — his full name is on the head stone and because Johnny's lifelong partner, Lorraine, always called him by his birth name, just "John" alone is what we put on his flat marker.
Today as Lucky and I drove home with Johnny's stone I realized that we will have it with us in Groton for several weeks before we have to take it to Canada — and leave it there — for his funeral in May. It's nice that "JOHN" will have a further time of resting with us before we have to take that next step.

More New Beginnings — Roger Williams University

It was with great pride and joy that my wife and I accompanied our younger daughter to Bristol, RI, for what was termed "Accepted Students Day at Roger Williams University" this past weekend. Our youngest daughter — who prefers to remain nameless in cyberspace — had already made a few trips to the campus, but it was my first time to see it plus the first time the family had gone there since she received her acceptance letter along with a huge 4-year scholarship (for academic merit) from the University. Wow !!!

No… that doesn't necessarily mean that eJP has made the final decision to go to Roger Williams University. But I suspect that RWU is going to be the one she choses once all is said and done. She has received acceptance letters from at least four colleges and universities this year — not to mention her 4-year full tuition scholarship that she got last Fall for the John and Abigail Adams (MCAS) Scholarship. We'll see…

In the picture on the left you see the signature Mt. Hope bridge — visible from just about everywhere on the Roger Williams University campus (map) — it takes you from
Fall River on the Mass mainland over to Bristol, RI, which is on the Southern tip of the penninsula near the captial of RI, Providence. All a 90-minute drive from our place.

I'm tempted to change the date on this posting because, no, this is not an April Fool's Day spoof… It's just that I've been very busy getting into my new job + posting more pictures of recent trips to Roger Williams University that's been keeping me busy.

New Beginnings — Quest Software, Newburyport

Yesterday morning when I got into my car to head off to Newburyport (Mass) for the first day of my new job, this bright eyed and bushy tailed "Hallmark Puppy" was lovingly nestled into the steering wheel of my car — a note of congratulations and encouragement from the love of my life. It touched my heart and left me wondering how she was able to find such an exact likeness of exactly how I felt !!

Below is a slice of what Quest Software (map in Newburyport, Mass) looks like from the outside — a panorama from the Newburyport Chamber of Commerce building out over the Merrimack river with the rte 1 bridge in the background.


You can tell it's still off season here, just off Newburyport center, because many of the harbor tour boats are still up on dry dock for the Winter. In the summertime I bet it would be difficult to get a picture like this — in the middle of the day without any people in the sequence of snapshots stitched together to make this panorama.

This very small software startup was called "Proposion" until it was acquired by Quest Software in October 2007.