Abortion - A complicated issue
"The abortion debate is the ongoing controversy surrounding the moral, legal, and religious status of induced abortion. In English-speaking countries, the sides involved in the debate are the self-described "pro-choice" and "pro-life" movements. "Pro-choice" emphasizes the right of women to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy. "Pro-life" emphasizes the right of the embryo or fetus to gestate to term and be born. Both terms are considered loaded in mainstream media, where terms such as "abortion rights" or "anti-abortion" are generally preferred. Each movement has, with varying results, sought to influence public opinion and to attain legal support for its position.
For many people, abortion is essentially a morality issue, concerning the commencement of human personhood, the rights of the fetus, and a woman's right over her own body. The debate has become a political and legal issue in some countries with anti-abortion campaigners seeking to enact, maintain and expand anti-abortion laws, while abortion-rights campaigners seek to repeal or ease such laws while expanding access to abortion. Abortion laws vary considerably between jurisdictions, ranging from outright prohibition of the procedure to public funding of abortion. The availability of safe abortion also varies across the world."
The recent birth of Molly has reignited the debate over frozen embryos. When Molly Gibson was born in October of this year, it was 27 years in the making. Her embryo was frozen in October 1992, and stayed that way until February 2020, when Tina and Ben Gibson of Tennessee adopted it. Molly is believed to have set a new record for the longest-frozen embryo to have resulted in a birth, breaking a record set by her older sister, Emma.
There are an estimated one million frozen embryos in the United States alone right now. If you're somebody who believes life begins at conception, you might see a potential tragedy. If you’re somebody who has long been struggling with infertility, you might wish that someone, somewhere, would send one your way. If you’re a clinic or storage facility, you might see a logistical struggle. And if you’re a former patient of IVF to whom one or more of those embryos belong, you might see indecision, an unyielding maybe that you can avoid dealing with for the not insignificant cost of approximately $1500 per year.
The options with leftover embryos are to use it themselves (an option that might now really even be on the table for those scrambling to raise other kids). Donate them to another infertile couple. Allow them to be used for scientific research. Or simply thaw and discard them. This has raised the debate over whether destroying them is abortion. Those that believe that life begins at conception argue that this should be criminalized. In the US the recent appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court has raised concerns among pro-choice advocates because of her previously expressed opinions.
"Barrett signed newspaper ad in 2006 sponsored by St Joseph County Right to Life, an extreme anti-choice group
Barrett signed newspaper ad that called Roe v Wade ‘barbaric’
Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
@skirchy
Thu 1 Oct 2020 13.45 BST
6,257
Amy Coney Barrett publicly supported an organization in 2006 that has said life begins at fertilization. It has also said that the discarding of unused or frozen embryos created in the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process ought to be criminalized, a view that is considered to be extreme even within the anti-abortion movement."
"So, what then? When might we reasonably say that personhood begins?
"A starting point that is far more consistent with the facts of biology is not conception but the emergence of the human brain. We declare persons dead when their brains have lost the capacity to govern the core functions necessary for life—breathing, excretion, and the like. When a fetus has developed a brain that can support its basic biological functions, probably at around six months of life, it can be reasonably argued that personhood has begun.
Those in the personhood movement in the United States have let their animus toward abortion blind them to the facts that have emerged about human embryology over the past fifty years. And scientists, sadly, have been unwilling to correct them. Conception is the start of something, but it is more the start of the possible rather than the actual. It is not until a being emerges that has the traits necessary for individual existence that we can and should say that a person has begun. How law and public policy want to handle that fact is still debatable. But to ask the law to treat embryos as persons from the moment of conception is to head down a path where the facts ought not permit anyone to go."
Beyond the moral, ethical, political, and legal issue about when does life begin, with the answer to that then affecting abortions, for me it is a very personal argument.
My son, Christopher, was born in 1970. My daughter, Heather, was born in 1977. Both wonderful kids. The loves of my life. Sometime after Heather was born I noticed that my ex-wife was not getting ready as usual to go to work. When I asked what was going on she responded that she was going to Toronto with her mother to Sick Kids Hospital to have an abortion. Needles to say I was shocked because she hadn't said a word to me about being pregnant. My first reaction was to question why she didn't need my agreement before aborting our child? She said it was her decision alone and did not involve me! Admittedly I didn't know the law but I just knew this was wrong. She obviously wasn't giving me any choice in the matter and it was too late to challenge her decision. It was very upsetting to say the least. One thought that I did have was that this was a clear indication that my marriage was over.
After the solarium company went down I just had to get away. I left home with no idea where I was going but when I got to Dryden I realized that I was half way across Canada and could keep going to see my parents. Shortly after my son and daughter came out for a three week vacation. The best time of my life until the day they had to go back to Brampton. Heather told me to stay out west. She said she had never seen me happier and knew that I had tried so hard, but my marriage was over. It broke my heart, I couldn't stand the thought of leaving her so I drove back home. A big mistake. Then in 1991 I got a phone call that changed my life forever. My mother had been diagnosed with fifth stage melanoma and given less than a five percent chance of surviving more than six months. Having been apart for more than twenty years I knew that I had to go to BC to be with her. I took a flight out the next day. Miraculously they caught my mother's cancer before it reached her lymph nodes so she was given more time. Finally after even more stress in my marriage I realized it was time to leave. I had left home a year earlier but I was still paying for everything and my wife wasn't even working. I told her we were done. I also wanted to spend whatever time my mother had left with her. In June of 1993 my parents drove down to Brampton with me. The house was sold and my Dad was going to sell off all my tools and things. The day I left my daughter was one of the toughest days of my life, but the plan was for her to come out and visit me again so I didn't know that it would be the last time I would ever see her again. The following year after talking to her I drove across the country in the dead of winter to see her but my ex and her new husband hid her away from me and wouldn't let me see her. It broke my heart and I cried all the way on the drive home to BC. That was twenty-six years ago and my daughter refused to respond to me despite numerous attempts to contact her. I saw my son briefly back in 2009 and we made plans for me to meet my three granddaughters but that fell apart after three months of waiting and he blocked me on Facebook and sold his phone.
The point in all of that is that I can't help but wonder about that possible third child. Would that son or daughter be the one who loved her father? Would we have had a life together? Would she maybe have gone with me on my travels? Maybe they would even be able to mend my broken relationships with my kids and grandkids. Would I still have a family that I cherished so much?
Quite obviously it changed my feelings on abortion when it became personal. Before that I agreed to abortion in cases of rape, incest or when there was an danger to the mother. I also agreed with pro-choice that it is a woman's right to control her own body; however, in cases like mine I also believe that it should be a mutual decision between a man and wife. I don't know if I had the right to object before my ex had the abortion or what the result would have been if we had not agreed, particularly given that our marriage was in big trouble at the time. Her killing our unborn child has obviously had brutal consequences for me and raised many other issues had she not gone ahead with the abortion. Still, I live with huge regrets and the unknown.
Diana Krall
Diana has always been one of my favourite artists. Back when I was building my music library I found a site in Russia that had almost every song she had ever recorded at the time, and I downloaded them all. When it’s time to relax I play them over and over. I’ve never been lucky enough to see her live but that’s on my bucket list for sure.
As a child, Krall played classical piano, sang in a church choir, and learned to play and sing the Fats Waller songs in her father’s record collection. She began playing piano professionally at age 15 and later studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and privately with jazz pianist Jimmy Rowles. Performing in the United States and Canada, she developed a repertoire that included subtle, sophisticated songs and spare accompaniment—a cool jazz rhythm section featuring her own piano, occasionally augmented by discreet string-orchestra backgrounds.
Renovations - Princess
It's said that life is timing. No truer statement could be made about this massive renovation. I was on my way into Kelowna to pay the balance of my first month's rent on a basement apartment I didn't care much for, when, for some unknown reason I checked my email. There was an email from my Realtor telling me about a place in the Princess MHP that was about to go into default and he suggested, although it was a mess, I could probably just takeover the existing loan and renovate the place. I met him there and, well, there rest is history, none of it good.
When I first moved in I wish I had taken more pictures of what I found on closer inspection, but let's just say I ended up pretty well gutting it, redesigning the layout and completely rebuilding it from the ground up. About the only thing I didn't touch was much of the exterior cladding mostly because it was in good condition and fit in with my planned colour scheme.
They had two massive dogs who had basically destroyed whatever lawn there may have been at one time. What little work had been done was very shoddy. When I leaned against the railing on the deck they had it started to collapse and I nearly fell off. They only things that was done right were the two additions, one at the front right with what could be two bedrooms and one at the back with a bedroom and a bathroom.
The reno of the kitchen was total with all new plumbing, electrical, walls, new appliances, flooring and cabinets.
Originally there were two bathrooms, the "fish" bathroom which was the main bathroom in the original unit, and the bathroom in the add-on part at the back. Although I intended to demolish and replace the "fish" bathroom with a new bathroom location, I thought the bathroom in the add-on only required maybe a repaint and replacing the vanity. Boy was I wrong!
It looked like the taps had been leaking in the bathroom because the backboard had been cut out to make repairs. I intended to install a one-piece shower/bathtub unit so the cut-out around the taps wasn't really a factor, but I just wasn''t comfortable just covering it up without making sure it didn't still leak. It did, so we started pulling off the plywood to find the source of the leak. Soon we were down to the sub floor and there was evidence that it was wet. To our considerable shock, when we went outside after running the taps there was water dripping on the external wall. There was also some evidence that the studs had been wet because there was blackening on the bottom. It was becoming more obvious that this was not going to be a cosmetic fix and would require demolition and rebuild.
Once we had removed the vanity and the bathtub we went to remove the old vinyl flooring. Naturally I was hoping it would come up in one piece, so Chris and I got a hold of one side and gave it a tug and it did come up in one piece. To my horror the vinyl and the floor was covered in obvious black mold! I grabbed Chris and we ran outside. It was too late to worry that we should have had breathers on or, better yet, called the HazMat team in. The damage had been done.
With breathers on we removed the sub floor and bleached all the walls and floor joists where we had seen any mold. The plumbing all came out and was replaced with new. All together my minor cosmetic fix cost me several thousand dollars. Just proves you never know what will happen when you start a demo. There's often secrets lurking in those walls.
The Exterior
It's hard to describe just how bad the place was from the outside. It was either damaged or broken down everywhere. No question the place was an eyesore in the park. The first job was to demo pretty well everything. The shed, although in pretty rough shape and empty on the inside, was structurally sound. It had a door opening on the back which made no sense to me because it would only be perfect back there for break-ins. I knew from the start that I would need a place for all my tools and to work because there would be nowhere in the house for this, plus I was trying to live there through all of this. Although I seemed to always be working on a million things at once, I did find time to reclad the shed and build in some great shelving and a workbench. In no time at all it was full.
In general the exterior of the house wasn't too bad, with most of the cladding in good shape. The one exception was at the entrance where they had put the BBQ too close to the vinyl siding and it had melted. I was most concerned about the first impression of the place so this is where I focused on making it look better. The first major job was to remove the old, broken patio door and replace it with the french doors, which made a huge first impression. Then we built the stairs and railings. Then we added a window to make the living room brighter. Then we re-clad this part of the place with new board and the horizontal boards in the highlight colour. Some new eaves-trough and downspouts and some flowers and things looked pretty good.
I might mention that the concrete pad we added was the first time I had ever done this kind of work. I researched it on the internet plus I had help from a guy in the park who saw what I was trying to do and helped me out lending me some finishing tools. I was pretty proud of the job I'd done when it was finished.
I should also mention that there were a number of areas that it looked like it was going to be a problem growing grass. Some of the areas were also out of sight, like the side of the place along the road, so I wanted to make it as maintenance free as possible. I got the idea of creating what looked like a dry riverbed down the side and around the front. What I didn't realize at design time was just how many rocks this was going to take. I think the first full dump truck load was something like 20 yards and that's a whole lot of rocks. I figured that by the time I was finished doing the whole property I had moved and placed about fifteen thousand rocks in total. Yeah, grass might have been easier.
Jewl
Into every child’s life must come a first pet
To care for, love and cherish and yet
There comes a day you know they’ll regret
A day that will make you so very upset.
For no matter how much you love them to death
They don’t live forever. They will take their last breath.
To a child this loss is a whole new feeling
That makes them cry and sends them reeling.
It’s so hard to make them understand it’s okay
To grieve their loss in their own special way.
To them it’s a pain they have never had
It makes them confused and so very sad.
We all go through it and we remember the pain
Our first thought is we’ll never have pets again.
But time heals all wounds and we soon recover
We learn that to go on we’ll soon have another.
Millions of pets go unwanted every day
Unloved and put down in such a cruel way
But you gave life to one so special to you
She knows that it was the right thing to do.
She wants you to remember all the good times you had
And not to dwell on her passing and be so sad.
Think of all the fun and joy she gave to you.
Smile when you remember her and don’t be blue.
To keep her alive in pain would be cruel
Think only good thoughts of your friend, Jewl.
In the days ahead you’ll miss her so bad
But remember she doesn’t want to make you sad.
She’s in a better place, free from pain
And she’ll want you to love another again.
More little joys like her will come your way
To fill your heart with joy. You’ll be okay.
Jewl will never forget her good friend, Emily
Who loved her and cared for her as much as could be
No better could she have been loved by anyone
Have only good thoughts, like the heart she won.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
I shed a tear for a fallen soldier today
Why did a young man need to die this way?
I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me
But he believed in “stand on guard for thee”
Not since Dallas have I felt this way
Our innocence is gone too this day
We know that life will not be the same now
True Canadians share regrets, yet somehow
We must find a way to get through our grief
To hold onto our values and our belief
That our beloved country is still strong and free
And that we can handle the threats to you and me
Our peace-keeper role has gone astray
Sad we have to pay for it in this horrible way
Our great “melting pot” has some cracks in it now
We struggle to accept that and yet figure out how
To guard ourselves against those who preach hate
And to all stand together before it’s too late
If you don’t like our country please don’t come
Keep all the violence back where you come from
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, for those we didn’t know
Now stands in lasting memory of brave Corporal Cirillo
Back "Home" again
As my initial post on this site says the primary purpose of it is a sort of diary but mostly just in case any of my kids or grandkids ever want to know about me. My daughter, Heather, hasn't spoken to me in twenty six years, which breaks my heart. My son, Chris, hasn't connected with me in more than ten years, despite my attempts to reconnect with him back when I lived in London, Ontario. As for my grandkids I met my son's oldest daughter, Danielle, when she was just a baby and we did reconnect when I was in BC. We chatted quite a bit until I assume her Dad put a stop to that. I've never connected with his daughter, Merissa. I did connect with his other daughter, Mackenzie, back when she was fourteen. Again we chatted back and forth and we were even going to meet when she came to Mexico, but she cut me off when she came to Puerto Villarta and stopped chatting with me just a suddenly. The saddest part of this whole thing is that I have no idea what I did to deserve this. Not a soul has ever explained why they won't talk to me. No one was ever stronger about family than me and my kids know that. Sadly they not only cut me out of their lives but did the same for my entire side of the family. It hurt their grandparents, my Mum and Dad, terribly. My brother and sister and my kid's cousins never heard from them again. No clue why.
Being forced back to Canada, something I figured would never happen after moving to Mexico, started back when I was living in Riberas del Pilar, just east of where I was originally in Ajijic. First I lost one of my pensions because I had been out of the country for more than six months and this was about a third of my measly pension income. Then trying to get my critical diabetic meds turned into a disaster when my friend sent insulin instead of my dry meds. It took months to get to me because she mailed them instead of sending them courier as I had asked and, of course, it was garbage after not being refrigerated for months. I called the pharmacy back in Belleville to explain what happened but they refused to renew my medications without a doctor. I started researching getting my meds in Mexico but that proved impossible because of the costs. I did go through a very lengthy process with their version of public medicine and managed to get a one month supply of insulin.
Then my landlord from hell who had given me nothing but grief since the day I moved in suddenly demanded two thousand pesos more a month and wanted it now! The fact that according to our lease he had to give me thirty days notice, plus he could only increase the rent annually by five percent meant nothing to him. The studio apartment was a nightmare with either no water, no electricity, or no internet and infestations of ants and, so much worse, cockroaches! Those little buggers are hard to kill! I was terrified chasing them around the apartment.
It was at this point that I was ready to just give up. I researched whether an overdose of insulin would kill me. It wouldn't. Back when I was unceremoniously dumped by my fiancée by text message I was just going to swim out in the lake far enough that I couldn't make it back, but I was too much of a coward to do that. After crying my eyes out for days I managed to pull myself together and try to go on, but here I was in a desperate mess with no idea what to do. Just when I was thinking about getting the sleeping pills and just laying down on my bed and going peacefully a guy messaged me on Facebook offering me a free apartment for a month in Chelem in the Yucatan, about two thousand miles away. Desperate to just get out from under all this stress it seemed like a better option than going back to Canada. It wasn't.
Getting rid of all my stuff was yet another nightmare. My new friend, Anny, in Guadalajara offered to sell my things for me, which would have been great if my criminal Uber driver, Salvador, hadn't stolen half my things in the move to Anny's place. Then my equally thieving dentist offered to buy my big screen, very expensive monitor and printer, but then refused to pay me, coming up with new fictitious bills he said I owed him. It took months to get my printer back from him but somehow he managed to destroy it. When my friend, Arnie, eventually managed to get it back for me it wasn't working and he couldn't get a dime for it. Another four hundred dollars gone. My four hundred dollar LG monitor was ripped off by the dentist, along with the executive two hundred and fifty dollar executive chair I gave him. I never calculated how much Salvador stole from me but it was at least my expensive desk, a coffee make that I had promised to Anny, and countless other things that the guys he hired stole. Add the cost to fly to Merida and that "free" month's rent cost me a fortune. The entire move was one of the worst mistakes I've ever made.
Not only did I lose a fortune moving to Chelem I also hated it. Something that the owner forgot to tell me when he offered me the one month free rent was that the place was sold as of the end of November so I would have to move out. The US purchaser was going to be charging nine hundred dollars US so I couldn't possibly stay. Not only that but after living for the better part of two years in the most perfect climate in the world I was now living in an oven. It was unbearably hot and humid. Mid thirties and higher every single day. The place I lived was on the beach, which might sound nice, but it wasn't because the wind never stopped howling. It could have blown me off the balcony. When I managed to catch the little crowded van that was transit to Progreso to shop I nearly fainted walking down the main street. Just brutal! One day when I was trying to get my glasses fixed I did actually faint. The shop owner called for help and the EMT folks got me to the hospital where they gave me insulin. At the time I didn't realize that the public hospital that they took me to was miles from the downtown where I needed to catch the van back home.
After not being able to find an affordable place to live, trying in vain to survive without one of my pensions, and running out my meds, particularly my insulin, I knew that I had to give up and go back to Canada, which broke my heart. I contacted everybody from the consulate to the Embassy trying to get help with the flights back to Canada, but that was just another disaster. I was trying to figure out whether to go back to the Okanagan or to Belleville. Although the flights back to Kelowna were cheaper, I think because the connection was out of Puerto Vallarta, I couldn't get answers from the CMHA in Kelowna as to whether they had the type of housing they had in Belleville. I was also under the belief that rents were cheaper in Belleville, which was totally wrong. Rents are insane, especially in a place as horrible as Belleville. I had been checking out flights every day and at one point found flights to Toronto that were as cheap as I'd seen. When you are checking these discount airfare sites nine times out of ten when you go to book them they are sold out. When I found these flights and expected to get the same "sold out" to my surprise the flights were actually booked. It was too late to change my mind and cancel them because there were no refunds. There went half my pension money to pay for the flights.
Now I was booked out, flying from Merida to Mexico City to Cancun to Toronto. Worst flights ever. I was going to be in the air or sitting around airports for twenty-four hours. Even the lady at check-in at Merida commented that I had terrible flights, asking if I couldn't have done better? In a bit of a last minute panic I ended up donating most of the stuff I had bought to live. The lady I gave it all to said she could sell some of it, like my brand new coffee maker, but she never gave me a dime. She did setup a driver to take me to the airport for 600 pesos. The owner of the house had picked me up at the airport when I first came but he made no offer to take me back to the airport.
Naturally the first flight out of Merida was delayed hours. I wasn't too worried because my layover in Mexico City was something like ten hours. Despite the fact that I was connecting on the same airline all the way to Toronto I still had to get my luggage in Mexico City and check it in again for the flight to Cancun. That meant I was hauling my luggage around for hours at the airport. I might mention that there is nowhere to sit or spend time at the airport Everything was closed overnight and the Krispy Kreme donut place showed that it opened at three o'clock in the morning. I remember seeing all kinds of people lying on the floor and at the telephone booths. I couldn't believe that they had nowhere to even sit. Eventually I saw them getting ready to open the donut shop and I asked the guy when they would be ready. He was nice enough to let me get a coffee and donuts before they were actually open. The donuts, delicious as they were, proved to be a big mistake.
It was something like six in the morning for my flight to Cancun. Again I had a very long layover before my final flight to Toronto which was scheduled to arrive around midnight in Toronto. I had already booked and paid for the bus to Belleville but it wasn't leaving the airport until six-thirty in the morning, so yet another long layover. Then disaster struck. I was sort of half sleeping on a bench, not realizing that I was actually going into a diabetic coma. A very nice airport staff lady shook me and asked me if I was okay? I guess my mumbled response raised concern and the next thing I knew was that I was being wheelchaired to their emergency clinic. The doctor there spoke good English and gave me insulin and brought my sky-high sugar levels down. They wheeled me back through security again and back to my bench. I still wasn't feeling great and I hadn't slept in quite a while so I guess I doxed off again. Next thing I knew another airport official was shaking me telling me that I was about to miss my flight. As she wheeled me down to the gate I heard my name being called over the PA system. They got me on the plane and stuck me in the first seat where I believe the flight attendants normally sit.
After finally getting to Toronto more than twenty-four hours after first leaving Mexico I went through challenges with customs but they let me in. First trip after getting my luggage was, of course, Timmies for coffee, something I had missed for two years. It was delicious. Then it was a matter of finding somewhere to sit and wait the hours until the bus for Belleville arrived. When it finally arrived and I showed the driver my prepaid ticket he said that I was only allowed one piece of luggage, but finally agreed to load my two pieces. When I first booked the bus I assumed that it would be stopping at the bus depot downtown. Wrong! It stopped at a truck stop off the 401, miles from downtown Belleville. Staff at the store told me that it was a twenty dollar cab ride to downtown. I didn't have twenty dollars. In desperation I called my friend, Doral and she agreed to pick me up. She said her and her friend were on their way to a dance at the Legion so invited me to come along, which i did. I still can't believe that after two days of horrible travel and little sleep, if any, I was able to dance, but I did.
The place I had to live just a few days ago, before I left Mexico, now wasn't available so Doral called the Ontario Works emergency housing number. They arranged for a taxi to pick me up and take me to a motel in Trenton for the night. It wasn't great but at least I got to finally have a much needed shower and sleep in a bed. In the morning I learned that OW took me to Trenton but they wouldn't take me back. I talked to the owner of the motel about staying but he was really disagreeable and said he wanted eighty dollars a night. He did say that people in another room were going back to Belleville and they would only charge me ten dollars. Thus started a couple of very crazy days with them. After we stopped downtown to get me a winter coat the police followed us to a parking lot and said that if the van moved they would arrest us. It had something to do with the muffler. Somehow we ended up on the reserve and they dealt with finding us a place. Off we went to Napanee to the Comfort Inn and they even paid for food for us. The next day we were supposed to get the van fixed but that wasn't happening. They went to the band office again to see about housing, but when they came back they said that I was out of luck because I wasn't native. I broke down crying. I couldn't take anymore. Then they arranged for me to stay the night at their daughter's place on the reserve. The apartment was disgusting but it was all I could do at least for the night. Then the police showed up because the landlord had seen me go in and I wasn't allowed to stay there. A very nice police officer called emergency housing again and then drove me to the Comfort Inn in Belleville. It was my first decent night.
The next morning two staff from the CMHA picked me up and I did their intake interview. Their only condition was that first I went to the hospital. When I got there my sugars were out of control and I spent the next five days being picked and prodded every hour until my sugars stabilized. Then they took me to a disgusting room at 12 Murney where I had stayed years earlier at 10 Murney. The room had no closet, a broken dresser and a horrible single bed. I wondered how I was going to survive but at least I had a roof over my head and it was better than what I had been going through since i got back to Canada. I was only there a few days when they told me that I was moving to Dunbar, the senior's residence, because some guy living there couldn't handle the stairs. Well, home again, sort of.
Why this website?
This website got its start way back in September of 2008 and I could only have wished that it started many years before. It is a diary of sorts of my life and includes various events, thoughts and photos from my travels.
The primary purpose of this site is for my kids, who have long since abandoned me for reasons I have never understood, and my grandkids, most of which I have never met and they were told that I was dead.
It’s ironic that no one is stronger on the value of family than me and my kids know that. Nothing will fill the emptiness in my heart being separated from my family. I have lost both of my parents and have nothing to do with my own brother and sister, both of whom did horrible things to me, which only serves to make my own kids and grandkids even more important. Every day I pray that any of them will find me and contact me. When my granddaughter, Mackenzie, contacted me on Facebook Messenger i was beyond thrilled, but after discussing meeting when she came to Mexico for a wedding she suddenly stopped talking to me. I have no idea why.
