Dorothy Flies Over Kansas

If I live to be 92 years young, I hope I am as adventurous and free spirited as Dorothy Ellis! 

 

She is fearless!

Dorothy was in hospice care when she told her family that she wanted to fly over her home in Kansas in a powered parachute that she had watched many times in the open sky as she gazed from her window.

Her family and her hospice nurse put their worries about her age and her health aside and to their credit they made Dorothy's wish come true!  I love her reaction at the end of the flight!  Sadly, she died six weeks after flying in her parachute machine but think of the great time she had up there in the bright blue sky. 

Here's the inspiring video her family shot watching her fly on a beautiful sunny day in Kansas!  I first saw this video on the Facebook page of JT Morriss & Son and I'm so happy they shared it with all of us.

So today let's all follow Dorothy and go for broke:

Dream A Little Dream

Here is something to think about ~

You have to speak

 

Your dream out loud.

 

               ~ Kelly Corrigan

To me the importance of this beautiful powerful thought is that when you speak your dream out loud, you start to make it real.  It's the first step in owning your dream and part of owning it is making the dream and all of its possibilities yours so that it can become real. 

 

By talking about your dream out loud, you give your dream a place in your life and it becomes a real part of your life, instead of just a passing thought that sometimes you think about but then it goes away and you continue on and put your energy into other things.

 

One of my dreams for 2014 is to upgrade my kitchen and I think I have finally saved enough money to start this exciting project!

 

 

Everyone has a dream.  It can be big or small; anything that you want it to be.

 

What's yours?

Star Night Star Bright

I am one of those old school people who still have a daily newspapers delivered to my house.  During the work week when I go outside to get the newspaper, it is dark and the moon and the stars are still shining in the sky.

 

It's a great time to collect my thoughts for the day.

 

This morning I took a moment to stand still on the sidewalk, take a deep breath, and say a prayer of gratitude for a new day and whatever it might bring.  As I gazed at the quiet beauty of the moon hanging in the early morning sky and the stars twinkling about it, I was reminded of the saying and unfortunately I don't know who wrote it:

I saw a star slide down the sky,

blind the north as it went by,

too burning and too quick to hold,

too lovely to be bought or sold,

good only to make wishes on

and then forever to be gone.

Safe travels today!!

A Heavenly Summer Wind

Happy Birthday Love today to a Special Person in Heaven.

 

The Birthday Boy was an abrupt-on-the-outside, marshmellow-on-the-inside kind of a guy who was my husband and my friend for 17 years plus.  He was an old school kind of Dad to five talented and fantastic children and took a HUGE amount of pride in his work as an award-winning reporter/writer.


He never forgot his New Jersey roots, having been born and raised in Red Bank, and was a die hard Giants and Yankees fan.  He loved everything about New Jersey: the infamous jokes about exits, the rumble tumble way of life and the edgy personalities of those hailing from the Garden State.

 

In honor of his birthday, I am posting a video of Hoboken's own Frank Sinatra singing one of his favorite songs: The Summer Wind.

Happy Birthday To The O:

Go For It!

Reach out there and go for it! 

 

You have to

 

dream big,

 

wish hard,

 

and chase after your goals,

 

because no one

 

is going to do it for you.

 

             ~ Cee Lo Green

 

 

 

Happy New 2013!!

Happy New Year to you and yours!

I hope you are not feeling too hung over today from the fun you had last night and may your first day of the new year be a harmonious one.

My New Year's Eve last night was a low key one for me: an early dinner with family and then home to try and stay awake to watch the ball drop in New York's Times Square.  I ended up falling asleep on the family room couch way before midnight (no surprise there) but then woke up at midnight because the neighbors were setting off fireworks and yelling, "Happy New Year" out in the street.

 

I looked out the window and watched them and smiled.  I loved the spontaneity and the celebration!

 

A new year had started.  A new year spread before us, fresh with expectations and wishes and time that it is unwritten.

 

I took a deep breath and said a prayer that this would be a year of good health and healing.

 

For those of you who lost a spouse, a child, a relative, a partner, a friend or an acquaintance in 2012, may you move forward into the new year with a sense of resilience and may you bring your memories of your loved one with you.

 

Use those memories to give you strength and let them restore your broken heart.

 

Use those memories as a touchstone and let them remind you that your loved one would want you to return to living your life.  You will never ever forget them, just as I will never forget my husband who died.  Weep for them when you feel sad, but also laugh for them when you remember a funny thing they did or said. 

 

Talk about your loved one and reach out to others.  You may feel alone in your thoughts but you are not.  There is always someone who cares enough about you to sit quietly and listen as you seek to recover and restore your outlook on life.

 

It can be scary, for this healing process is exposing you to a different life, a life with new people, places and possibilities.  But remember you will always have your loved on with you and that person will always be in heart and in your memory.

 

To you my fantastic readers, I wish all of you good health, happiness, love and laughter in the new year and as 2013 unfolds, take your time to find new meaning and new purposes in your wonderful life.

 

Peace Always & Happy New Year!!!!!

 

May 2013 be all that you wish it be!!!

 

 

 

 

Happiness Is A Choice

Dear Readers,

Today's post is a continution of yesterday's chat about life being easier to navigate when you embrace a positive attitude.  As the below story says, happiness is a choice, and you can practice it as much as you want!!

A very good friend sent me this story that was recently published in a British newspaper called The Guardian.  It gently addresses the thoughts of people who know they are at the end of their lives.  The story is timely because it gets right to the core of addressing how we live our lives verses how we wish we had lived our lives.  My friend said she found the story below to be "rather uplifting, because we might still have time to prevent some of our own regrets."  I agree!

True happiness comes from forgetting about yourself and doing something for someone else just because you want to, not because of what you're going to get in return.  You do it just because you know it makes the other person happy. 

I found this philosophy to be true even after my husband died.  Helping my son, a friend or someone at work freed up my mind and let me temporarily think about something else.  Sometimes it was a relief to get out of that heavy cloud of hurt and try to become part of something lighter. 

Focusing on the bad, the ugly and the negative, just puts you in a bad, ugly or negative frame of mind and it's hard to believe that anything constructive will come out of that.  I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did:

Top five regrets of the dying

By Susie Steiner

The Guardian

Wednesday 1 February, 2012

A nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life?

A palliative nurse has recorded the top five regrets of the dying. Photograph: Montgomery Martin/Alamy

There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

What's your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?