Category Archives: family

70

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We celebrated my mom’s 70th birthday this weekend. If my dad was still alive, we would have celebrated his 66th last week.

I just got home from a long weekend with my mom and family in a small artist community in the middle of nowhere Texas. When I hugged my mom goodbye, I had a terrible sense of foreboding. I had a flash that I wouldn’t see her again and that frightened me. I will be an orphan when that day arrives.

It is inevitable that parents die. But it wasn’t until that moment that I realized how quickly finite our relationships are with them. My grandpa (dad’s dad) when asked what he thought when he looked back over his long life said, “I never realized it would go by so quickly.”

My mom and I have always had a tenuous relationship, but we have also always had a strong bond. She isn’t very demonstrative, but I know that she loves me deeply. So did my dad. I can’t imagine a world without that love existing for me. Some of it is already lost.

The present has a way of moving quickly into the past like lines on the road seen through the car back window. I never realized it would go by so quickly.

Mom, happy birthday.
I love you.

Sept. 11, 2012

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Here is the script of the radio show “Connections”, hosted by my dad, the late Terry Roberts. This broadcast aired Sept. 17, 2001 on WTBQ in Warwick, NY, his first show after the 9/11 attacks.

http://terryworks.org/2010/05/07/terrorism/

My pop always closed his show with:
“Nothing gets in and nothing gets out of a closed mind or a closed heart”

“Some of the things that I learned from my dad”

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My dad wrote this for his pop Father’s Day 1988
I came across the letter a couple of days ago.
Some good advice here.

  • Common Sense
  • Life is simpler than it appears to be
  • One can live an honest life
  • Don’t look back
  • Have faith
  • Wash the windows, check the oil, the battery, the radiator, and the tires.
          Give service
  • Don’t hit your little brother
  • Hard work is worth it
  • Don’t look down on others … and who am I to judge?
  • One does not need to make a lot of noise
  • Listen to your mother
  • Picking fights with people bigger than you is usually a stupid thing to do
  • One can be at peace in mind and in heart
  • Think! and too much thinking causes problems!
  • Take care of your family
  • Live your own life
  • Don’t worry too much
  • The point of fishing, the joy of it, has nothing to do with how many fish you catch. It has nothing to do with catching fish at all.

    • For Fathers Day 1988
    with love,
    your son