Return to Blogging 2022

Bob and I are returning to blogging about our travels after some time away. We returned to house sitting in May of 2021 following the death of my sister from cancer and the easing of COVID restrictions.

The primary purpose of our blogs is to create a repository of memories, so we can recall our experiences at a future point in time, when our recall won’t be the sharpest!! So, if you’d like to follow along, please do so. We’d love to have you.

But before we start that, I want to just share a bit about my only sibling and Bob’s sister-in-law.

Brenda Kay Quade (1967-2021) was an intense, dedicated lawyer, a generous friend, a lover of family, and a self-described nester. She was a devoted mother to Sammy, her Jack Russell, for 18 years. She had a wicked sense of humor and loved to shock people with that humor or a quick change of hair color. She came to live out loud, and she did. She knew exactly who she was when she arrived and blazed the trail she was meant to take.

I miss her every day. Little things like her texting me a funny meme daily or her funny quips and her strength. She battled cancer courageously for 18 months. She ultimately taught how to both live and how to let go of the world when it’s time.

I have gone through everything from survivor’s guilt to questioning the meaning of everything, but have finally settled on that it would dishonor her to not live my life fully. So Bob and are are living out loud in our own way, not through personality so much (well, with Bob, personality too) but in doing out-of-the-ordinary things that fit us.

I would always say “I love you” to Brenda, and she would respond “I love you more.” Say things you want to say now to those that mean the most. That should be one way we all live out loud.