Sad News

Last Friday, I went to the memorial service for my second cousin, Ken, who passed away of cancer at age 63.  At the service I met with his brother Bruce, who I have not seen since I was a school age boy.  It turns out that their mother had just passed away six weeks prior.  Both Ken and his mother had a genetic eye disease that left them with very limited vision, and essentially legally blind.  Ken had a difficult life as his condition really limited his career opportunities.  I understand he was a avid fan of both country music, and sports.  It was requested that those attending his memorial dress casual, preferably in western wear or a sports jersey.  I wore the Renegades jersey from my hockey team.

Then on Saturday, while Anna and I were out at Nordegg, I got a message that my friend Vince had passed away.  Vince was diagnosed with brain cancer earlier this year.  He is the only other original member of the Renegades Hockey Team besides me.  I posted previously on my blog about the team winning the championship this past spring in his honor.  Neither radiation treatment nor chemo-therapy was successful at stopping his brain tumor and eventually he was moved to hospice care.  I visited him a couple of weeks ago and at that point he was still relatively coherent and knew who I was.  We had a good visit and I also got to meet his parents at that time.  Another guy from the team had visited him last week and Vince had deteriorated significantly by then.  He passed away on Saturday morning.

Then on Saturday afternoon I got an e-mail from my long time friend Andy.  Andy has been involved in the Monochrome Guild since I started the group, and was also involved in some other camera clubs prior to that.  His son Matthew passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack last Monday... he was 37 years old.  An autopsy revealed that he had un-diagnosed heart disease.

It seems I will be going to a couple more funerals or memorial services in the coming days......

One of my former team mates shared these photos of Vince, with me and some of our other players.  This was following a championship that our team won back in 2008.