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Showing posts from November, 2013

~Prepare yourself~ A story of a true American Veteran and Hero

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~Prepare yourself~ A story of a true American Veteran and Hero Every year on Memorial Day and Veteran's Day everyone is sidetracked of the real meaning behind the holiday.  Stores have huge sales to which most people flock, forgetting the real meaning of the day. Every day there are more soldiers injured in war zones. Our Veteran Hospitals often offer care that is less than adequate and quite frankly, we often fall short of taking care of those who put their lives on the line for us. My father served in the Korean War. Many of my relatives served in various wars including the Civil War, World War I & II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and the Gulf War among many others.  Many of them suffered from war related illnesses and injuries. I went to school with Chuck Giza. Chuck is one of those guys that you could always count on. He was always polite and never got caught up in the typical school harassment that most kids fall into. After High School Chuck went into
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No matter what you put in an obituary it never tells the story you want the world to know. Catherine was a mother of four but she was so much more than that. She was like a second mother to me. For the last four years she has lived at Sunrise of Fox Chapel aka Concordia of Fox Chapel. I cannot begin to say enough about the staff there. In the times that we could not be there, the ladies that treated her like family. They laughed with her, listened to her stories and even gave her those extra midnight snacks that she loved so much. They truly took wonderful care of her. For the longest time I spent three days a week helping with her and spending time with her. Sometimes she knew me, sometimes she didn't. As hard as that was, it didn't matter. What I found out through the stages of the disease of Alzheimer's that I would never have known any other way was in many ways a blessing of sorts. I had never really known anything private about her life growing up. Spending tim