Three Obituaries

It has been a rough week; three people in my 'orbit' have passed away.
Judy was my cousin and classmate in elementary school. She was a beautiful singer. (I still remember singing some difficult parts of the Latin 'Mass of the Angels' with her during morning Mass. The Priest must have approved, as he never critiqued our duets!)
She loved serving as the 'life of the party,' and enjoyed the spotlight.
We'd all look forward to school concert season: the waiting, the hard work at rehearsals and performances, after which she would regale us with an expert performance of HER version of the show. Of course, she played ALL THE PARTS: songs, Highland dances, poems*, recitations … and … the highlight, a 'dead-on' impersonation of Miss A., our Principal, acting as perennial emcee! (Judy's version was usually much better than the real thing!)
*For Miss A., 'poems' were always called 'po-ems.'
Judy died last weekend, in her 60s, of a heart attack, in Ontario.

Sister Katherine was a member of the Sisters of Charity - Halifax.
Telling you that she loved to read is an understatement! She could rightly be described as a 'voracious' reader.
My wife and I would bring her a large shopping bag laden with books one week, only to discover that by the next week she had READ THEM ALL and was waiting for us to replenish her supply! We also were aware that other folks brought her books, too, and that she was one of the most active patrons of the local public library!
She always enjoyed discussing her latest reads and asking what you were reading.
She had worked as a teacher for half a century!
She died this week, at 97.

Steve Jobs -- I'm sure you've heard -- is being described as a 'genius,' a 'visionary,' an inventor-entrepreneur on the same scale as Edison, Henry Ford and Walt Disney.
From the Apple IIe, to the original 'Macintosh,' through to the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, he made computers fun to use.
My wife and I are both 'Mac people' as the result of working in our respective special education classrooms with various models of the Apple and the Macintosh. We could depend on them to carry out what we wanted, every component was integrated, and we didn't have to wait for the 'hourglass' to get the next step done, or devise complex 'workarounds' to do an assignment.
They were simply so much easier to use than any PC machine we ever worked on.
Jobs deserves all of the accolades that are being offered; his legacy will live on brightly through the ages.
He died this week of pancreatic cancer, at 56.

To show his philosophy, I offer an excerpt from a university commencement address, delivered during his first bout with pancreatic cancer:
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. - Steve Jobs - 1955-2011

This essay was proudly written on our new iMac.