At Rest

My wife’s Aunt Negri who was the reason we had to rush home from dinner on Friday is finally at rest. She passed early this morning with her devoted husband and other family members at her side. She fought a gallant battle against a pervasive case of stomach cancer for more than two years after surgeons determined there were no surgical options. She handled this battle with the grace and courage that defined her as a person. She was a lady of deep faith which brought her comfort over the past year in which her family was struck with a number of other tragedies.

Tia Negri(in black) with her Husband and Three of Her Nieces Including my Wife (in Red)
Taken During Our Last Trip to Panama

She was the wife of my mother-in-law’s youngest brother and a true family favorite. The party following my civil marriage ceremony in 1982 took place in her apartment, a memory I will always cherish. Unable to have children of her own she became that “special aunt” for the far flung nieces and nephews who came to cherish spending time with her. Whenever she and my wife started a conversation I knew not to make any plans for the next couple of hours. We were lucky enough to spend some time with her during our last trip to Panama and while we knew this was probably the last time we would see her that wasn’t a cloud over the day. She was every bit the Aunt Negri we all came to know and love. The past couple of months were filled with intense pain. While we will miss her beyond words, she finally is beyond the limitations of her mortal body and partaking of the fruits of a life well lived. Rest in Peace Tia Negri – we will never forget.

Over the past weekend clogged with anniversaries I polished off another book. A surprise arrival on my Kindle momentarily halted with headlong rush through Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder novels. I’ve written before about my stable of favorite authors whose work I always pre-order as soon as they are advertised on Amazon, usually months before they arrive. W.E.B. Griffin is certainly one of those and although he now writes with his son William Butterworth, which has diluted the readability somewhat, I am still unable to avoid checking back in when the latest in one of his many series arrives. It is every bit the same thing as an old friend stopping by for a chat. Such was the case with Deadly Assets, in the Badge of Honor series, featuring the further adventures of Sergeant Matt Payne of Philadelphia’s finest.

The authors take some pretty hard shots at Philadelphia’s corrupt politicians and there wasn’t the same underlying abiding love for the city that marked earlier entries in the series. Payne is shot in the opening scenes of the book and this forces a loyal reader to plow through the book, which are flashbacks of the two days preceding the shooting to learn his fate. Alright, you got me; I was going to rush through it anyways. The book jumps between several plot lines which is problematic for the first half because not enough time was spent developing some of the characters involved. The second half of the book and especially the final scenes were more enjoyable precisely because I finally understood who everybody was.