FW: From Jim birthday gift

[http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (Robert)]

 > From: Bhavani <http://www.gmail.com/~bhavaniowl>
 > Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 15:38:02 -0700
 >
 > Today is my sister's birthday. She was always Margaret to me but is now called 
 > Bhavani. I thought I'd share one of the basic stories about my sister, one that 
 > I've told a thousand times but not quite in this way.
 > 
 > The story has to do with the kind of sympathetic and loving relationship that a 
 > father and a daughter can have. Our father was a great guy but one who, by the 
 > time he approached his sixties, was being increasingly overtaken by arthritis, 
 > osteo and rheumatoid. By the time he was the age we are now, he was a cripple. 
 > He moved slowly. He was hunched. He used two canes. But, to me, there was never 
 > a word of complaint. How could a man live like that? One thing that helped him 
 > was the deep love he had for my sister. He loved getting up in the morning and 
 > making breakfast...but he especially liked to cook for Margaret because it 
 > enabled a special kind of conversation, one where he could confess his pain, 
 > for instance.  He once told her that he was sure there was a time when he was 
 > not in pain...he just couldn't remember it. He did it only once. When she told 
 > me, some many years later, I was surprised. He had never said anything like 
 > that to me. I've come to believe that when he said that to her, he knew that he 
 > would be enveloped with a love and warmth from her unavailable anywhere else, a 
 > therapy that could make a man in pain smile and be glad to be 
 > alive...regardless.  What a gift my sister was to him...and to so many others. 
 > 
 > Thanks, Margaret. Thanks, Bhavani.