Day: March 6, 2019

When I last left you Patrice and I were getting ready to go to dinner at the home of one of my sister-in-law’s friends.

My brother, Stephen, married an Aussie, Fayla, in January 1972 after knowing her only a few months. Obviously a whirlwind courtship like that would be doomed for failure. Fayla and Stephen remained happily married for 44 years. It took Stephen’s death on July 7, 2016 to separate an incredible couple.

When Fayla heard that Patrice and I would be making our first trip to Australia she became very excited and gave us all sorts of recommendations. Her best suggestion was that we get together with some of her friends and relatives. We were picked up at our hotel by Sam whose wife, Samena is a 1st cousin of Fayla. We had to go to pick up Samena so Patrice suggested I sit in the front. I immediately walked around the car to get into the passenger seat. Oops, we are in Australia, the driver sits on the right. I hurried back to the passenger side and got in. Samena must be a small woman because the seat was drawn very far up. I could not figure out how to move up the seat (I claimed to be very smart). I decided the drive couldn’t be too far so I would just deal with the seat as is. We started on our way when

I then knocked my head with the sun visor. I put the sun visor up in it’s stored position only to get hit again. This repeated itself 3 more times before I finally decided the darn thing was broken and I was going to have to just sit with it in my face. The ride to pick up Samena was indeed short and I did survive. Samena was taken aback by how much Stephen and I looked like each other. She told me it was as if she was seeing Stephen again. Except for Stephen being a couple of inches taller that me, we looked very much alike (yes he was an incredibly handsome guy).

Sam and Samena are a very sweet couple. Unfortunately Samena has a significant hearing issue. Many of the things we said were repeated by Sam in a voice more appropriate for a library. Obviously Samena is amazing at reading lips and that is how she heard Sam instead of us. Of course Sam turning his head to repeat our words instead of looking at the road did make me a bit nervous.

Dinner was at the home of Robin and his wife Helen (a childhood friend of Fayla). Also there was another friend, Faye, and her husband Morrie. It was a fantastic night. In addition to a marvelous home-cooked meal we had some wonderful conversations. Of course we talked about Stephen and the tragedy that took him from us. He died from a horrible disease called Creukzfeldt-Jakob Disease. (https://brainfoundation.org.au/disorders/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease/). He was active and enjoying life in April, started having symptoms in May and then died on July 7, 2016. Sounds horrible? Yes, it was.

Much to my surprise I found out that Sam and Robin are both doctors. We discussed the Australian and US health systems. I learned a lot and found it fascinating to hear what they had to say. I very much wanted to continue that conversation but unfortunately that we will have to leave that to another day.

Next up on our agenda is to see some Australian animals. I will check back tomorrow.