New York

This weekend was a mixture of sadness, memories, family and stories. There are so many things I am amazed at. The more than kind gestures of family friends who took us in and fed us, laughed with us and told great stories. There are the parties and dinners family and friends put on for the relatives. There is the effort everyone made to get here from all parts of the country. There are the hugs and touches people gave to one another when we cried thinking of our love and how much we are going to miss Ralph Sr. There was the strength I saw in my family who bravely organized this while sorting through their own grief. Then there was the smiling faces of all of us coming together meeting and catching up. I was able to experience NY food for the first time too, and good thing I don't live here or I would be in trouble trying to resist everything. I feel continually lucky for the family I married into, and now I am sad to go home, feeling at a loss for words for how family can transform a person who had almost no family before, into the luckiest girl in the world.