Let Heaven and Nature Sing

The past few weeks I have experienced the loss of an extended family member and a lifelong close friend, all while returning for the first week back to school after a summer break. Life and death are both so bittersweet, yet somewhere in the chaos there is an unknown balance that keeps those of us still living moving forward and seeking peace. Life is interesting. Although some are born into families of influence or privilege, you enter this world with nothing except for the environment that surrounds you. You then spend your life on earth chasing dreams and spinning your wheels, acquiring possessions that you can’t take with you when you leave. Funerals are really interesting, especially in small towns. They tend to bring together generations of people experiencing multiple levels of grief and reunite people from all walks of life. The older I get, the more I appreciate where and how I was raised, and even though I found my ticket out of a small town and have a successful career in Ho...

Charles and I spent the last 12 days in Napoli, Italy, with two of our nieces to celebrate their graduations from high school. For the most part, everything went off without a hitch. Despite two flights being cancelled and a couple of minor emergencies, things could have ended up worse. I always enjoy traveling with the younger generation because it’s great to see their vivid reactions to the environment. This was both of my nieces’ first trip to Europe, so like everyone who discovers it for the first time, there was a lot of vivid excitement along the way. We toured Caserta, which is the largest palace in Europe. I had never heard of it, but for Emma this was one of her bucket list items. One of my life goals has been to make it to the Amalfi Coast, and this can now be scratched off my list. We took a full-day tour with a private driver followed by a mountaintop lunch with an amazing panoramic view where we celebrated Cecilia’s birthday. Everything was picture perfect, and at this poi...