Notes From My Easel

Lennie and I shared a beautiful love affair for 996 days and nights from Valentine’s Day 2009, when we met by serendipitous chance on the Internet, to November 7, 2011 when he died in my arms in his beloved Hawai’i. The following is a pictoral history of some of the early photos in the short span of life [...]

Tonight I drove in to Waikiki to have dinner with a friend.  A $30 cabride got us the 10 blocks or so from the Ala Moana Hotel to the Halekulani because the security was so high during APEC (Asian, Pacific Environmental Conference).  The dignitaries are scattered amongst Waikiki’s finest hotels.  Outside the Ala Moana were [...]

It is Friday night as I sit here crying.  I have a flight booked back to Honolulu for tomorrow morning. Lennie was rushed into hospital a few hours ago with a perforated bowel.  The cancer has spread and his vital signs are not good due to the fecal matter that is seeping into his system. [...]

At 4 a.m. I awoke to the sounds of screaming.  There was a doctor and a nurse in our room packing yards of gauze into Lennie’s rectum, trying to stop the bleeding.  The screams were Lennie’s screams as he bit into his pillow, not being able to stand the pain….. Earlier in the day Lennie [...]

We have just arrived back in Hamilton after spending a week in Canandaigua with Lennie’s sister and father.  His 2 daughters and the new baby at 3 months old flew up from Florida to stay with us.  It was a little family reunion that I thought might do Lennie the world of good, just to [...]

It’s strange how life can be going so well and then in the blink of an eye it can change.  Sometimes the change is good like someone coming out of a coma; sometimes it can be unexpected like winning a lottery; and sometimes when all seems to be going well, it can start to slip [...]

The 3 weeks of Hell that I last wrote about have stretched into 5 as Lennie was now in less pain, but too weak to do much of anything in the way of caring for himself.  He has slept a lot which in itself is restorative. Lennie and I arrived back in Mexico on Wednesday [...]

This is just to let everyone know that I have been very, very ill since Christmas.  I am slowly recovering and will give you an update in a couple of days on ‘The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t’  -things could not have got much worse if I had tried.  Lennie is still here and he became [...]

The following is the diet that I have Lennie on.  I had written it up when I left Hawai’i so that both he and his daughter Malia would have a regular routine to follow, making this diet a bit easier to follow. On getting up:  1 glass of water with fresh squeezed lemon.   1/2 [...]