First, I
want to say that I am honored that my niece, Aleksandra, ask me to represent
her father, my brother, here today.
My brother
Tim died almost 2 years ago in November from something the doctors called
Mantle Cell Lymphoma (they were never sure), but those that knew him well think
that it might have been from a broken heart. Our mother Zelma, with whom he was
very close had died a few years before and his best friend, our sister
Jennifer, had passed away 6 months earlier.
For most of
his life Tim was an outwardly happy person with lots of friends and interests. We
grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park. Later Tim attended Washington
State University where he was the manager of the school football team. From
there he moved to Seattle where he lived for most of his years as an adult. During
his life he held a variety of interesting jobs, from United Airlines Cabin
Attendant to pizza store owner and even as a CPA tax accountant. Through it
all, he always had a “I’ll do it my way” attitude.
For the last
10 years of his life he moved to San Diego, where our sister lived and where
our mother had gone after our father died. In his later years Tim seemed to
shut down and withdraw from old friends and activity. No one was ever sure why.
One thing
that was always a bright spot for Tim was his daughter Sasha. For years every
conversation with him would somehow be turned into something about her. It was
the great lament of his life that she grew up so far from him.
When she was
very young, he worked hard to build and maintain a relationship with her across
the miles. As she got older, he arranged to bring her out to the west coast to
develop connections with the rest of our family in California. Our mother had
an especially close relationship with her.
As Sasha grew
older, she herself initiated many of her own visits. She came to San Diego to
attend significant birthdays and family events. She traveled to Michigan,
sometimes with her father, to meet her Grandmother Mallon’s family there. She
also visited me and her cousin Tim in Boulder, Colorado. Additionally, she, and
for a while now with Alex, has gone up to Massachusetts to spend holidays and
vacations with her cousins, my daughter Kerry’s family. In short, Sasha has put
a great deal of effort into being an active and integrated member of the
extended Mallon family. I sometimes think she has a better grasp on who is
related to whom and how in the family than I do.
Now back to
the present.
Welcome Alex
to the Family Clan, as in marriage, “For Better or for Worse”. Having gotten to
know you, I’m delighted to have you on board.
You have
shared with me that you told Tim, even before you had said it to her, that you
loved Sasha, and that he gave his blessing for your marriage.
I am
confident in sharing with all here, that this would have been the second happiest
day of my brother Tim’s life.
The happiest day was the day that his daughter, Aleksandra, was born.
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