Alonzo Edward "Ed" Cady

Ed Cady was a relative of mine; more precisely my father's cousin's wife. He passed away a week ago. I never knew him well - my father's family is huge and spread out across the US, while I grew up in distant Switzerland - but amongst the many names and faces from my hundred + relatives at family reunions, Ed and Carolyn's were two I could always place. Not least of all because they were always, constantly and without fail smiling.

I just read Ed's obituary and it made me realise how little I knew about him and his wife. Or rather: that I knew nothing about them and their life. This reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a friend of my parents' about the importance of sharing family history. There was quite a backdrop to his particular story, but it did resonate with me.

As mentioned I grew up a fair distance from both of my parents' families, and I knew both my mother and father in a context foreign to that in which they themselves grew up. When my grandmother Anita passed it was the first time I realised how much about her life I would never truly know. I don't feel completely detached from her history, rather I like to think that I am a product of it, mixed with many others. But it's another world I will never truly enter.

Would more stories have made up for that? I don't know, possibly not. I guess there is always a sense of lacking at a time of death, no matter what. On the other hand everything I can learn about her makes me smile. It all fascinates me as something I have only known from fictional stories, and yet here it is real, here it is part of me.

This post has ended up being more depressing that I had meant it to be. Look at it the other way: how wonderful is man's life. How full of joy the every day life we ignore while we live it. How beautiful the life of this man, Ed Cady, as he passed through life day by day, ending each sunset with something more than he had at sunrise.

On April 27th friends and family in Fort Collins, CO, will gather together to celebrate Ed's life. An exercise that should take place every day during life, at the time of death and still every day thereafter.