Richard

In the way of blended families, Richard is my cousin. He’s my stepfather’s elder sister’s son, an old-school gentleman with a soft bass voice and a habit of tipping his hat to the ladies and opening doors for them. He grew up in Colorado, came to the Northwest drawn by a love for the rain forest, and worked as an insurance underwriter until his retirement a few years ago. He has had health issues since he was a child, but he met and fell in love with a woman who was a great champion of health and fitness. She helped him manage his health and become as strong and fit as he possibly could. To everyone’s surprise, his wife Kathy developed an illness in November which turned out to be an aggressive cancer. She died in mid-December, leaving Richard not only grieving but also forced to re-imagine his life and decide how to go on, as they had both assumed for many years that he would go first, and he never envisioned a life without Kathy. 


He has decided to move to Florida, to live near his brother in a retirement community, and now he is packing up and preparing to leave the house where he and Kathy lived for many years.