BC,
Thnak you so much for the information and for sharing your travels.

I thank you also, for sharing your journey with us.

Ah, I forgot how much I used to love living vicariously through fodorites. What a lovely trip (minus the hell part). Good to see you are well bookchick, and thank you for sharing!

Ahhh~ Kathy, you make me smile, then you make me weep. And now you make me long to be in Italy!!
Much love. Scarlett

Just beautiful...

And wonderful that your found some peace in Rome.

Hi bookchick,

Thank you for sharing such a personal account of your travels. Your writing style just reaches out and grabs me, I was utterly transfixed reading your marvelous descriptions. I'm happy to hear you were able to find peace in Rome. Your mother must have been one amazing woman to have raised such a sensitive and kind daughter.

Loved your report. I couldn't make it to Italy this year, but in reading your descriptions I almost feel as if I just returned from a luxurious spa in Capri!

And how wonderful that you were able to experience healing and find some peace.

Kathy, thanks so much for sharing your journey with us.

I laughed, I cried...

Reading your report feels sort of the way that massage must have felt.

Great report bookchick. I lost my mom almost a year ago and have missed her terribly. I decided to spend my first mom-less birthday in Paris which is my happy place. My mom and I had been there together 8 years ago and had so much fun so I thought it would be appropriate to spend my birthday there and think about her. I've also read the Secret Life of Bees and loved it. I found it to be very comforting. I'm so happy for you that you found your trip healing. I'm not there yet but I know I'll find the same peace. I read a book this spring that I found very comforting. Same Sweet Girls by Cassandra King. It is about girlfriends, not mothers and daughters but I liked the message it gives about what happens when you die. Take care.

bookchick: so enjoyed your wonderfully written report. You should write for a travel magazine!!

Thanks again, everyone. I lost my mom in the early morning hours of March 21st of this year. She'd been experiencing some dementia, which was mild to moderate, for the past couple of years prior to her death. For about two days before she died she just felt very tired, and spent a couple of days in bed, but I did become alarmed at one point and called 911 and an ambulance came and took her to the hospital, where she died of a heart attack.

My father died very suddenly in July of 2003 of a heart attack. I saw him early in the morning on the day he died, and received a phone call in my office around lunch time telling me of his death. Ironically, he'd just been to an outpatient visit with his rheumatologist and was on the way to the parking structure in a major university medical center when he collapsed. He was resusitated, rushed to the ER until he could be transferred to the CICU, but had a second heart attack while in the ER and died there.

Despite a tempestuous marriage, they were very good parents, and I learned to love them individually for their very different traits. I was their youngest child, and came along quite a few years after they'd had their first 3 children.

BC

The loss of a parent is always wrenching. My dad took the long, slow Alzheimer's route, which is perhaps sadder than a sudden death. When a person's brain deteriorates from the present backwards, they seem to be displaced from the present to earlier and earlier, so they think the people around them are ones they knew forty or fifty or seventy years ago, and whatever skills they acquired in the interim gradually slough away like the layers of an onion.

In the end, my dad could only speak his native Greek (although he was a fluent and articulate radio announcer in English), he thought I was his father and my children were his brothers, and his bodily needs were those of an infant. After a brief bout with pneumonia, his ordeal ended.

For us, though, he had been dying since five years before, so the loss of his vital signs was almost a relief.

I loved reading your trip report, bookchick. I was in Rome for four days a couple years ago and want to go back. Seems like a lot of people on this board can empathize with you regarding the loss of your mother. I lost my father when I was 21 and 4 months later, my mother died. That was about 35 years ago. There is still a hole in my heart. But the grief gets more bearable as time passes. God Bless You.

Wonderful trip report, Bookchick. Thanks very much for sharing.

Bookchick,

What a wonderful trip report. I was in Capri this year and had a drink at the Quisisana. While I was sipping my wine I wondered what it would be like to stay there for a few days. Now I know. Thank you for the vivid description. I felt like I was there.

Johanna

Thank you bookchick. I loved every word.

Bookchick, thanks for the trulylovely trip report. Made me long for Italy, but I am off on an elderhostel trip to Chile in a couple of weeks. It will be my first trip to South America and I am very excited about it.

Time to try some destinations other than Europe.

Sending your thoughts of
gratitude and comfort.

Kathy, I just read your report about your memorable trip to Bella Italia.. I must compliment you mia cara..Your writing is super, I could actually see and feel everything you described.

Your joy,your mixed emotions and the sadness that you felt when you were thinkings about your late beloved Parents.
I lost mine many years ago but I always feel their presence within me.
So you are going back to my Bella Roma..Lucky lady..
I am going back in June with Brooke, cant wait to see my beloved city.
Take care..