Last Friday you may have noticed a lack of postings on my part. In general I try to post every week day, but on Friday I had to attend a funeral for my grandmother, Jacqueline Camden. She passed away New Years Eve at the ripe old age of 83. She was sick for quite some time, so it wasn't unexpected, but it was still pretty tough.

All my life I knew her as a caring, loving, and highly intelligent woman with the fire of 10 people inside her. She was small in stature, but her spirit was incredible. My father told me how once a neighbor complained when one of the kids brought home a black friend. Apparently she read her the riot act and told her she had no intentions of raising any racist kids. (In case folks notice - my daughter, Lynn, is named after her, and she was very happy that some Asian blood was getting mixed into the family.)

I want to share one memory I have of her. It isn't important. It isn't "defining" or my precious memory or anything like that at all. It is a fun memory, and one that kept popping up in my head the last few days.

When I was young, I'd visit her and Grandpa during the summer for a good month or so. Every now and then, my grandmother and I would take a trip to the mall. I'd carry with me a pocket full of quarters (anyone else miss going to arcades?) and we would eat at the cafeteria and just talk. We'd then split up. I'd hit the arcade and book stores and she would go her own way, and then we'd meet up again.

As I said - nothing special or deep - just a nice, warm memory of her.

I'm going to do something I don't normally do here - and that's disable comments. I'm OK - as I said, her passing was expected, but as this is a highly personal blog post, I don't really want to discuss it.