One quick anecdote about my dear cousin Pat and her great family:  when my wife Wendy and I had recently started our own family, Navy orders took me to ships homeported in Long Beach, and we lived in West Garden Grove, and were near-neighbors with Pat, Tony, Anton, and Jenny.  Busy years for us all but many events in our lives shared, especially for Wendy and our girls, as I seem to have been perpetually deployed, and yes as always to the Persian Gulf. Pat, as she had done for me throughout my younger years,  welcomed us into their family’s life, much as service families have done over time. Another great insight for us, which would serve us well in our later life, was understanding her help to her aging parents my Aunt Emily and Uncle Dale, in their own aging – how best to help support people they loved.

When Pat's mother Emily passed, she asked my father to “officiate” in the scattering of her ashes, and I helped him write those comments. It gave her “Uncle John” solace in the passing of his dear sister to help with the ceremony; ironically, I suspect in the same waters that will be home to her and Tony’s earthly remains. 

Later as my father was nearing the end of his life, Pat’s regularly reaching out to him on the phone and in FaceTime proved a real source of joy to her older widowed “Uncle John,” even as his own world became much smaller over time. Pat’s grandmother Ethel Peterson’s “Little Snowflake” my dear cousin, and friend was a godsend to her classic “stoic Swede” uncle, bringing many smiles over a number of years to him, much as she was to so many of us over her storied life.  Similarly ironic was that Pat's death date was also my father's birthdate, albeit some ninety-four years earlier.

From our family of mariners, “fair winds and following seas” to our dear cousin Pat; the lives you've touched and improved along your journey of life are truly legion!

With great fondness, and heartfelt condolences, John & Wendy