Reunion, Remembrance & Resilience

Hello everyone, Uncle Marv here, and welcome to my podcast recorded Saturday, May 17th. Hello everyone, here we are, and another week has gone by, and I wanted to just do another quick update, and this past week of course on Sunday was Mother's Day, so I hope that everyone had a great day, and all mothers out there were properly celebrated, and had a great time. For those of you that have kept up with me and my life, of course I did head up to Melbourne to visit with my mom, and we had a nice little visit, got her out of the house, had a nice time there, and that was significant.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute. Some other things that I want to get to is explain to people what has happened in my life, in Kim's life, and on Thursday night I had a quick little satellite Zoom meeting, and we chatted with some friends ahead of our reunion that is coming up next month in June in Satellite Beaks, so those are the things that I want to chat about real quick. But first I wanted to say that one of the reasons I wanted to do this show is I've got a bunch of events coming up over the next couple of months that are going to be times where I sit with people, conferences, the reunion I mentioned, other events, and one of the things that I've had to do a lot is talk about, you know, how things are going, and it was always a question for me is, you know, how much do you share when it comes to grief in the proper context, because a lot of times we'll just kind of gloss over things unless it's a personal friend and we're in a private situation where we can share, and I'm not always in those situations, and I found myself on my IT business podcast Wednesday night sharing with my listeners there about what had happened to our family over the last couple of weeks, and it felt a little weird.

Some of them are personal friends and we do talk about things. We talked about health on that show, and so that got me thinking, man, I really don't share these things a lot. Now, some of you might know that in 2021 my mom got diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and if you don't know what that is, that is a blood disease that, you know, basically attach your plasma cells and makes it to where, you know, those cells become abnormal.

They multiply uncontrollably, crowding out normal blood-forming cells. The infections really get really bad. They affect the bone marrow, causes a lot of pain, fatigue, weakness, kidney dysfunction, so that is what my mom is going through.

And again, that was in 2021. This is a disease where the, you know, the expectancy is, you know, about five years. The median is six, but for the most part, people, to get to the five-year survival rate, it's about 55 to 60 percent.

So we are here at year four. And I mention that because three weekends ago, I was in Tampa doing a customer move, but my mom was in the hospital because she had had some irregular blood pressure, and they sent her there, and there was a couple of scares while she was there. She is fine now, and that is why we were able to celebrate Mother's Day.

And of course, I just lost my train of thought because I didn't write that down as a note. But I wanted to give that update because people, you know, have a tendency to ask me how my mom is doing, and it was tough to kind of explain that situation there. What is making it a little more difficult, and if this is too much information, I apologize, but I think you should know, and I'm trying to say this in a way that I can't say it and I can direct people here to hear the story because I probably won't recount it in the same way and in as much detail when I see people at these conferences or at the reunion.

But that same week that my mom had gone into the hospital, Kim's father had gone into the hospital, and we were both kind of over that weekend dealing with our parents in the hospital, and it's that season of life where most of us that are, or most of you that are friends with me, you know, we're around the same age and we're all at that point in time where we're dealing with caring for our parents, we're dealing with losing our parents, and that's what we ended up dealing with Kim's dad. And we lost him just over a week ago, and it was something that, it's not that it wasn't expected, it just wasn't expected now. So that is a situation that we are going through, and unfortunately I can't really share too much, I've not gotten permission from Kim to share details, that is her story to share, and many of you might be wondering, well Marv, why are you there alone if Kim is going through this? Well, she is in Georgia at the cabin that we talk about a lot, that's where we spend our Christmases, the first part of December with her family, and they have a trip that they have done for the last several years in May, and it's a regularly scheduled trip, it's one that I normally do not attend, and it's a trip where her family, her brother, her sister, her son, her dad, they all fly into Georgia and spend a week at the cabin, this was something that was already planned, and they decided not to make any changes to those plans, and so she is there, I had a bunch of stuff happening with work that I couldn't make those changes to get up there, and this was a trip for them.

So she is there, they are doing their family remembrances, and I am here, and giving my support from afar, but this is of course something that I'm not sure how much I'll share before those conferences or the reunion coming up, but just to give everybody an idea, that's what's happening with us. And it's just, like I said, interesting. Now, this also ties into the satellite Zoom meeting that we had on Thursday, and I want to thank everybody that attended there, and the notable names that people will want to know is that Mr. Satellite Beach was in attendance, Nino was there, Sanchez, Nuvy, my good friend Rebecca Beal Brunette, and Sandy from Orlando all were there, and we had a great time.

We probably spent about an hour and a half just chatting, hanging out, and of course part of that conversation too did revolve around each of us sharing things that we're going through with our family and friends, and it all revolved around these seasons of life, and it was just interesting to share where we all are, and it was good because we could explain our situations amongst friends. It was easy because it was a place where we could be honest, even if it was messy, and you don't always have to have the right words but being simple and honest was something that I appreciated with that. But it was a good time.

So to move off of the grief part of the show, it was very interesting to look back and start talking about stories of how we grew up in Satellite Beach, how we got there. Some of us, you know, we didn't know exactly how we all got to Satellite Beach. Many of you may not remember, the whole reason that I ended up in Satellite Beach was because my dad was in the Air Force, and Patrick Air Force Base, South Housing was literally right next to Satellite High School.

You walked from South Housing through a little, you know, concrete bridge and into, you know, the elementary school, Holland that I went to, Delora, Satellite High School. It was right there. So that's how I ended up in Satellite Beach.

And if my parents had not divorced, I would not have stayed in Satellite Beach. We would have done our move that happened every four years, but my parents divorced and I stayed in Satellite Beach. And it was interesting to hear the stories of people thinking that, you know, I'd always been there.

No. Wasn't always there. And then, of course, hearing stories of people thinking that, well, I'm going to skip that story.

That's probably a little too much information, but it was interesting hearing. It was fun to know that when my parents divorced, when we moved off of South Housing onto Coral Reef Drive, which is Waterway Estates for us, and off of South Patrick Drive, I did not realize how many people lived either on my street or in my neighborhood. It is amazing that all of us were within, you know, one or two years apart, and there was probably like eight or nine people that lived in that little area there.

So it was fun hearing those stories. The one thing that I can share that I thought was very interesting, so, you know, on the Facebook, everybody's sharing pictures of their childhood home either being sold, remodeled, or places where they've gone back to live. When their parents have passed on, they've taken over the house.

I can't do that. And the reason I can't do that is our original house that we moved into when we moved for the Air Force Base, well, that is gone because South Housing for the Air Force Base is no more. That was all sold.

And where my house used to stand and where most of South Housing was, there are new homes built there, and South Housing does not exist as it does today. I think the last time I went up there, there was maybe a couple of buildings still standing from where they haven't started building yet, and those buildings are, I believe, was the firehouse where the Boy Scout troop used to meet. And I believe, I think it was the BX, the exchange of where you could go and purchase some things there.

And maybe the chapel. I don't remember if the chapel is still there or not. But it's funny looking back at the history, and that part of my history is gone, and the house that I grew up on Coral Reef Drive is no longer there.

It was torn down, I don't know, maybe 10, 15 years ago. Whoever purchased that house, apparently our house wasn't good enough, and they tore it down and built this monstrosity. And when I say monstrosity, it's a nice house.

It looks very nice. It's big, but it is not the same as all the other houses around it. All of the other houses are still the original, and I don't know what you call them.

They're not really bungalow-style houses, but they're your typical three-bedroom, two-bath house, single-story, maybe, I don't know, 1,600, 1,700 square feet. Well, this house that they built is probably 2,300 to 2,500 square feet, fills up a lot, and it's huge. So it was interesting going back through there, listening to other people talk about their homes, where they grew up and stuff, and I'm like, yeah, Satellite Beach erased all my history, no more houses and all that stuff.

But anyway, if you are a part of Satellite and missed that, that's just a little bit of what we chatted about. We also talked about the reunion coming up. I did a show a couple of weeks ago and talked about that.

I have a link that I will share again. As far as I know, there are still spaces to attend. Now, I'm not sure about Saturday night, which is going to be the sit-down dinner and all, but of course, Friday night is going to be the big social and really the huge event where we're going to have the classes from 1983 to 1987 hanging out.

And it should be very interesting. I think it's going to be on the outdoor patio. There's going to be some Island Vibes music, which is going to be good.

The DJ that they had at the last reunion was horrible. Cash bar, so you can, of course, hang out there. And it's going to be good.

It's going to be at the Melbourne Beach Hilton, and like I said, I think everything is still available if you want to attend both Friday and Saturday nights. I'll have the links in the show notes that if you need to get more information or if you just simply need to pay. And again, not a big deal.

It's $120 for a weekend to go back and remember friends from the beach. Let's see here. Yeah, Tina and Tina, those are the two you need to chat with and get all that information.

So that's going to do it, folks. I just wanted to do a quick little update. Again, talk about my situation so that hopefully I won't have to do it at these conferences coming up.

I will be in Orlando for a conference the first week in June. I'll be in Denver for a conference there. Then of course, June 19th and 20th, I've got the satellite reunion.

And then I believe I'm off to Chicago, Jersey. I don't know, somewhere. I'll check out my schedule soon.

But that's it, folks. Thank you for hanging out with me on the Uncle Marv podcast. And we'll chat with everybody real soon.

And until then, holla.