Skip to main content

a tribute

Today, Mom went to the burial of her sister's mother-in-law, Kay. Mom was dressed all in black except for a green and pink scarf, tied on in memory of Kay. Kay was never without her signature color: pink. The attached photo came from her Guest Book. What fond memories I have of Kay and her husband, Herb, who often joined us for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter and hosted Fourth of July parties. Kay would come in with candy canes for all the kids, warmly greeting everyone whom she met.
One Christmas, Herb, knowing I was fascinated by card tricks, laid out 9 playing cards, 3x3. He asked me to point out a card while he was not looking, telling me that he would guess which I had chosen. Though he seemed to mentally strain himself to guess, he never missed. After ten minutes of awe and wonder, he let me in on his trick. Kay was sitting across the room with a newspaper in hand, holding the paper at the point that corresponded to the card I had chosen!
In my "research," I learned that Kay was born in Brooklyn. My boyfriend is moving there this weekend. Perhaps I'll search out the early habitation of Kay! I also came across some "research" that was not decidedly NOT the Kay Kohn in question, unless she moonlighted as an applied physicist.
This wonderful woman will be dearly missed. I look forward to hearing many more reminiscences at her memorial service tomorrow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rare Disease Day 2024

Today's Rare Disease Day. There's sometimes a particular weightiness to life with a rare disease. All the appointments, emergencies, traumas, doctors, therapists, medicines, opinions, schedules and upset schedules. My touchpoint is being mom to my precious girl with Wiedemann-Steiner Syndrome  (WSS). You'd have to spend a day or week shadowing me to know what it's really like. Doesn't that sound alienating? As though you couldn't possibly imagine if you're not living it? Well, maybe. But think about a time of immense grief you've lived through, or a time when your world seemed to be falling apart around you and it felt like everyone else was completely unaffected. I suppose it's a bit like that. You might have thought that those around you couldn't possibly know how that experience felt to you. A couple weeks ago, I started keeping a list of all the extraordinary things that happened in my life due to my daughter's rare disease. I learned a c
1 comment
Read more

Startup Day 676: MVP coming soon

Hunkering down and revisiting user data consumed much of my last hundred-odd days, resulting in a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Simply built using Softr and Airtable (with tons of gratitude for  INVANTI 's support), I'm testing the willingness of Disability Self-advocates and Caregivers to find and write reviews of providers they recommend. Of the 200+ pain points expressed by Empowered Together's community, 88% can be addressed by the online marketplace simulated in our MVP. Users get to recommend respite providers, social activities, and therapists they love. We're testing a shift from Word of Mouth recommendations to tech-enabled referrals and lead gen, leveraging the collective voice and purchasing power of the disability community. This progress energizes me as a founder. This could be the key to unlock support for families affected by disability. My narrative for a startup bootcamp's application summarizes it best: As Empowered Together’s founder, Sarah has a
Post a Comment
Read more

Startup Day 703: MVP live...

It's official, you can visit app.empoweredtogether.us  to see what we've been building! It's been a long journey to get here though this is really just the beginning. Yesterday, I reflected on why I'm doing this ( watch here ). I want to dive a bit deeper around the concept of creating the future I want to live in with my kids. I'm building a marketplace to connect families affected by disability with recommended businesses. I hypothesize that this will increase the rate of excellent customer experiences for People with Disabilities (PwD) -- 80% of their customer experiences are currently FAILURES! I also hypothesize that businesses will see the value in welcome PwD and society will slowly become more inclusive and accessible. Big dreams, I know, but that's the future I'm creating. On the personal side, creating that future would be meaningless to me if my kids and I didn't get to enjoy it together. That means it's equally important for me to engage
Post a Comment
Read more