Portrait Dan Raas

YOUTUBE 3zX51a9ygJY

Life-changing events will happen. Um, uh, what you do with them or about them is shaped by where he came from. And, um, you know, there, there are analogies, but not necessarily direct, uh, a direct line learn to ride that wave, uh, you know, um, There are high points, low points. Uh, remember the good times and try to forget the bad. I am Daniel RAs and I go by Dan. Um, I'm 73 years old and I live in Bellingham, uh, up on Alabama hill. And we've lived in this house since 1991. Uh, and don't have any plans to move, uh, as far as certainly not out of Bellingham at this point, although both our kids who are age 36 and 42, um, live in Seattle and we've all the three of us have been accepted. The idea that, that some point I'll probably move to Seattle. But right now I'm fairly self-sufficient the first, most changed was getting married and then stay married to Debbie for 46 years plus, um, and certainly another change which I'm dealing with at the moment is that Debbie died 10 months ago. So w uh, Uh, and that, uh, that processing that is still a work in progress and will be probably for the next umpteen years. Um, I had a stroke 20 years ago, uh, which, uh, left my right side, uh, at, at the beginning. Totally paralyzed. And I recovered some function, but certainly not as much as I had, um, I was a dancer. Uh, uh, in my youth, uh, and, uh, uh, had trained with a number of folk dancing groups and perform, um, and I enjoyed it a minute and an immense amount. Uh, and, uh, I was also a musician. I played the mandolin, a guitar, um, and I dabbled in a couple of the other instruments. Uh, none of which are. Translatable to being one handed. It was the same body. It just wasn't working as well. Uh, and it wasn't working in the same ways. Uh, and it was a body I could no longer depend on to do things that I couldn't do before. Uh, and it was a body that still was changing. Um, in various ways and still is the physical therapists have a, an expected curve of how you recover from a stroke. It flattens, but doesn't doesn't necessarily stop. Um, uh, until you give up skip Dodson that I was my law partner represented the lemon nation for about 39 years. We're now the elders, we have the institutional memory, uh, and in particular, I met her in, uh, one of their newer lawyers and the fishing case, which started in 1970. Uh, there's a lot of history and a lot of, uh, details in that I'm still quite active with Beth, Beth Israel, synagogue. Diabetes camp heavily involved in building this new synagogue, which took I'm still going on. About 20 years. Debbie, Debbie Ellis said that, um, I always had too much to do. And one of her jobs was ordering that, uh, partially. So she got enough time, but also because, so I didn't go crazy. Daily life has changed a lot. Over the past year. Um, certainly, but keeping in touch with friends and family, uh, that's critical. Um, I was always a social person. I miss that a lot. Um, looking forward to getting together, uh, with everybody, the kids during their college years, the, uh, our relationships change. From mostly being a parent to being a confidant and friend, uh, uh, I talked to them daily. Each of them at this point, it was, you know, once a week or so before, uh, Debbie got really sick. Debbie was a three time cancer survivor and was working on her fourth candidate set of cancer. Absolve. What killed her, but. You know, I, I know a whole lot more about how the body works now than I ever thought I'd want to learn. And that's certainly true, still true. I did that part of my knowledge is as interesting, but you know, on the whole, I'd rather not have it. I can dream. And occasionally of having full use of my body, it's amazing how difficult it is to open an envelope with one. Let alone writing the check, entering it in the check register. Uh, so we had, Debbie had done all that. It takes me about 15 minutes to write one check from our envelope, Todd up when I felt the oldest I've felt when I've seen opportunities that I could do. Uh, and we'll be good at. Knowing that sure I could, but I'm standing in the way of somebody 20 years younger, who could do them just as well, uh, and really needs to flower.