LA STATE OF MIND

I flew to LA to say final goodbye to my brother Benet who died at an old age. A range of emotion, or absence of emotion at times as I don't seem to have much of it in general.

I have friends who's family are so close, they are each other's best friends. Friends who's families see each other at holidays, mostly weddings and funerals. I belong to the latter category. But no matter what, family is family and it's a good thing.

Then there's friends.

This too is a gift from God. So while in LA, managed to visit with Terry and her husband. We were college friends and memories of our young days are always sweet. We were teens, seems like many moons ago. Nothing seems to change as we chatted except our jeans don't fit as they did before. This too is sad.

Then there's my good friend Jim, who is now a Catholic priest in one of the parishes in LA. It's funny that he speaks to me in Tagalog as many of his congregants are Filipinos.

A beautiful way to end this trip was a visit with the ever famous award winning John Wineglass. We chatted away on a range of subjects from earthshaking sermons of late David Wilkerson, to "Please explain to me Donald Trump" to California taxes.

Red eye and back home.