Earlier in the summer I stumbled upon a local news article about some mushroom hunters that found remains of a body in a barrel. I was intrigued, but shrugged it off until a few days later I talked to my step-sister who informed me that my family presumed the remains to belong to a former friend of the family’s ex-wife.

This former friend of the family was Tom Tomich. Before he was a friend of the family, he was my step-uncle. My Dad’s ex-wife’s brother. I referred to him as an Uncle and his daughters as my cousins. I’ve spent the night in his house with my cousins, as well as my cousin spent the night with me at my Dad’s place. I knew that Alicia’s mother “left town” and abandoned her daughter. Why would I question that, I was 10 or 11 years old at the time?

Apparently Tom made mention to several people and maybe even members of my family that he killed Lois and put her in a barrel. Since I heard that news, I’ve been waiting and wondering about the testing of the remains. I heard a few weeks later that my ex-cousin provided DNA for comparison. After that point there hadn’t been any news until yesterday, when the remains were confirmed to be Lois Tomich. I hadn’t seen Tom in many years. I know what he looks like and I remember that he always had a slick used-car-salesman attitude and he really wasn’t a very like-able guy…but I didn’t peg him to be a murderer.

Now, I know that it is useless to question the mentality of a man who would strangle his daughter’s mother, but I can’t help to be completely sickened by his utter cowardice. Yesterday, his daughter finds out that her Mother was murdered and today her Father plummets to his death. The least he could have done was face the consequences rather than burden his child with two outrageous and horrible tragedies.

Now they think he might be linked to the disappearance of at least one other woman.

I don’t even know what to say…Alicia and Amanda will be in my thoughts an prayers.

You can spend your whole life building something from nothing
One storm can come and blow it away
Build it anyway

You can chase a dream that seems so out of reach
and you know it might not ever come your way,
but dream it anyway

God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good,
and when I pray..it don’t always turn out like I think it should…
but I do it anyway, I do it anyway

This world’s gone crazy and it’s hard to believe
that tomorrow will be better than today,
believe it anyway

You can love someone with all your heart,
for all the right reasons, and in a moment they can choose to walk away,
love ‘em anyway

God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good,
and when I pray..it don’t always turn out like I think it should…
but I do it anyway, I do it anyway

You can pour your soul out singing a song you believe in,
that tomorrow they’ll forget you ever sang,
sing it anyway….yeah sing it anyway

I’m not sure who wrote the song, but I just saw Martina McBride perform it on the CMA’s.

Words to live by!

As I entered the title for the post, I realized that I must have all ready used this title before, but I’m OK with that. A lot has gone on here lately. My Mom moved out on Wednesday. Not only did she move out, but she moved across the country to the Northern West Coast. I miss her, but it sure is nice to have the house back.

Really, it was pretty easy having her here. She was always busy, so we didn’t see her much. The hardest part would be sharing the bathroom and giving up space that we had used previously. Which is consequently part of what we are enjoying now that she’s gone. We moved our computers into the dining room and soon, we can move them back upstairs. There are a couple shelves in the bathroom that we gave to her that are empty now and I’m planning out how to reorganize in my head. When she moved in, she stored all of her belongings in our basement. It basically consumed the entire basement. As she has planned this move, she went through all of that stuff. She threw a lot of it out. She took some of it with her and what is left is consolidated into one corner of the basement to be taken away by a moving company in December. This has basically given us 3/4 of our basement back and in December, we’ll have the whole basement back. It is quite nice to have the space back.

Just before she left, we took Gabey trick-or-treating for the first time. He wasn’t feeling the greatest, so it was a little difficult…but still pretty fun. Visit Flickr to see the pictures.

I also got some sad new this morning. My aunt passed away last night. I really don’t know the details, nor do I expect to find them out…that is just how my family works, but I’ll be attending her viewing tomorrow. She didn’t want a funeral, so she’ll have a viewing and then she’ll be cremated. I’m not big on funerals, but still it all seems so abrupt. We stopped by my Aunt & Uncle’s home today and I got to see family that I haven’t seen in years. It was kind of nice. Once upon a time, my Dad’s side of the family congregated every Sunday at my Grandma’s house. When she passed away that all came to an end. Everyone went their own direction and we all lost touch. I saw my cousin, Sherry. She is the same age as me and we grew up together. We got in a lot of trouble together and we had a lot of fun together. She was my best friend for a couple of years and then we lost touch, just like everyone. I saw her today and I was shocked to see a 12-year old girl that looked just like my best friend from years and years ago. Her daughter is her spitting image and this was the first time I’ve ever met her. I’m hopeful to see my other cousin, Jeff tomorrow. Strange how one death tore the family apart and another brought them together.

Well, that is about all for now. Since my Mom moved across the country, I’m really going to try and post more often, so she can stay up to date. Wish me luck on that!