Thursday, February 25, 2016
My heart broken from the sadness this brings to Joe's family and friends. He is the NICEST guy I know. Joe and Mike were fortunate to share the past year together doing what they love. Roaming the property, setting up and checking the deer cameras, hunting what they could, cooking with a huge cast iron pan into the wee hours over a crazy stove they made from a 55 gallon drum. Spending a weekend with them up there was certainly entertaining and I couldn't ever seem to get on their eating schedule but we laughed about it every time. A couple of years ago Joe took Mikey up with him to the track to spend the summer and treated him like his own. Even there I couldn't get used to the cooking arrangements! lol
Mike and Joe talked a lot in the car when Mike was driving home from work. Sometimes I would pull up the driveway and Mike was still sitting in the car, after a 2 hour drive home, in the driveway talking and laughing with Joe. I can still hear Joe's laugh coming from the car speaker. Over the past year they talked on the phone making plans to go upstate and what they were going to do at the property so often that I called Joe Mike's other woman! lol
I am overwhelmed with the flood of memories of all the years I know him. From when Lori, Annette, Joe, and Mike were teenagers and I was the little sister in the car when my mom drove them places, to when years later Joe and Annette set Mike and I up that first night and we hung out in Joe's backyard. Our marriages, children, camping, Disney, and even the marriage of his daughter. Time went by so quickly and I didn't realize how much he was in my life and is a part of me.
With all my love- Maureen
