My Dad often said:"It takes all kind of people to make a world". Ho hum, we would think, and what is THAT supposed to mean? Thinking back he was probably trying to console himself for having to deal with the more ornery ones, but Dad was no quitter and could be friends with anyone. I was just amazed by the variety of people who turned up at his funeral, all who had come to farewell, "dear old Pat", "me old mate Paddy", the "best neighbour ever", "someone I'll never forget" to quote some of the labels on the flowers.

This reminiscing is brought on by three things, an old friend's serious illness and taking a card around the neighbourhood to get signatures, an answer to a post written by Tom (tdehaas) and the Stroke Ed meeting yesterday.

There are all kinds of people in the my neighbourhood, but few who have been here as long as us, we have been in this house 23 years, but have had it for 37 years. We came here as newly weds, had two out of three of our kids here then went away for 10.5 years because of Ray's job. We came back with teenagers, three instead of two, then had our kids fly the nest and in two cases come back for a while, then off they went again. Ray and I are the "older couple" now, all our neighbours are younger.

There is a couple our age over the road but all the others have young families, a single Dad with one child on one side a single Dad with two down the road, a nice young man who came here "single" and is now "partnered" next door on the other side has two teenaged daughters who come for holiday visits. All different people , all getting on when our courses collide which isn't often.

There are all kinds of people here, caregivers and survivors and family members, extroverts, introverts, aphasic, physically disabled, ones with "invisible deficits". All kinds of people with one thing in common - stroke. But for the rest, it is gloves on and go to your corners somedays, and "I couldn't agree more" others depending on the topic.

Rezdog/Tom's response to Larrys post on casual chit chat SO reminded me of my Dad who would talk to whoever would talk to him. Dad had a slight stroke maybe 25 years before he died, his greatest thanksgiving was for his "full" recovery. He would talk to anyone on any subject, no matter how little he knew about it (did I inherit that, do you reckon?) and so people loved or hated what he said but all of them liked him because he never held a grudge or remembered a slight, held out his hand to all, and a lot of times a helping hand at that. He just LOVED people, chit chat was never casual, reminiscing was great, he always knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who...

And so to the Stroke Ed yesterday, six people who had had strokes with very different deficits, four people who cared for a stroke survivor with very different attitudes. How could life ever be boring when there are so many different people to get to know?