Update

4 minutes • 2010-05-18 | update personal 

It has been more than a month since I last blogged. I started a couple of blog posts, but they are mostly ideas written down than structured posts, hence they are in my draft folder.

Throughout this month and change that I have been absent (I know my favorite readers have missed me - all 5 of you and no mom you are not in that count) many things have happened that made me sit back and reflect on what I have and what I have lost.

Grand Caravan

As any other family living the American Dream, we outgrew our current car capacity and therefore had to purchase a minivan!

We decided to get the Dodge Grand Caravan mostly due to the fact that it looks great and also because we had a Dodge for the past 10 years and the features on it were exactly what we needed. The new vehicle would accommodate easily ourselves, our son Dimosthenis, our 2-year-old Golden Retriever Hairy and our soon to arrive daughter Zoe, with plenty of room for our ‘stuff’ when going on short trips.

So the weekend after we purchased the minivan we decided to drive to Delaware, where my in-laws live to surprise them. They always love it when Dimosthenis visits, so we thought it would be a good idea to spend the weekend there. We woke up relatively early, packed our stuff and were on our way to the beach. It was when we stopped to fill the minivan up when we heard the news.

Jim and Dimos

Jim - my brother-in-law - had passed in his sleep. It was all a bad dream, I did not want to believe it but there was no denying it.

James Ruel Poston died peacefully in his sleep on March 20th. Cause: Heart condition.

We turned back home, let Hairy in the house (our neighbor was going to look after him) and headed straight to Baltimore where Jim’s apartment was. The whole family gathered there, and inevitably we had to deal with the mundane logistics of the situation i.e. moving all of his stuff out of the apartment and cleaning it. It took a great deal of effort To do so and the psychological burden of the event did not help. A few days later, exhausted physically, and psychologically we managed to complete the task.

Jim’s obituary reads:

James Reuel Poston, 40, died Saturday, March 20, 2010, peacefully in his home.

James was born April 11, 1969, in Washington, D.C. to Joy and Phillip Poston. He studied sports broadcast journalism in college – a passion he carried with him throughout his life. Family and friends will always remember his wonderful sense of humor and strong commitment to those he loved.

James is survived by his parents, Joy and Steve Smith and Phillip and Susan Poston; grandmother Mary “YiaYia” Pantazis; his sister Tia and brother-in-law Nikolaos; brothers Jonathan and Peter; sisters Lauren and Abigail; and nephew Dimosthenis.

A funeral service was held Thursday, March 25, at St. George Greek Orthodox Church, 8805 Coastal Highway, Ocean City, Md. Interment was in Bethel Cemetery, Lewes. In lieu of flowers, make donations to the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, ripkenfoundation.org.

Arrangements by Watson Funeral Home, Millsboro.

On Thursday, 25th of March 2010, Jim was buried in Lewes, DE. Family and friends gathered to say goodbye for the last time.

Jim will never be forgotten. His goofiness, smile, kind heart, unconditional love towards his nephew and infinite knowledge about sports will always be the things that defined him.

After the 40-day service following his passing, we started getting ready for a new arrival, our daughter Zoe Dimitra Dimopoulos.

Life

Zoe Dimitra was born at 12:06 on the 3rd of May 2010. She weighed 7lbs 11oz and was 20 inches tall. She came out screaming, but soon was calm and happy in her mother’s hands. Her name means Life in Greek, and it is also the name of my mother-in-law. It is a tradition to name your children with the names of your parents or in-laws.

We decided that she will have a middle name (Greeks rarely have middle names) and it is Dimitra.

The reason we chose this middle name is to honor my recently departed brother-in-law Jim. His Greek name was Dimitris (it translates roughly to James in English) and Dimitra is the female version of that name. James/Dimitris was also my wife’s grandfather (‘pappous’ in Greek), so we thought that it would be nice to remember him this way.

It has been a really rough month and a half, filled with tears, sorrow, tears, joy. Life goes on and Zoe is here with us.

I have started taking the train again to go to work which will give me roughly 3 hours uninterrupted programming and blogging. I will finally be able to continue on some of my projects like the <angular/> bug tracker, a blog based on Google App Engine, Python development and more.

Stay tuned!

  • Nikolaos Dimopoulos

    Boldly goes where no other coder has gone before.... and other ramblings

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