Self-Knowledge College

I write principally on Self-knowledge (SK) with a chaser of fiction.

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SELF SERIES №2. SELF-KNOWLEDGE: The Key to Your Best Life.
Read my article here: https://frankdaley.medium.com/self-series-2-self-knowledge-the-key-to-your-best-life-e4bcf1f542d7.

SELF SERIES №2. SELF-KNOWLEDGE: The Key to Your Best Life. This is a series on the Self, a series about you.

Today, April 19th, is the second anniversary of my wife, Patti-Anne (Fitzpatrick-Daley)’s death from a sudden, massive brain aneurysm. She was 63 and in perfect health.

They can’t detect brain aneurysms unless with a Cat scan or MRI and what GP is going to just order one of those just because you have a headache?

We were together 35 years, married for 33.

We were happy from the beginning.

The age difference did not matter. She was 19 years younger than I.

She was not phased.

From an actuarial standpoint, it should have been I who died.

But if you think life is fair, you haven’t been paying attention.

She was a loving, beautiful, talented, funny, human being.

She had an astonishing impact on people, all in the same way.

I realized her life purpose after her death.

It was to show people, not tell them (she never did that), that loving people is not difficult.

In fact, it’s easy although not without being susceptible to pain.

Easy in the sense that anyone can do it; difficult in the sense that it opens you to rejection and pain.

Especially if you never know yourself and never stray from it.

Unlike most people who never really know themselves, she knew herself instinctively.

She never doubted it or wavered.

I wondered if she even thought about it related to herself. We discussed self-knowledge a lot, of course, because I help people how to do it professionally: to know themselves. I have written several books on it, but I had nothing to teach her on that subject.

She was sui generis, her own thing, nothing else like her.

I think that was one of the things that connected us so fast and so deeply: we each knew exactly who we were, and we liked, and then loved and accepted each other immediately.

At her funeral, everyone of all ages, from teenagers to seniors said exactly the same thing:

“I loved Patti-Anne.”

You met her and that was it.

She employed no defense mechanisms, no guardrail, no shield; she was just open to life and love.

We were unable to have children, but she helped her sister, Rosemary in Waterloo, with her three boys, her nephews; and helped Adriana and Gilles Roche, our restauranteur friends in Caledon, where we lived for 20 years, with their three children; and was a devoted and mischief-making aunt to her sister Mary Elaine’s three daughters, all of these from their beginnings as infants.

But she didn’t do this only for her family and friends.

When a young couple moved in across the street from us In Waterloo, she astonished the baby’s mother by bringing the infant a mobile to hang over her crib.

She had not met the woman.

She also loved and cherished my daughters, Rachel and Regan, for more than three decades.

Read the rest of my post below.

Second Anniversary of My Wife .Patti-Anne's Death This photo is damaged but it captures the essence of Patti-Anne: her smile, honesty, directness, openness, vivacity, frankness, and beauty. Today,…