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September 4, 2013
Services
Family and friends are invited to attend memorial services in Roseann’s honor at Vander May Funeral Home, 567 Ratzer Road, Wayne, NJ 07470. Visitation will take place from 2 to 6 PM on Sunday, Sept. 8, and a funeral will be held at 11 AM on Monday, Sept. 9, followed by a repast. Further details may be found at vandermay.com.
Roseann Collins Traynor, 61, of Bloomingdale, passed away peacefully at home after a long and courageous fight against cancer on September 4.
Born in Brooklyn, Roseann grew up in Monroe, NY. She attended Hofstra University, where she met her husband of 42 years, Timothy Traynor. After working as an executive assistant at IBM, Roseann dedicated herself to caring for her family. She loved nature and was a staunch advocate for many causes, especially the environment and equality. Roseann will be remembered by all who knew her as one of the kindest, smartest, funniest, wisest, most loving, generous, and loyal people ever to grace the earth. She spent her life making the lives of those around her much richer, happier, and more beautiful.
Roseann is survived by her adoring husband, Timothy, of Bloomingdale; her devoted children: Jesse Traynor and his fiancée Justyna Krygowska of Highland Lakes, and Michael Traynor of Pompton Plains; her big brother, Roger Collins, and his wife Ellen of Apopka, FL; and several nieces, nephews, cousins, and dear friends. She was predeceased by her parents, Grover and Pearl (Gelfand) Collins; her brother, Bruce Collins; and her daughter, Lindsay Traynor.
In lieu of flowers, donations are welcome in Roseann’s name to the following organizations: (1) Valley Hospice, Dorothy B. Kraft Center – Third Floor, 15 Essex Road, Paramus, NJ 07652; and/or (2) Garden State Equality, 40 S. Fullerton Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07042.
A Reflection About My Mother
with love from her son, Michael Traynor
If I tried to write a traditional, cohesive narrative capturing the entirety of my mom Roseann’s life, our relationship, and what she meant to me, it would be as long as a Russian novel. It’s almost impossible for me, especially in the wake of such a tremendous loss, to articulate everything she has meant to me. What I offer here instead is a loose snapshot, a hodgepodge of memories, stories, and observations that capture a small fraction of who she was and, moreover, who she was to me. If ever you have an entire year free, maybe then I’ll have adequate time to tell you the unabridged story of my mom.
What many of us will remember best about my mom is how silly, witty, and hilarious she was. She was never above being a goof and a total weirdo; it was always ridiculously fun to be around her. Her big, bright smile and her laughter were infectious. Whether she was chasing my brother and me around as The Tickle Monster when we were preschoolers or howling over The Golden Girls a couple months ago, we had nothing short of a great time when we were with her. My mom and I got each other’s humor and silliness perfectly. We would tango around the kitchen to the song “Hernando’s Hideaway.” We’d call each other and spend the first three minutes making progressively funnier sounds into the receiver. Sometimes, even in the middle of a conversation, we would make funny faces at each other from across the room, gradually twisting our faces into weirder contortions, trying to see who would crack first. Even if we were out together in public, she had no qualms about breaking into goofy dances with me or doing what we called “T-Rex Eye,” our absurd rendition of a scene from Jurassic Park. Long after she was diagnosed, she retained her sharp sense of humor, her wit, and her gift of levity, and it got us through some extraordinarily trying times.
As much as my mom enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the city, her heart belonged to the beauty and peace of the country. As a young girl, she was more interested in climbing trees and sleeping with the cats on her family’s farm in Goshen. Through the early years of her marriage, she and my dad would travel to places like Yosemite and the giant redwoods of California, and, as we got older, we accompanied them to dozens of beautiful places, from the White Mountains of New Hampshire to the mesas of Arizona. As soon as the weather warmed up, she would spend her afternoons in the backyard among the flowers, the birds, and the waterfall, or strolling through the quiet gardens at Skylands Manor and Laurelwood Arboretum. I remember how she was the driving force behind the W.A.T.E.R. (Watershed Area Towns for Environmental Responsibility) group, among others, when I was a kid and worked tirelessly to protect our community’s water supply. Once, she called me after midnight when I was in college, and told me she had stood up to a crooked state senator who was preparing to vote against an environmental initiative for his own gain, and she had told his office she was going to the papers unless he agreed to meet her for a tour through the beautiful forests his vote would endanger. “Mom!” I exclaimed. “You just threatened a senator, and now you’re having him meet you alone in the woods?” She laughed fearlessly, “He ought to be more worried about me!” Her deep affection for the natural world was something she passed on to her children. Animals also never stopped being a source of wonder and admiration for her. No matter how many deer or bears she saw moseying through her yard, she beheld them as if for the first time; she treated them with awe, reverence, and respect. When a frog took up residence in her pond, it practically received a hero’s welcome. Her love of animals was such that she shamelessly referred to her children’s pets as her “grand-animals” and got a kick out of sending me Valentine’s Day cards from my cat.
When the chips were down, my mom was always there for the people she loved. Her loyalty was unrivaled. She supported and encouraged us through every challenge, through every heartache, through every uncertainty and fear we ever felt in our lives. She was someone you could always rely on, especially when times were hard. When her best friend Dorothy was diagnosed with lung cancer, my mom devoted herself to her friend, taking her to all of her medical appointments, bringing her meals, and even sleeping over when things got tough toward the end. She nursed Jesse and me through surgeries as adults with the same love and attention as she did when we were sick infants. When I was in college and had my heart broken, I called my mom in tears at four in the morning. Even though I’d woken her from a sound sleep and she must have thought something far more terrible had happened than the end of a turbulent early-twenties romance borne out of bad judgment, she stayed on with me for the better part of an hour, offering endless comfort and sympathy, never platitudes or stock silver linings. A week after that breakup, I had to fly out to Los Angeles to start graduate school, which was decidedly unpleasant timing. Knowing that, my mom decided to meet me out there a few days later. She rented a convertible Mustang and we drove up the Pacific Coast Highway, sneering at ourselves in the rearview as if we were cool, laughing as the wind blew through our hair. We went to museums and amusement parks, walked along the beaches, and had wonderful conversations about life and love in between. It’s one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me. What other mother does that for her son? Flies across the country to make him feel better? This is how unbelievably special and devoted my mother was.
My mom was fiercely protective of her family. She was an otherwise gentle and loving person, but if you messed with her husband or her babies, she was like a blonde, 5’7” Lou Ferrigno. You sometimes hear a person say they would take a bullet for someone they love, and you wonder, “Would they really?” I never had to wonder that with my mom: Throughout our lives, she was our shield. Sometimes literally—my dad could tell you a story about a barroom gig he was playing, when a drunk, crazy dude came slashing toward him with a knife, and my mom took that guy on fearlessly. There was a kid in my first grade class who, by age six, was already a Guinness world record holder for his astonishing acts of douchebaggery. When my mom caught wind that he was picking on me, she did what only pre-2000’s moms could get away with: She marched right up to him outside my elementary school and said, “Hey! If you so much as look at my son the wrong way, I will hang you by your tongue from the tree outside your house.” It made me feel invincible. Whenever I felt scared about anything, she would tell me, “Don’t you worry. They’ll have to get through me first!” And she meant it.
When Jesse and I were kids, my parents called us down to watch the famous episode of Ellen, when the titular character came out. I will never forget my mom turning to us afterward and telling us, “I don’t care if the person you love is white, black, striped, or polka-dotted. I don’t care if the person you love is Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist. I don’t care if the person you love is a woman or a man. All that matters to me is that you are happy and you are safe; the rest is up to you.” How amazing is that? No matter who you were, my mother came to you with love and acceptance in her heart. I am grateful every day that I got to be raised by someone like her, someone who always encouraged us to be ourselves, to love ourselves, to love others, to live without prejudice or hate.
My mother was a firm believer in equality of all kinds. I learned this early on: When I was in elementary school, a car salesman refused to talk to my mom about purchasing a car unless she “came back with her husband,” and she gave such ferocious hell that he probably got transferred to a dealership in Saskatoon. She wore an equality pin the size of a saucer on her winter coat, and she marched with homemade signs calling for us to love our fellow human beings. My mom was unafraid to call out those who advocated injustice and prejudice and support those who fought on behalf of the unrepresented and oppressed. From the time we were young, she encouraged Jesse and me to be people of strong conviction and inspired us to use our voices to defend human rights.
If there is anyone in the world more loving and generous than my mother, I have not come across them yet. She was the most wonderfully affectionate person I’ve ever known. When we were kids, she would kiss the tops of our heads so much that she would say she was “putting dents” in us. Even when we were grown adults, she would gather us in her arms and exclaim, “Come here! I need to put dents in your head!” and kiss us a thousand times. She doled out hugs handsomely, telling us the hugs “recharged her batteries”; we’d look at each other and say, “I need my batteries recharge!,” and that was our way of saying we needed a hug. How could I possibly describe all the ways in which she loved us, besides giving you a rapid-fire list of moments? When I would have an asthma attack as a kid, she’d stay up until daybreak beside me, shoulder to shoulder, and keep me calm by reading books to me. She came to every school play, every spelling bee, every poetry reading, every piano recital, every terrible tee ball game and made us feel like we were superstars. She once drove all the way up to Poughkeepsie to eat a crappy hamburger at the chain restaurant where I worked, just so she could say hi and leave me a $20 tip; she always wanted us to know that we mattered to her. She would argue with us about who loved whom more. If I were away, she would spend a couple nights at my apartment to keep my cat from feeling lonely, and when I’d come home, I’d find my apartment cleaner than when I’d left it and my cupboards fully stocked with food. Whenever we said goodnight or goodbye, she would tell us, “I love you up to the sky, down to the ground, and out into the universe.” In fact, the last words she ever said to us were, “I love you.”
If I have learned any kindness, courage, tenacity, compassion, respect, sacrifice, conviction, patience, fun, and love in this life, it is in large part by my mother’s example. Mom, not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for what you’ve given to me. You were not just my mother; you were my friend. I hope I can be even half the person you were. Thanks for giving me life, and thanks for making it good. I will miss you and love you forever.
Dear Family and Friends,
As you might imagine, I check this web site about my dear wife and partner of nearly 43 years, Roseann Collins Traynor, frequently during each day – for strength to go on, and to read the wonderful comments about her from all of you. They are truly inspiring and heart-warming, and oh-so-true about “Ro.”
As you might imagine, I can barely stop thinking about her during every waking moment. Reading your thoughts and remembrances truly makes me feel a little better – AND validates everything I always knew about my sweet Roseann. She will always be “my girl,” the one who unwittingly “just stopped by” my college dorm room in December of 1970 on her way to dinner with a friend of mine (surely the biggest mistake this friend ever made, as I knew he had “designs” on Ro – sorry, Louie!).
Life for both of us would always be different from the moment we laid eyes on each other. Within only one month we were talking about sharing our lives together. By April of 1971, we became engaged, and we married exactly one year and one week after we had first met. And so began the first of almost 43 years together and being madly in love for all of that time!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write your fond remembrances. I will always treasure your stories about her and the memories which you have shared with us about her. Though none surprises me – as I had the joy and privilege to spend my life with her from the age of only (twelve days from turning) 18 - they all add warmly to the lifetime of exquisite joy and love that we shared for so long.
I realize that this is not supposed to be a web site that promotes any back-and-forth between me and you, but I have no other way to connect with you during this sad time. I hope you will grant me this little bit of space to help me let you know how much your kind words are helping me and my sons, Jesse and Michael, to try and cope with our loss.
The very personal and bracingly honest letter within that I earlier wrote to Roseann was surely written during a window of untold grief on my part, but I do not regret a single word or feeling; indeed, they are all universal truths to me, and I am relieved to have had some venue to let the world know how I was and still am feeling about this incredible woman and person.
Imagine for just a moment the stories I could tell about Ro as her life-partner and the man who was lucky enough to be so loved by her for so long! Some would be touching; some would be heart-breaking; some would be funny; others would be sad; still others would be so personal and private that I would never impugn her dignity nor disrespect her privacy by telling anyone else (they will be mine to deliciously savor for the rest of my days).
I hope that some of us, along with Michael and Jesse, will get to spend some much-desired time together in the near future to share even more wonderful reflections on this remarkable human being – my lovely Roseann.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts. I shall always be grateful for your taking the time to reach out to me and my family at this time of unspeakable grief and sadness. You have given us all an important respite filled with knowing smiles and warm memories of this spectacularly special woman I was so fortunate and so proud to have had as my wife, spouse, lover, partner, confidante, and friend for a beautiful lifetime together.
Aaahhhh…Roseann. I shall always love you with all of my heart. Rest peacefully, baby, until we are once again side-by-side for all of time.
With much love and deep appreciation to you all,
Tim Traynor
If you would like to send a private condolence directly to the family use this condolence section.
Family and friends are invited to attend memorial services in Roseann’s honor at Vander May Funeral Home, 567 Ratzer Road, Wayne, NJ 07470. Visitation will take place from 2 to 6 PM on Sunday, Sept. 8, and a funeral will be held at 11 AM on Monday, Sept. 9, followed by a repast. Further details may be found at vandermay.com.
September 4, 2013
Services
Family and friends are invited to attend memorial services in Roseann’s honor at Vander May Funeral Home, 567 Ratzer Road, Wayne, NJ 07470. Visitation will take place from 2 to 6 PM on Sunday, Sept. 8, and a funeral will be held at 11 AM on Monday, Sept. 9, followed by a repast. Further details may be found at vandermay.com.
Roseann Collins Traynor, 61, of Bloomingdale, passed away peacefully at home after a long and courageous fight against cancer on September 4.
Born in Brooklyn, Roseann grew up in Monroe, NY. She attended Hofstra University, where she met her husband of 42 years, Timothy Traynor. After working as an executive assistant at IBM, Roseann dedicated herself to caring for her family. She loved nature and was a staunch advocate for many causes, especially the environment and equality. Roseann will be remembered by all who knew her as one of the kindest, smartest, funniest, wisest, most loving, generous, and loyal people ever to grace the earth. She spent her life making the lives of those around her much richer, happier, and more beautiful.
Roseann is survived by her adoring husband, Timothy, of Bloomingdale; her devoted children: Jesse Traynor and his fiancée Justyna Krygowska of Highland Lakes, and Michael Traynor of Pompton Plains; her big brother, Roger Collins, and his wife Ellen of Apopka, FL; and several nieces, nephews, cousins, and dear friends. She was predeceased by her parents, Grover and Pearl (Gelfand) Collins; her brother, Bruce Collins; and her daughter, Lindsay Traynor.
In lieu of flowers, donations are welcome in Roseann’s name to the following organizations: (1) Valley Hospice, Dorothy B. Kraft Center – Third Floor, 15 Essex Road, Paramus, NJ 07652; and/or (2) Garden State Equality, 40 S. Fullerton Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07042.
A Reflection About My Mother
with love from her son, Michael Traynor
If I tried to write a traditional, cohesive narrative capturing the entirety of my mom Roseann’s life, our relationship, and what she meant to me, it would be as long as a Russian novel. It’s almost impossible for me, especially in the wake of such a tremendous loss, to articulate everything she has meant to me. What I offer here instead is a loose snapshot, a hodgepodge of memories, stories, and observations that capture a small fraction of who she was and, moreover, who she was to me. If ever you have an entire year free, maybe then I’ll have adequate time to tell you the unabridged story of my mom.
What many of us will remember best about my mom is how silly, witty, and hilarious she was. She was never above being a goof and a total weirdo; it was always ridiculously fun to be around her. Her big, bright smile and her laughter were infectious. Whether she was chasing my brother and me around as The Tickle Monster when we were preschoolers or howling over The Golden Girls a couple months ago, we had nothing short of a great time when we were with her. My mom and I got each other’s humor and silliness perfectly. We would tango around the kitchen to the song “Hernando’s Hideaway.” We’d call each other and spend the first three minutes making progressively funnier sounds into the receiver. Sometimes, even in the middle of a conversation, we would make funny faces at each other from across the room, gradually twisting our faces into weirder contortions, trying to see who would crack first. Even if we were out together in public, she had no qualms about breaking into goofy dances with me or doing what we called “T-Rex Eye,” our absurd rendition of a scene from Jurassic Park. Long after she was diagnosed, she retained her sharp sense of humor, her wit, and her gift of levity, and it got us through some extraordinarily trying times.
As much as my mom enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the city, her heart belonged to the beauty and peace of the country. As a young girl, she was more interested in climbing trees and sleeping with the cats on her family’s farm in Goshen. Through the early years of her marriage, she and my dad would travel to places like Yosemite and the giant redwoods of California, and, as we got older, we accompanied them to dozens of beautiful places, from the White Mountains of New Hampshire to the mesas of Arizona. As soon as the weather warmed up, she would spend her afternoons in the backyard among the flowers, the birds, and the waterfall, or strolling through the quiet gardens at Skylands Manor and Laurelwood Arboretum. I remember how she was the driving force behind the W.A.T.E.R. (Watershed Area Towns for Environmental Responsibility) group, among others, when I was a kid and worked tirelessly to protect our community’s water supply. Once, she called me after midnight when I was in college, and told me she had stood up to a crooked state senator who was preparing to vote against an environmental initiative for his own gain, and she had told his office she was going to the papers unless he agreed to meet her for a tour through the beautiful forests his vote would endanger. “Mom!” I exclaimed. “You just threatened a senator, and now you’re having him meet you alone in the woods?” She laughed fearlessly, “He ought to be more worried about me!” Her deep affection for the natural world was something she passed on to her children. Animals also never stopped being a source of wonder and admiration for her. No matter how many deer or bears she saw moseying through her yard, she beheld them as if for the first time; she treated them with awe, reverence, and respect. When a frog took up residence in her pond, it practically received a hero’s welcome. Her love of animals was such that she shamelessly referred to her children’s pets as her “grand-animals” and got a kick out of sending me Valentine’s Day cards from my cat.
When the chips were down, my mom was always there for the people she loved. Her loyalty was unrivaled. She supported and encouraged us through every challenge, through every heartache, through every uncertainty and fear we ever felt in our lives. She was someone you could always rely on, especially when times were hard. When her best friend Dorothy was diagnosed with lung cancer, my mom devoted herself to her friend, taking her to all of her medical appointments, bringing her meals, and even sleeping over when things got tough toward the end. She nursed Jesse and me through surgeries as adults with the same love and attention as she did when we were sick infants. When I was in college and had my heart broken, I called my mom in tears at four in the morning. Even though I’d woken her from a sound sleep and she must have thought something far more terrible had happened than the end of a turbulent early-twenties romance borne out of bad judgment, she stayed on with me for the better part of an hour, offering endless comfort and sympathy, never platitudes or stock silver linings. A week after that breakup, I had to fly out to Los Angeles to start graduate school, which was decidedly unpleasant timing. Knowing that, my mom decided to meet me out there a few days later. She rented a convertible Mustang and we drove up the Pacific Coast Highway, sneering at ourselves in the rearview as if we were cool, laughing as the wind blew through our hair. We went to museums and amusement parks, walked along the beaches, and had wonderful conversations about life and love in between. It’s one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me. What other mother does that for her son? Flies across the country to make him feel better? This is how unbelievably special and devoted my mother was.
My mom was fiercely protective of her family. She was an otherwise gentle and loving person, but if you messed with her husband or her babies, she was like a blonde, 5’7” Lou Ferrigno. You sometimes hear a person say they would take a bullet for someone they love, and you wonder, “Would they really?” I never had to wonder that with my mom: Throughout our lives, she was our shield. Sometimes literally—my dad could tell you a story about a barroom gig he was playing, when a drunk, crazy dude came slashing toward him with a knife, and my mom took that guy on fearlessly. There was a kid in my first grade class who, by age six, was already a Guinness world record holder for his astonishing acts of douchebaggery. When my mom caught wind that he was picking on me, she did what only pre-2000’s moms could get away with: She marched right up to him outside my elementary school and said, “Hey! If you so much as look at my son the wrong way, I will hang you by your tongue from the tree outside your house.” It made me feel invincible. Whenever I felt scared about anything, she would tell me, “Don’t you worry. They’ll have to get through me first!” And she meant it.
When Jesse and I were kids, my parents called us down to watch the famous episode of Ellen, when the titular character came out. I will never forget my mom turning to us afterward and telling us, “I don’t care if the person you love is white, black, striped, or polka-dotted. I don’t care if the person you love is Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist. I don’t care if the person you love is a woman or a man. All that matters to me is that you are happy and you are safe; the rest is up to you.” How amazing is that? No matter who you were, my mother came to you with love and acceptance in her heart. I am grateful every day that I got to be raised by someone like her, someone who always encouraged us to be ourselves, to love ourselves, to love others, to live without prejudice or hate.
My mother was a firm believer in equality of all kinds. I learned this early on: When I was in elementary school, a car salesman refused to talk to my mom about purchasing a car unless she “came back with her husband,” and she gave such ferocious hell that he probably got transferred to a dealership in Saskatoon. She wore an equality pin the size of a saucer on her winter coat, and she marched with homemade signs calling for us to love our fellow human beings. My mom was unafraid to call out those who advocated injustice and prejudice and support those who fought on behalf of the unrepresented and oppressed. From the time we were young, she encouraged Jesse and me to be people of strong conviction and inspired us to use our voices to defend human rights.
If there is anyone in the world more loving and generous than my mother, I have not come across them yet. She was the most wonderfully affectionate person I’ve ever known. When we were kids, she would kiss the tops of our heads so much that she would say she was “putting dents” in us. Even when we were grown adults, she would gather us in her arms and exclaim, “Come here! I need to put dents in your head!” and kiss us a thousand times. She doled out hugs handsomely, telling us the hugs “recharged her batteries”; we’d look at each other and say, “I need my batteries recharge!,” and that was our way of saying we needed a hug. How could I possibly describe all the ways in which she loved us, besides giving you a rapid-fire list of moments? When I would have an asthma attack as a kid, she’d stay up until daybreak beside me, shoulder to shoulder, and keep me calm by reading books to me. She came to every school play, every spelling bee, every poetry reading, every piano recital, every terrible tee ball game and made us feel like we were superstars. She once drove all the way up to Poughkeepsie to eat a crappy hamburger at the chain restaurant where I worked, just so she could say hi and leave me a $20 tip; she always wanted us to know that we mattered to her. She would argue with us about who loved whom more. If I were away, she would spend a couple nights at my apartment to keep my cat from feeling lonely, and when I’d come home, I’d find my apartment cleaner than when I’d left it and my cupboards fully stocked with food. Whenever we said goodnight or goodbye, she would tell us, “I love you up to the sky, down to the ground, and out into the universe.” In fact, the last words she ever said to us were, “I love you.”
If I have learned any kindness, courage, tenacity, compassion, respect, sacrifice, conviction, patience, fun, and love in this life, it is in large part by my mother’s example. Mom, not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for what you’ve given to me. You were not just my mother; you were my friend. I hope I can be even half the person you were. Thanks for giving me life, and thanks for making it good. I will miss you and love you forever.
Dear Family and Friends,
As you might imagine, I check this web site about my dear wife and partner of nearly 43 years, Roseann Collins Traynor, frequently during each day – for strength to go on, and to read the wonderful comments about her from all of you. They are truly inspiring and heart-warming, and oh-so-true about “Ro.”
As you might imagine, I can barely stop thinking about her during every waking moment. Reading your thoughts and remembrances truly makes me feel a little better – AND validates everything I always knew about my sweet Roseann. She will always be “my girl,” the one who unwittingly “just stopped by” my college dorm room in December of 1970 on her way to dinner with a friend of mine (surely the biggest mistake this friend ever made, as I knew he had “designs” on Ro – sorry, Louie!).
Life for both of us would always be different from the moment we laid eyes on each other. Within only one month we were talking about sharing our lives together. By April of 1971, we became engaged, and we married exactly one year and one week after we had first met. And so began the first of almost 43 years together and being madly in love for all of that time!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write your fond remembrances. I will always treasure your stories about her and the memories which you have shared with us about her. Though none surprises me – as I had the joy and privilege to spend my life with her from the age of only (twelve days from turning) 18 - they all add warmly to the lifetime of exquisite joy and love that we shared for so long.
I realize that this is not supposed to be a web site that promotes any back-and-forth between me and you, but I have no other way to connect with you during this sad time. I hope you will grant me this little bit of space to help me let you know how much your kind words are helping me and my sons, Jesse and Michael, to try and cope with our loss.
The very personal and bracingly honest letter within that I earlier wrote to Roseann was surely written during a window of untold grief on my part, but I do not regret a single word or feeling; indeed, they are all universal truths to me, and I am relieved to have had some venue to let the world know how I was and still am feeling about this incredible woman and person.
Imagine for just a moment the stories I could tell about Ro as her life-partner and the man who was lucky enough to be so loved by her for so long! Some would be touching; some would be heart-breaking; some would be funny; others would be sad; still others would be so personal and private that I would never impugn her dignity nor disrespect her privacy by telling anyone else (they will be mine to deliciously savor for the rest of my days).
I hope that some of us, along with Michael and Jesse, will get to spend some much-desired time together in the near future to share even more wonderful reflections on this remarkable human being – my lovely Roseann.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts. I shall always be grateful for your taking the time to reach out to me and my family at this time of unspeakable grief and sadness. You have given us all an important respite filled with knowing smiles and warm memories of this spectacularly special woman I was so fortunate and so proud to have had as my wife, spouse, lover, partner, confidante, and friend for a beautiful lifetime together.
Aaahhhh…Roseann. I shall always love you with all of my heart. Rest peacefully, baby, until we are once again side-by-side for all of time.
With much love and deep appreciation to you all,
Tim Traynor
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