I remember Barry, He was the first few bloggers who became my real friend. Barry too, like me is a bereaved parent. We share something painful, but it changed us.
This bell was given to me by Bernard Bell. Bernard too has passed on, and Bernard was a bereaved parent too. He traveled round the world and perform magic shows for free.
Let the bells ring, I say Hi to Linda,.
So many of our participants are new so I thought that this week I would show and tell you one small bit of our history. For those that have been with us nearly from the beginning will remember this and hope that you add your comments to help round out my story. This is about how we were a group of friends, knowing each other only through blogging and The Friday Shoot-out, but caring about one another regardless.
We, the FSO Gang, got started in the early part of 2009 and one of the original 10 or so, was Barry of An Explorer's View. He quickly became a favorite within our group plus 600 odd followers out in BlogWorld. Almost from the beginning, we knew he had been diagnosed with a rare throat cancer and was battling for his life. His writing brought us in and made us care about his struggle. We got to know his wife Linda, and his special dog, Lindsey. The battle became very personal to us all.
During a post about one of his visits for chemo, he talked about the bell that stood outside of the hospital that was rung by patients in celebration of a completion of another round of Chemo. The idea flew around the globe, at 2 O'clock his local time, he would ring the bell and we, wherever we were, within our own time zone, we would ring a bell with him. Here is my ringing of the bells for Barry.