You’ve been asking us for the option of creating online tributes in your languages.  You’ve been asking to use the site without having to translate everything from English.  Well we’ve launched our first in a series of international editions today.  nl.Respectance  is online and ready for our Dutch members to use.  We’ve formed some strategic partnerships in the Netherlands and I hope you like the new things you see. 

Please let me know how you like it, and what more we can do for you.  We are listening to you, our members, in setting the future of Respectance.  Have a look and Start nu!

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The grieving period is a sad time whenever a friend or loved one dies.  It is a well 
documented process though, and most people come through the grief in the end.

What must be unbearable though, is when we have a friend or loved one who goes 
missing.  Whether foul play is suspected or not it must be heart wrenching to have to 
live with the hope of life, and the fear of death.

Steve Fossett’s plane was discovered this week, along with some of his personal 
belongings.  So there is closure now for his family.  The sliver of hope that they 
must have clung to has vanished. We have many tributes on Respectance dedicated to 
people who are missing.  I hope they find their closure soon.

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We got the sad news on Saturday that Paul Newman died. One of our members created a beautiful online tribute to his life.

Paul Newman the actor acted with all of the great actors of his generation, playing memorable roles in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and he won an Academy Award for his role in The Colour of Money. He finally retired from acting in May of 2007. He had an incredible life in film and on stage.

Paul Newman was a philanthropist, and feeling that he had so much, he gave back $220 million with his Newman’s Own line, launched in 1982. He donated the money to causes as varied as Little People’s Theatre (handicapped actors) in Toronto, and the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp (ill children). He gave to Universities and relief organizations. He was generous.

Paul Newman the family man, was married to Joanne Woodward for 50 years, and had 6 children and 8 grandchildren.  He lived queitly in Connecticut, far from the trappings of Hollywood.

As Leonardo Dicaprio said, “Paul Newman was a role model”. I have to agree. It seems that so many people are famous for being bad, but so few are famous for being good. Paul was a good man. Join us remembering him.

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How angry must someone be to plan a mass murder? How does the anger become so great that acting on it becomes reality? How can it be that no one, nobody, sees the anger and stops the person? I think that mass murderers are often labelled by society as ’sick’ or ‘phycho’, and let’s face it they must be not quite right. But calling them names after they are dead is a cop out.

The friends and families of these students must be in unmeasurable pain. Their lives scarred forever. Join me in leaving condolences for them. Perhaps in our small way, we can help them.

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Danny listened to his dying wife’s wishes. He took a chance. He is a winner whether he wins X Factor or not. He listened to his heart, honoured his wife, and made his family proud. He touches the lives of everyone who hears his voice with the emotion that rings in it.

Thanks Danny. You did well.

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We have been listening to you, and to your requests for international versions of Respectance. We’ve had thousands and thousands of memorials created in at least a dozen languages in the last year. Many of you have wondered if we’d consider launching sites wholly in other languages.

Well I have great news for you.

As part of the changes Todd alluded to in our last post, we are pleased to announce that we are rolling out Respectance in Polish, German, Dutch, French, and Chinese. We have them up now, but they won’t go live for another couple of weeks when we’ve made sure that everything is working just fine. Marcin, head of IT here assures me it won’t take long now - but I’ve learned to take the word of those IT guys with a grain of salt!

Thanks to all of you for your ongoing support. Make sure you keep checking in regularly for updates and more great news.

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I am travelling down an unfamiliar road these days, it’s not on any GPS that I know of. It’s the trip to the end of life. I am travelling this road beside my friend Heather. I am in awe of her strength, her resolve and her grace. I won’t even try to describe how brave she is, and how easy it is to travel the road with her because of it.

I admire how she is trying to make every living day a memory for her family and friends. I love that she went to Italy for her 25th anniversary with her husband and closest life friends even as she is dependent on a feeding tube and can no longer speak. I love that she spends as much time with her children doing things and creating memories as she can. I especially love that everyone wants to do all of this with her.

We all travel this road at some point in our lives, it’s just that most of us aren’t consciously aware of how few miles we have left on the road. At the end of the road all that anyone has left of us is the memories and material things that we leave behind. The material goods soon wear out. It’s the memories that stay with us, and keep our loved ones alive.

Thank you to my friend Heather for reminding me of all this every time I see you.

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It’s been a great first year for us at Respectance and we’re excited about some of the changes that we’ve introduced. Respectance began as a free site, and it will remain a free site to everyone who wants to create an online tribute.

As Respectance’s popularity grows though, our need for more storage and staff grows as well.  In response to these needs we are going to begin showing ad banners on the site.  Don’t worry though, we’ve been very careful about the ads we are accepting and they will completely fall in line with the respectful nature of the site.

If you would prefer to not see any ads on a tribute that you create, you can actually sponsor a tribute.  Sponsoring a tribute is a wonderful gift to a family. It keeps your loved one’s memory alive forever.  By sponsoring a tribute you ensure the ads are removed. For only $30 a year, you can keep your tribute free of ads and enjoy unlimited photo uploads and storage.

Keep your eye out for this change, and some of the others that we’re rolling out in the near future and as always we want to hear from you.  Let us know what you think, if you like the changes and what more we can do to make Respectance a better place.

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Once again September 11th is upon, and once again my thoughts turn to those people who lost their lives that day.   As the years go on, I can only hope the pain for the families of those who died dulls a bit.  I hope too that the joyful memories are starting to shine through a bit brighter.

September 11th marked the beginning of the War on Terror, and many thousands of lives have been lost since.  A lot of this pain can be traced directly back to the actions of a few people that day.  It’s really stunning when you think of the cascade effect that September 11th has had in changing the world we live in, and changing the lives of so many in the world. 

I’ll be going online and visiting some of the online tributes to those lost. It’s helpful for me to put names and faces to the event to keep it real.   I’ll keep the souls of all the lives lost that day in my prayers.

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I flew home from a holiday this weekend, and sadly remembered that a year ago, while I was flying to San Francisco, my dear Oma died. It was a hard time for me, she and I were particularly close. She was a wonderful woman. It meant a lot to me when my mother made her online tribute that friends and family from all over the world visited and contributed to.

So much has happened in the last year. I think she would have been proud of all I’ve done. She likely would have scolded me for a few things, but that was part of her charm. She expected great things from all of her family.  It was those expectations that formed who we became.

I visited her tribute on Sunday, and it warmed my heart to know that my Mother, and many others in the family came to see her as well. The tribute has provided us with comfort, and has kept her memory alive for my nephews who are too young to really remember her in their lives.

There will also be a special thing happening next weekend. We have a family reunion and my mother has digitized a video interview with my grandmother. We will upload it to her Tribute, one year later. This way the entire family, also her emigrated brothers in Australia will be able to see this lovely interview. Really looking forward to that.

Bless you Oma, we miss you.

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