Prelude
Michael Kret, Father

We live on a block in Middletown, New Jersey.  It’s really not a block, but that’s what our parents called the streets where we grew up.  So we call it a block.  It’s really a half circle.  We enter on Southview Terrace South and we exit on Southview Terrace North.  About half way up the circle is a big hill.  The kids in the neighborhood love to ride their bikes down the hill.  Going up the hill is another story.  We organize hayrides around the circle on Halloween and once a year we have a big block party when we welcome new neighbors and say goodbye to old.
 
It’s a great neighborhood for raising a family.  People buy houses when their children are young, stay in the neighborhood for 20-30 years and then move on and sell their homes to families that are just starting out.   It’s walking distance from a train station and if you catch the express train you can be in midtown Manhattan in about an hour.   The Jersey Shore is about 15-20 minutes in the opposite direction.



My Dad must have walked around our block a thousand times.  He and Mom lived with us for three years when we first bought the house in 1996.  Mom helped with cooking and cleaning.  Dad was our resident handy man and they both helped us raise our children.  Life was good.  Dad died in 2004 from complications of pneumonia at the age of 75, way too young for a man who kept himself in outstanding physical condition, but then Dad was always an athlete.  He played semi-pro baseball for several years, but for reasons I guess we’ll never fully understand, he abruptly decided to give it all up just 19 games into his final season.  Even Mom never got the full story.  I guess I should be happy. If Dad hadn’t quit baseball I might not be here today. It’s funny how fate sometimes takes precedence over our personal plans and dreams.
 
Actually, what ended Dad’s life prematurely was a traumatic brain injury that led to hydrocephalus, literally meaning water on the brain.  I believe it all started when he took a fall cutting the hedges at our house when we first moved in, but we’ll never really know for sure.  I miss my Dad.
 
Mom lives just four miles from our home.  She and Dad moved out of our house in 1999.  I think the craziness of four kids and several animals finally got to them.  Mom loves to be with her family, to cook, to shop through QVC, and to place a bet now and then, pretty much in that order.  Almost every Friday night she makes Italian gravy, not sauce, and every Sunday afternoon she comes to our house and we eat macaroni, not pasta.  I love my Mom.
 
We have four children; Kevin, Dylan, Megan and Jenny.  My wife Joan and I always wanted a big family, but neither of us expected four beautiful children, two older boys and two younger girls. 



Add to the mix the dogs and the cats and chaos is usually the norm in the Kret house, but somehow we make it all work.
 
About half way up the block, where Southview Terrace South turns into Southview Terrace North there is an eight inch by eight inch square box drawn in fading white paint on the pavement.  The local police put it there to mark the spot.  That’s where Kevin landed when he fell off his skateboard.  He had a scratch on his knee, a scrape on his thigh and a traumatic brain injury that left him unconscious.  No, he wasn’t wearing a helmet.  You might expect this to be an agonizing story about quality of life and the demise of a happy family where tragedy has struck, but it’s not. 
 
It’s a Journey of Hope.