Ellen A. Bowen (Apelgren)

1 Comments

1. Ward Bowen on November 18, 2015 at 12:00 am

   I met Ellen when we were still in high school at a dance at the Greece YMCA on Long Pond Rd in 1969 and it was love at first sight. She was fun, outgoing, and a very happy person, and everyone who knew her immediately took a liking to her. That is when we started our adventure in life together; and we got married in 1972; I began working for Kodak and selling real estate and she started working at Charlotte Appliance. Our first residence was a small cottage on the lake in Hamlin that my parents owned; and we stayed there for a year; and it literally was our honeymoon cottage. After that we got an apartment in Greece; and then expecting our first daughter we decided it was time to look for a house; so also being in real estate; we found a house on Dewey Avenue that was suitable for our new and growing family. In about 2 years we outgrew it with news of our 2nd daughter; and then moved to Long Pond Rd just North of Latta rd. We stayed there for 2 more years and then found a house in Clarkson where we lived for another 24 years and shared the greatest times and memories of our lives together while our family was growing up. There are so many things about Ellen that made her a special person it’s hard to begin… She was loving and caring and giving to others at all times. She loved helping her family and planning family events, and organizing camping trips in the summer, and numerous activities in girl scouts with our daughters and events in our church and many other social and school activities, like swimming, school plays, dancing lessons and soccer for our daughters. She was an excellent cook and loved to bake on the holidays always bringing dozens of trays of cookies to our relatives over Christmas holidays. Things like birthdays and anniversaries, valentines day, Easter, memorial day, forth of July, labor day, halloween, thanksgiving and Christmas were always very important events for us.in our home and we used to have many large family gatherings for these events at our house in Clarkson over the years. Our families suffered many tragic losses on both sides of our families with the deaths of my twin brother and Ellens youngest sister at a very young age, and then many other deaths of close family members over the years too. We unfortunately had some marital problems like many couples often do; and we got legally divorced in 1996. But we never actually were ever apart even after our divorce were we Ellen? We kept on seeing each other and being together because God knew we were always meant to be together and so did we. The greatest tragedy came In May of 1999 when your brain hemorrhage left you paralyzed on your left side and it changed our lives and the lives of everyone near to us forever. Years of recuperation and confinement.to a wheelchair were hard adjustments for Ellen to say the least but you had such a strong will that you recovered everything except your ability to walk. My daughters and I took it upon ourselves to give her the very best care possible and took turns caring for her; with our youngest daughter Caryn and her husband Tom taking on the longest share of that responsibility at their home in Greece. We are a very close knit family; and so we never had a problem taking care of Ellen and minimizing her disability and so she was always a part of all of our families events and activities. She was everything to me; my friend, my wife, my lover, my confidant; my advisor; and so many more things; and I know now that the best and most important thing in my entire life has been taken from me and gone now. You will always be in my heart and a part of me and everything I do; and even though we are no longer together and God has taken you from all of us; I hope and I pray that when my time comes we will again be united through all eternity. Death has only temporarily separated us and as we used to say to each other; ‘forever and always’… I will always love you.
   Ward