Wed, Oct 17, 2012

When my dad died almost two years ago my life changed dramatically. My parents were four months shy of a seventy year marriage. They had many health problems, but the two together still barely managed to have a somewhat functioning household. But my dads falls were becoming more frequent and he was sleeping most of the night and day. My mom would wake him at 3:00 in the afternoon for their "happy hour." That constituted most of their conversation time. Then my dad died.
My mom was in shock.  We were all in shock.
They lived about 250 miles from us. We (Karen, my wife and Micah, my son) planned to visit them for the weekend. My dad had fallen the morning we left San Antonio to drive to the Texas valley and had to be taken to the hospital. We visited my dad several times that weekend. Sunday noon we left to go back to San Antonio. My dad was in less pain and doing better. As we arrived close to the outskirts of San Antonio my mom called my cell phone to let us know that Dad had died. It was a disbelieving and eerie feeling. My dad had died.
We told my mom we would come back. My brother lived in Houston. I told my mother I would contact him to see if he would come with us. He is a disabled vet. He said his legs were too bad to travel.
We went back down to the valley. I was surprised at what I found. More later