Afternoon everyone ..
We have all lost someone from our lives. As painful as that loss is, we have to move on. But our memories will last forever.
Today November 9th. is the day my father passed away. It’s been two years now, yet still feels like it just happened.
Aside from the three month struggle my father went through. The entire thing was during the Covid wreaking havoc on the world. My father did not have covid, but the struggles to be able to see him in the hospital were intense. In order for my mother and I to be able to see him, it took me going all the way up to the director of the hospital to allow us visitation.
My father’s body internally was failing, all of his organs were shutting down one by one putting a major strain on his heart and lungs. Afterr a visit from his specialist learning there was zero chance of a recovery, my father in sound mind made the decision to be taken off the machines, and medication keeping him alive in ICU.
I got a call from my mom, at around 8:45am. She was crying hysterically, which I thought my dad had passed away. After a minute or two my mom composed herself to tell me what my dad wanted to do. My mom told me that she was on her way to the hospital to see him, and that he wanted me to go see him at 2:00pm. Because of the covid restrictions only one of us was allowed to see him at one time even with the special approval.
Without going into detail those were the last five hours I had with my dad. He requested me to do certain things, and told me many things that he had never told me before. My dad was a huge Jeopardy fan, Alex Trebek had just passed the day before. My dad asked me to watch Jeopardy with him. Not long into the show my dad said that he was extremely tired and wanted to say goodbye.
That was the hardest day of my life. Knowing that I would never see him again. Even writing this post has been challenging to say the least.
The first anniversary of his passing was extremely hard on my mother. This morning wasn’t great either….
So let’s fast forward….
I have fulfilled most of his requests already, some are still a work in progress.
I am reminded of him daily by many things. One of them is a red maple tree that he planted in our back yard when I was a kid. The tree is a perfect height to be a tree umbrella. My dad would take a lawn chair and place it under the tree every day it was nice during the summer. He would sit there and read the paper, do a crossword puzzle or just relax.
This is the tree.
Some of the kickass members of #silvergoldstackers had a piece of poured silver done by @raybrockman in memory of my dad. I believe it was @summertooth & @dfinney who made it happen. It’s a hand poured home plate for baseball. My dad was a huge baseball fan. I have a shadow box planned for this piece. While it’s all planned out, going through the photos for it has been a challenge still.
This is the magnificent piece in memory of my father. Thank you @summertooth, @dfinney and @raybrockman.
