Heartbreak

It's been a tough couple weeks.   I've been back and forth between home and my hometown a LOT since the middle of May when Dad had his open heart surgery.  Meri came with me on Fridays.  I worked a lot from the hospital cafeteria and Dad's room in the ICU.

For the record, my house was totally neglected.  Don't come see me for a while!

While the surgery itself was a success, Dad suffered a stroke the next day.



Within 3 days he couldn't talk or move his arm or leg.



It was heartbreaking.



After all of his kids, most grand-kids and his sister came to say say goodbye, a week and a half later, he left us to be with Mom in heaven .  

The funeral was Monday in Nebraska.  Right next to Mom and just across the green where his parents were buried.

On the evening that he passed,  the 25th, Meri and I stayed up til midnight and worked on the lining of his coffin.  Since we had finally accepted the fact that he was not going to make it, we scrambled trying to find navy blue satin or it's equivalent on that Friday night at 8pm.  Did you know that JoAnn's and Hobby Lobby both close at 8pm?  neither did we...  So we checked out Walmart's fabric department.  Meri found some great star fabric and we knew we wanted to incorporate it but nothing else matched it that we could find.

Meri looked through the sheets and found a navy blue king size satiny cotton sheet set. PERFECT!  PLUS we didn't have to gather it by hand all the way around the base of the coffin.

the flounce, I cut off the top of the top sheet and stitched it to the front and top sections of the elastic, stretching it as I sewed.  It made an automatic gathering for that too and was already hemmed as well.
win win!

A sister and niece helped for a while that evening and they ironed and helped staple it in.  Then Meri and I stayed and completed the lid lining.  We couldn't get much further as it was late and she and I had to get a little sleep.  We slept on the floor of a church class room.  Not too comfy, but oh well.

During this week, while I was going through the memory boxes that I've got, I found a book with Mom and Dad's early dating friendship letters.  SO sweet!  Meri read one and busted up.  It was written by Mom and she said, "This country is getting almost as bad as Nebraska." HAHAHA!  I'm going to have to use that sometime, slightly altered of course, for various other things.  But it won Dad's heart, so it's got to be a keeper!

Isn't it sad that for funerals from our generation and definitely the next, the only "love" letters will be Snapchat or Instagram or posts on Facebook?  Kind of hard to show those at a viewing...  

My nephew's slideshow was great!  I want to get a copy of it as there were so many people to hug that I missed some of it.

Also, while going through old photos and seeing a time in Dad's life that I hadn't known, I felt sad that I hadn't known him then.



Also sad that I didn't have a visual of his life then when he told his stories and I wish I could hear them again and capture all the moments. Of course, he was 8 or 17 or 26 at the time of the various stories, but what a vibrant young man.  I see his face in my nephews and hear his voice in my brother.  a bit.

Meri asked for Dad's leather Marine jacket and she got it!  She is so proud of it and yesterday  morning, a man came up behind her at Casey's convenience store saying "Semper Fi!  I am a Marine from 1965!!!"  He took us both by surprise so we didn't have a proper response for him, but Meri has thought about it and has a proper one for the next time someone comments about her jacket.

I'm sure she'll cry every single time.

Also, yesterday morning.  We were told that Dad and the coffin would be at the church 7:30am so Meri and I made sure we were there to hot glue in the final touches.  Dad didn't arrive for almost another hour.  So with the viewing starting at 9am, we finally finished the coffin with 10 minutes to spare.  Siblings and their families started arriving early.  One sister said that I reminded her of Mom.  I quipped, "because of the last minute?"  "yep" she smiled.

Oh well.  Consider this a tribute to her AND Dad.

The funeral was at 11 with a lunch following at the same hall as Mom's funeral.  There were cousins of Mom's that I'd never met before and one that I did many years ago.  Pictures had to taken of everyone and their kid.  or grandkids 

My grandniece, Elsie.  A second later, she'd thrown Meri's bracelet on the floor announcing, UH OH!

That was no accident... But what a cutie!

Here are me and my siblings and our spouses.  My youngest sister wasn't able to stay for the lunch.

and the grand-kids and great grands. Most anyway.

When that wrapped up, I grabbed my tablecloths and table runners, Meri and Maddy started hauling things out to the cars as my drink dispensers got dumped.

I'm so glad Maddy and Matthew could come too!!  They stayed over last night and left about 30 minutes ago.  Still waiting for the Star Trek travel mechanisms to get us to them in a split second instead of 6 hours...

Then friends of a sister stayed behind and cleaned up everything for us.  WHAT a blessing!!!

while we all headed out to Dad's hometown in Nebraska about an hour away.  

Leon had some orange Tic Tacs.  He was handing them out to cousins over a stranger's grave.  He was overheard saying, I hope this guy liked Tic Tacs!

Mom's grave is under their feet.

The service there was very short, but because Dad was a Marine, there were three Marines to see him off.  One with taps and two with the flag.  *sob*  They presented it to my oldest sister, Tammy and she broke down.  Of course we all had already to some extent.  NOT enough kleenex at the cemetery...  Anyone within reach, reached out to touch her shoulders and arms to console her and everyone else sitting down.  I stood behind them with another sister and my brother.

Afterwards, Leon, Maddy, Matthew and I went off to find both sets of my grandparent's graves.  I knew that I still had one grandparent unaccounted for out there but didn't get a chance to ask where he was.  When the grave stone gets installed, we'll have to see if we can find them all when we come to see it.

What a great man.  a great dad.  I'm going to miss him so much.

How I wish to hear this in Dad's deep, partially growly, loving voice, "Hey Valerie, how are you?"

Not good Dad...