Goodbye To The Patriarch

My dad passed away this morning around 2:00 a.m. The Patriarch of our family--our oldest male--is gone.

My sister called at 6:30 and asked how I was doing. First, a call at 6:30 in the morning is never a good sign. Then for her to start out this phone call with a "how're you going?"... Then she broke the news, which was what I had been expecting but it was still so hard to hear.

As I sit here and type this, crying, I think of what my dad meant to me and how I feel about his death.

I feel a lot of regret--regret that he was such a hard man to know. He didn't show his feelings, didn't seem to take much interest in what was going on in his children's lives. Only once in the six years that I've lived in Arizona had he initiated a phone call to me to see how I was doing. One day out of 2,190. One of my sisters-in-law has often commented how much he missed out on really knowing what interesting and funny people his kids were.

Yet he'd drop everything at a moment's notice and go help someone who needed it.

My brother G and I were planning on flying home on Saturday anyway to spend time with Dad (the plan was to see him before he got worse). But with congestive heart failure, he just didn't hang on long enough. Now we'll be going home on Saturday, but we'll be going to his funeral.

I'm gonna give my mom an extra long hug when I see her while I cry like a baby in her arms.

I'd appreciate any extra positive thoughts and prayers you can send our way.

With all that being said, this will be my last post until I return from Ohio. I'll be checking messages/email, but I won't be blogging again until Sunday December 10th.

See you then.