It’s taken me awhile to pen something…..anything…. about the heart wrenching loss that my family endured last month. At the age of 95 my father died peacefully in his sleep in the very early hours of the day before Thanksgiving. At first I thought there would be so much needed to be written about a long life so well lived by the most important & influential man in my own. Should I begin with the 12 year old boy at the very beginning of the depression? Or should it be stories of the time he spent in Oregon as a 20 something young man working in the CC camps? Maybe his time as an Ordinance Sergeant during WWII or his lifelong career working his way up to Superintendent of Mails in the U.S. Post Office. Certainly I could write about my dad meeting my mom for the very first time & the start of a special relationship that would produce eleven children in the process. I could pick just one of any of those topics & fill page after page with the stories that he told and, from more recent times, the memories that we shared during that life well lived. I could write about the times he & I spent in the last years of his life sipping on a glass of 18 year old Jameson as he talked about years gone by and the people & places that meant most to him. I think if I were to concentrate on any one aspect of his life it would be that one because it was a special time for me. Just me & my dad enjoying each other’s company over a perfect glass of Irish Whiskey.
So yes, writing about any of those things would be pages turning into chapters that would no doubt tell a wonderfully interesting story about a very special man. Instead though, I want to share with you how he left this world. I want to share it because it happened just the way he wanted it to. No hospital room, no wires or life support systems. Just his own bed in his own home covered by the blanket that his own grandmother had woven by hand from the very sheep that she raised on her farm in Canada after arriving there from Ireland. Earlier in the day he enjoyed a little breakfast and then later a bowl of soup before he went into his room to rest. He closed his eyes and opened them again several hours later for the very last time as he gazed around the room where all of his children and most of his grandchildren, along with their husbands & wives and a few of his great-grandchildren had gathered to say their final goodbyes. He closed his eyes again…..and was gone. It was a time of great sadness, but in the days and weeks that followed, as the reality of life …and death set in, I was also comforted in knowing that he drew his last breath how and where he did. He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
