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How can I begin to explain how incredibly difficult it is without you. The reality I wrestle with continually is only tempered by the demands and activities of obligations. They are momentary distractions. Occasionally, enough of them are strung together so that the moments almost feel “normal”. Yet when the wind dies down, the sailboat does fall over. Usually right on top of me. I bought a travel case for the Canon photo printer. It seemed like a good idea. As I was emptying the box to put what was important in the new case - there was a photo I had taken of one of our moments with Darrell at Chili’s. I don’t know why the picture of you pierced my heart. I have seen others, I just wrote an article with your photo on it. This one though invoked the full fury of your absence. It sucked me back in time - I did not want to go there - but back I went. That airlock to the past I thought was so secure just opened and sucked me out into the emptiness. As usual I had a perception that I was doing “quite well”. I should know better. Today at church I was speaking with a few I had not really talked with for a while. They do know of my situation - but I know - just as I did when I was in their shoes - they have no idea what is under the pleasant exterior I am projecting. I often want to scream that although I may look ok - I’m not but I don’t want to upset all of you with the truth. The conundrum that all of us in grief face. Don’t think I am “moving on” just because I’m not a visible mess. I’m an invisible mess - to them at least. Perhaps that is their blessing not to see it. I just mumble to myself - how can this be one year? And then agree that I am officially floating just above whatever life is suppose to be. I’m not a participant at all - just an observer. A disinterested one at that. The Hamblets invited me along with Jim and Faith to their home once again September 5th. It was such a wonderful time. A totally different environment that is a welcome change from the present. I finally took the next set of clothes to MCEF. The timing was right as it was the first Sunday of the month they accept donations. They took the important things - a few things I wasn’t sure but they didn’t take those. I so despise throwing things away - but it looks like I might have to. I will now continue the gathering. I have pulled a few items out just to have them. I need a few remnants while I am still here. Yet for all my wrangling I have settled - after the two very contentious weeks after the return from the beach - on my original observation from when this all started. God wants me here for something. You are waiting your next moment - that 1 Thessalonians 4:16 moment. I must take on the mission I have here as my part. I don’t actually rejoice in this - but rather feel that you not being here for the pathetic world situation is a blessing. I would rather suffer than have you. You are ready - I will see you again. I know exactly what my first words to you will be when I see you again. A true cosmic joke spanning two realities in a sense - no make it a cosmic irony. And yet I know He will be helping me soon. I just know it with all my heart. His glimpses into what could be very poignant and encouraging. The appetizers of the coming new life. My continual prayer is that I want to be ready for that thread to begin. I know it will. And although I am exceedingly grateful to be blessed with our home and resources - the loss of the intimate - the closeness - the feminine perspective is just too much for me to bear. I exist without all of that - but only for a short time. It’s like holding your breath. You can do it - for a short time. But eventually come back gasping for air. I end up gasping for something that I cannot supply - until God picks me up and settles me as the waves of emptiness pass. The orderly analyst fully understanding that if something new is poured into this vast emptiness - this unresolvable logic problem I have will have to step aside for whatever new reality is introduced by its presence. Displaced for that new connection. Since He wants me here I keep reminding Him (but this is just for my benefit actually) that He will be bringing me the ability to have that connection. I just am not that personality that can really blast through all of this. No - I will need help, down here - for that to happen. For now a stalemate for me - with the emphasis on the stale. I know what you would tell me - to not worry about you. To trust in Christ (I do) and go forward in His plan. That is what I am doing. I tell God He has to fight my battles - the latest one I asked for today was to help me be strong in your memory. That, just as I have been praying from the beginning, my grief is turned into strength. I am reading your notebooks - actually my plan is to read everything you have ever written down on all of the little scrap papers, notebooks - everything. All of your emphasis and notes are little glimmers of you. And when the thought first struck me - and it almost literally struck me down - that all of your notes you ever wrote have turned out to be for me in this new reality. That was a breathtaking moment to realize your work had another purpose. So I read them in the morning, before bed. You leading me through God’s word. I could not have a better guide. Every underline, every highlight, every special notation a bit of you that brings me comfort. You prepared me for this and now comfort me as I go on without you.

What is Facing Grief - The Podcast? It is a unique story told through weekly episodes that recorded the journey as it happened. Sadness, pain, revelations, love and so much more. Starting August 12, 2020 join us for this weekly look at living in the state of grief - from one who has lived there. Next Episode - August 12, 2020 / "The First Episode"

In some cases we may face more than we can comprehend in our grief journey. Beyond the immediate loss and aftermath - there can be other losses that we did not realize at first. In today’s episode, the author reflects on several additional reasons he came to see his grief journey would be particularly difficult. From Volume 1, “The First Thirty Days” - Day 24 - Essay #21 - “The Perfect Storm”

We face the strongest emotions we have ever encountered in grief. Our loss is often too much for us to comprehend. Amidst this reality there is something we can do to help others know of why our loss is so great. In today’s episode we will learn that as we mourn the loss of the most precious relationship in our lives - there is yet another dimension that we need to embrace. A dimension that often goes unnoticed - but when realized and fulfilled will be one of the greatest ways to share the story of the incredible connection that is at the core of your grief journey. A way to take that precious part of your heart - and share it with all of those you love. From Volume 6, “Parting” - Day 171 - Essay #13 - “Legacy”

In the essay “Lessons from the Clothes” (Volume 8 - Essay #16) came an unsettling fact as to why this exercise in living in this strange new world is so difficult and occasionally traumatic. It is difficult and traumatic because - at its core - the exercise is part of dismantling a life. Of course, I never saw it that way - we really do not have this perspective. And even though we do not have this perspective - the reality is that death brings this unexpected truth to those who are left behind. It is one of the reasons - among so many others - that the effect of a death is so varied among the participants. This is one of the factors that instills either guilt - in varying degrees - or ambivalence to the event. Distance being one of the greatest factors in the effect. The farther away - either physically or emotionally to the moment - and the person - the less impact you personally feel. In a sense it has to be that way. We would be all overloaded if we felt each death in its full fury. Yet sensitivity and empathy are also necessary to those in the outer ring. Where the life - now ended - directly impacts you will be where that life intersected with yours. Where the mechanics of life meshed and connected. In these areas the intensity and impact - the loss of that life - are profound and disrupting. In all the ways the loss manifests itself we are touched. We feel the loss of the interactions, both good and not so good - since that is just a part of the realities of life. But the core of the person - and how that core touched yours - brings with that proximity - a new level of the impact of the loss and with that level are the most difficult and intimate moments of loss. We have the memories - the ways in which we interacted - the emotions underneath all of that - we feel the loss - the emptiness and void that is now part of our damaged reality. But what we really are living through is the dismantling of our very being as it struggles to cope with losing connections and interactions so crucial to how it operated for so many years and decades. This unraveling is what I constantly struggle with. It is independent of our “operational life” as I like to call it. We will appear “fine” to the observers. You know the observation because we have all made it, “Oh, look at how well they are doing.” And in the pure mechanics of life that is certainly a correct perspective in one sense. Yet to us who have the ongoing struggle with the loss - each day is yet another episode of the dismantling process. Since it is predominately an emotional process - the times at which the dismantling becomes apparent are surprising and unexpected. Our lives are so much more complicated than we realize. On the surface our lives can appear very simple. Life does have those elements. Elements which we all experience since all of us humans do operate the same basic way. But then our personalities, perspectives and life experiences come together to make us amazingly unique when compared to each other. It is in all of that uniqueness that our encounters with the dismantling process become prominent - in so many different ways - in our lives. For the loss of a spouse or a close family member with which we were deeply joined - those moments - the Bible calls them “the sting of death” can be striking in their appearance. In those moments shining the light of reality where we would rather not have it shine. It reveals something we know yet do want to really be reminded of. The dismantling reveals endless facets of the loss. It is a poor analogy really but fitting in a way - those moments are like the seasoning on food. The seasoning is not the main course - but adds to the flavor and texture of the meal. Those dismantling moments then, are the “seasoning” of grief. Not the main course - but a continual dose of bitter emotional moments that highlight the reality we so wish to not recognize. As in any list of tasks of human activity - there is an end to that list. We do arrive at the final item, that final bullet point. We do run out of tasks at some point that were on our list. And in this dismantling as well, we will run out of parts eventually. This is perhaps that point of “closure” or “moving on” for which I have such a strong semantic disdain. Perhaps because the terms are bandied about as so many trite cliches. When in reality - those observations do acknowledge the end of the dismantling process. Yet it is a very personal and intimate experience that is not really honored by the trite and superficial. Another strange loss - since at that point we would only have to start over and yet as much as we hold on to what is gone - it is gone. And at some point, the scales will fall off of our eyes as we reflect what happened so many days, weeks, months and years before. The loss that occurred but could never be a part of us - at that time. Its day will arrive. That day in which we emerge from where we have existed. We have existed in a way with them with us - with us as each component, each memory of them presented themselves to us for our review - and in the larger sense - to dismantle that element from ourselves. Each memory presented for our recollection. And for our final moments with each amazing part of what that memory represented - and how it meant so much to us. Our spirits flavored with the immense impact of their lives, their love - always with us - actually now a part of our very being. Yet with the reality of the dismantling of their lives now complete. Something real, something necessary. Something we have to live through. And through the tears, those moments where the loss engulfs us - they are with us as they leave their emphasis on the life we now live - without them. Each precious moment of touching them once again - touching them again as we treasure what each moment represented. And say our goodbyes to each. For now.

Featured on "Facing Grief - The Podcast" August 26, 2020. Click this link to go to the Podcast. Written Monday, November 18, 2019 / Day 98 / Late Morning Usually neutrality is sort of boring. After all it represents - well, nothing at all. That is why It is so of boring. It is neither one way or the other - it is in the middle. Firmly in the middle with nary a trace of either side that it could be. Think of the space between the double yellow lines on the roadway. That’s the proverbial “middle of the road”. Being neutral is like that. In the state of grief though, neutrally is really something. I never really caught this until I experienced it. You can act like you are scared - as actors try to do - or you could actually be facing a life threatening situation and really be scared. In the state of grief we are dealing with real and powerful forces. They manifest themselves in the most extreme emotions you have ever experienced in your life. Yes, and I mean ever. It is the difference between acting scared and being scared. Once inside - you see that a lot of your prior emotions while powerful in their own way, powerful in the extreme situations you may have faced in your prior life - are no match for what you now experience in the world of grief. Intensity on a scale you never dreamed of. And really, how could you? In those days we reacted that way but as normal humans. In grief you are in a different place. A place where your world is magnified - and not in a good way. No the superlatives of good do not apply in grief. There is no good there. There is no love, joy, peace - nothing of good report. The closest we get to good in grief - is neutral. For you see, in the state of grief any cessation of the intensity, despair, loneliness, emptiness - any relief from it - that relief is a welcome change. A refreshing change. Because the atmosphere becomes calm. Not because the storm has passed but because there is a lull in the storm. And that lull - is neutrality. I first experienced it after a period of extreme intensity. Intensity is what we normally experience and that’s really saying a lot. Intensity of anything is an experience. In the state of grief, however, extreme intensity is normal. After that period of intensity I felt strange. Strange because there had been a constant and unyielding undercurrent of all that grief has to offer. It’s like that all hits radio station - but it is grief that is picking the songs - and they are all downers. It was such a strange feeling - to actually have no feeling. What was this? I mused. This is certainly not normal because there is always something playing. But right now - for the moment - there is nothing. Wow. Welcome to neutrality. And boy, was nothing ever more welcome. It was an oasis in the desert of painful emotions. A rest area on the highway to despair. It was refreshing. Dare I say - almost positive. But it wasn’t - it was just neutral. And that is fine for now. In recent weeks I have experienced a discernible reduction in the intensity of my grief sessions. They do not grip me like a dog playing with its stuffed toy anymore. They bite for sure - and all the accompanying worst that grief can offer is still present. But it’s just not a pot at full boil lately. It’s a slow simmer with an occasional uptick in intensity. That is a welcome change. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to inch past neutrality at some future point. Stick my toe into the other side. I can dream. Dream that one day neutrality will just be a waypoint as I emerge in the future that is awaiting me.

In this thirteenth month the questions continue to outnumber answers. Faith has been a constant throughout each month and the evidence of God’s hand has been revealed in so many situations where there could be no other catalyst or reason that was clearly apparent. Having returned from one week on the beach two days past - the reentry into my shell of a life - much more difficult than I could have ever anticipated. That has also been a constant - the unanticipated emergence of awfulness when it is least expected. Looking back over a week of watching the waves come in - those memories are a stark reminder of how life has been. A calm backdrop, suddenly swelling to a point where a powerful crest is created which then comes crashing down on itself in an explosion of energy splattering the water in every direction. Looking back while navigating the emotional terrain of grief - this is a fitting analogy to how the days, weeks and months have unfolded. Among those waves - echos of my former life awaiting my return along with the artifacts of that life now one year and two weeks past that bitter anniversary. Emptiness has facets just as a diamond possesses. You believe you observe the beauty the diamond you see in front of you - yet turn it slightly and there revealed is yet another view of what you had just been looking at. It is the same - yet different. And so it goes - with each succeeding turn revealing more beauty in the light. Emptiness seems quite well defined. It is void of anything. Yet that emptiness does turn to reveal yet more of the same. There is no escape from it - other than the arrival of a new element that would displace its presence. For me - the miracle of March, 2020 - releasing me from that untenable place - that vacuum of a life I had been trapped in - to deposit me in the land of emptiness. A matter of degrees really - yet emptiness being much more palatable than the stark vacuum of what life had been previously. In the physical things - the “administrative life” that I now lead - being more than enough to keep my activity going. Although along with that activity - nothing really satisfying in the physical realm - nothing of the immeasurable value of what was before. Endless lessons have been observed along the way - revelations of my own weakness and God’s abundant grace. Visions of an unimaginable future that awaits just ahead - just past this most hollow of realities. Some lessons I have been blessed to receive - lessons shining a light on what could be ahead. A “sampler” of various situations that on their own, quite innocent. Yet little shafts of light illuminating my spirit with points of what could be - when, as I keep thinking, “I am ready”. In the reactor room of what hurts the most - that loss of the precious connection. The longing for its restoration - that futile longing that goes unfulfilled and can never be in this life. The message to me - from the beginning - has been that I am the recipient of a new life. Right now, a desolate, hostile and foreboding place - yet with the sign out in front declaring “something new coming”. The sign not being any comfort as the conditions look far from ready for anything new to be available. In the lessons of the past months - there have been examples and reassurances that when something could happen - my complicated analytical perspective is no match for God’s elegant, simple and unexpected way of changing something - “in a twinkling of an eye”. Not only the moment believers relish based on the scripture I hold on to in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 but also a subtle reminder that change and new blessings can be immediate. When change will appear - it will appear. And I will know it. The message a simple one. One which we all do know. Focus on not focusing on what you want. In God’s realm - giving and gratitude being the tools to pull our hopelessness out of our focus and replace it with the satisfaction of helping and giving. I have been so blessed in this place I am now in. Damaged and in need of rehabilitation from the devastation yet knowing that the great healer is working that great healing as only He can. And in that healing - the threshold of the future awaits. Perhaps at some point the scales will fall off my eyes and I will see that I am already there. It is hard to say - I am the least likely person to know about myself. But that is okay. I no longer fight my battles. I have learned to turn the wheel over to the One who can. And does. In all that has taken place in this past year I realize I have done nothing. He has done everything. My only job has been to hold on. Hold on to the One who can do what I could never accomplish - or envision. And hold on I will continue to do. Because that coming new life is already here. I just have to have the eyes to see it. The heart to accept it. And the faith to know that I do not need to know what is coming. Only that it is coming. Of that - I am sure.

Featured on "Facing Grief - The Podcast" August 19, 2020. Click this link to go to the Podcast. Written Thursday, August 29, 2019 / Day 17 / Evening We have come home hundreds if not thousands of times. It's just a normal part of life. But when there has been a loss - coming home will never be the same. In one sense there is no home anymore. What home there was included the person now gone. There is a void - a hole - actually a crater where there had once been a home. Going home becomes one of the biggest reminders of the loss. One of the most difficult to face. When you are out - dealing with something - there may be a tug, an unsettled feeling that the new reality exists - but stepping inside that door activates a new level of awkwardness. Something is missing. Really missing. It's something you can't ignore - only endure. Instead of home being your safe place, a place of family and love - it becomes the place where the family and love - used to be. Oh sure there are the memories and all - they are important - but at the moment you open that door the resounding reality announces what you know deep in your heart. You are now alone. Everything in the home screams the presence of the one who is gone. In my case I play my grief logic routine...I know she is safe, she is no longer suffering...God took her...I was there when He did...and in my case..she was good with all of that. Well that's great for her - there's just one little problem: I'm still here. Home becomes the epicenter of my progress. How was it today? Oh not too bad. Did you cry right away or did it take a while? It's the yardstick of my grief. Just step in the door and just look who is waiting for you - grief. And he brought his friends emptiness and despair. What a party. Coming home in the afternoon is preferable to coming home in the evening. Darkness just makes it ever so much more distasteful. So I pray and focus on what I can. Just resting, preparing a meal, answering emails or perhaps writing an essay such as this one. These activities do have their part. But when grief tries to take me to the place I do not want to go to - I just jump ahead and go there myself. I go through my grief logic routine - I focus on her - not the past. When I get to my endless love for her - that's where I pray for supernatural help. And although it is the worst of the worst moments for me - I use it to beseech God that in my view He made this decision to take her and only He can supply me with the power to understand what life will be without her. I cannot do that - nor at my deepest inner level do I want to be separated from her. But I am. So the exercise will continue. I have been writing a lot this week and interestingly it helps at some background level. Not enough to change the despair and longing for the impossible - but I sense a small movement. I know my prayers will be answered. I know that coming home will not be so difficult. I ask God to turn my grief into strength. Take this anguish and turn it into building material. Material so I can build a legacy for my love and my sweetheart. This I feel can happen. It's just not happening yet. Coming home will get better. When will that be? I just have to keep coming home to find out.

Featured on "Facing Grief - The Podcast" August 19, 2020. Click this link to go to the Podcast. Written Sunday, November 3, 2019 / Day 83 / Morning In Volume 1, Essay #9, I wrote about coming home. Home was a toxic place at that point. A place to be endured since the very act of entering was a profound reminder of the emptiness and despair of my life. Now at day 83 I can report that there has been a change. When I come home now - there is no longer that breathtaking wave of awfulness that seemed to be waiting for me. Coming home has now become - neutral. In grief, neutral is almost joyful. Neutral because the lack of the overwhelming waves of emotions I do not want to experience is refreshingly absent. And that is quite welcome. The heaviness has been lifted. My wife and I always had this little thing we did when we came home. We opened the door and declared, “We’re home!!!”. So most of this time - that has been one of those taunting memories. One of those memories that sees you coming and just can’t wait to work you over for a while. Now, when I open the door I say, “I’m home!!!” - and it doesn’t sting a bit. So in that sense - coming home has improved. As I wrote in the original essay, coming home is the epicenter of my progress. And using the original measurement - I no longer cry when I enter the house. Not right away or even after I am home for a while. Things seem matter of fact in a general way. Now don’t start celebrating. There is a perceptible sense of potential sadness everywhere. It’s just that now it is an element I can invoke if I’m not careful - so I try not to encourage anything that would activate it. But those waves of sadness and despair are no longer there when I come home. I go through whatever routines of coming home there are sort of matter-of-factly. So that is an actual good thing. Coming home is also the yardstick of my grief. So if grief can be measured - I no longer receive any attention from the “welcoming committee” of grief and it’s friends. In that sense this is an amazing moment. Coming home has become - sort of “normal”. The hope I hear in the background - the hope that I have heard through its tiny, tiny voice over these past months has just become slightly louder. I can’t wait for the day I come home and find that hope has moved in with me.

Written Wednesday, April 8, 2020 / Day 240 / Noon This day marks one month since I ended hostilities with the future (Volume 7 - Essay #12 “Cease Fire”). As I reflect on what that all means I have been drawn to the thoughts of what that future might be. Of course, I have no idea what that will be, so instead I have focused on what it seems I will need going forward. One of the elements that speaks to me is strength. I have never had the strength in my life I thought I should have possessed. I was never really a strong person. My personality is not a dominant one. When I enter a room, nothing much changes in the room, where with some the entire atmosphere can change. “Look, it is [whoever it is]!”, they might say - and all of a sudden the mood changes. I’ve never really had that much of an impact. And when I think of the times in my life where I have taken difficult stands, I have always persevered in those decisions, yet not in a demonstrable or eloquent way. I have taken my stands and held to them. But those moments would not be portrayed as entertaining or poignant as I would have dreamed they would be. Looking to the future then, I see I will need to be stronger in this new life. Through the incredible moments of this past month, I do find I have a confidence about what has happened that propels me more than I have ever had previously. In looking into my past, I am looking for where there was strength in my life. I have been invariably drawn back to my Father. He was neither flamboyant nor overbearing. He was like so many of his day, he worked hard and in his limited ways, pursued his dreams. As an only child, I grew up around adults. In my day, the neighborhood kids were my family in a sense. We played and played in our neighborhood each day. When night approached and our mothers called us home, we resisted until most of the group was gone and we were left by ourselves and had to finally, reluctantly go in. In my era, as opposed to today where there is so much knowledge and instruction, there were not a lot of direct instructions from my parents. They took care of us but direct teaching just was not a part of our lives. Now looking back however, I do see their lessons quite well. And for the most part, they were powerful as examples always are. In that way they are a part of me. Thankfully, what they embraced in certain areas never touched me. They were smokers and social drinkers (wine with a mixer that they had most days). My Dad liked horse racing and was a regular at several tracks. I spent many times with him, never really getting the racing (or betting) bug in me but enjoying the spectacle of it all - and of course he would buy me hamburgers and fries! My Father had a background he rarely shared. His Navy experience in World War II on a destroyer - working with the big guns - a topic that rarely surfaced - and then only in the most general way. My Dad grew up in a home with sisters from his Stepmothers first marriage. He never talked much about them. His birth mother abruptly left the family when he was a small boy. A curious time that he never really understood or was enlightened about. At 16, his father enrolled him in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC’s) to plant trees in Maine. It was one of those programs created during the depression era. At 18, his father enlisted him in the Navy. He never talked of his relationship with his father - it seemed a bit harsh from the little I knew. Ultimately, his Father committed suicide over an event that we could only guess was the real motivation. But my Dad was always there in my life. He was a worker. As the least articulate person in the sense of public speaking, he had a career as a salesman - one in which you would think speaking would be helpful. Yet he was successful at it just the same. He did not like to be in an office - so the world became his office. Some of the most comforting times were those I could go “work with him”. Which meant driving around with him to his various destinations at which he tended to the business he was a part of. I can only recollect a few days in my life where he would be home ‘sick”. And those times were for issues that made him immobile (one was an infection in his foot that became a problem). Other than those times - his resolve to work was a pillar in his life. He was a thinker as he would say. He had ideas for inventions that he pursued. There were so many of them. One of his ideas - for a springless plastic valve to be used on a shaker, say for salt or any powder type of item, brought him to cut up my mother’s Tupperware lids to get the plastic he needed. That was the invention for which he obtained a patent. Something I was always proud that he achieved. It was one of those successes someone from his background rarely accomplished. Even though my mother typed (on the old manual typewriter) countless letters to companies to pitch the valve, nothing ever came of those efforts. A failure? Perhaps. But an example? Yes. Absolutely yes. He acted like a person who had resources - although he didn’t. That got him into financial trouble with people and family members who because of those issues were lost to me growing up. His models in his life, from what I can surmise, were not all that great. Yet despite all of that he provided me a solid foundation in which I could grow. His examples of work, pursuing his dreams and pure drive becoming part of what I would become. I am thankful to God that I did not succumb to his other examples that were also a part of my life. I consider that was part of God’s guidance. Often, when we look back at our lives, we can sometimes see more clearly about the choices we made. We can see them more clearly after the fact than when we were living those moments. My mother had died before him. We had moved to Virginia and I often feel moments of sadness that he faced being alone on his own as I can now so deeply understand. Having tasted of that well of sadness - I get a retroactive twinge for what he might have faced. My parents drifted apart towards the end of their lives - it was always sad. Sad because of their story. He pursued her. One story was that he would wait outside her apartment and walk her to work every day. I have but a few written artifacts of the love he lavished on her. I’m not sure it was reciprocal - she often stated that with all of his affections towards her she thought he would make a good husband. I was never sure if there was a real deep love there. As having experienced that and so much more in my life - looking back to their marriage often makes me a bit sad. After her death, I remember him saying quite often that he reflected on her good points. How good she was. Some of that original love perhaps showing itself in his later life? His comments revealing a sensitivity I had never seen in him in that way before. He looked at life in a quirky way - often I am reminded in my life at how I seem to have some of that perspective in how I see things. Not sure if that is genetic but the proclivity is certainly interesting. At the end of his life, he did something that I am forever proud of him for accomplishing. He was alone in this - my being out of town was always something that haunted me. One of those side-effects of our moving to Virginia that I have had to make peace with over the years. My parents, as I had mentioned, were both quite consistent drinkers. Something I had never embraced or felt compelled to do. He was, now in hindsight, something called a “passive alcoholic”. Someone who is not prone to violence when they excessively drink. Oddly, as a child, it is something I never really noticed. In my teen years, I was a bit more vocal about both of their patterns of drinking - not that it had any effect at the time. But towards the end of his life, as it is more clearly seen in retrospect, he checked himself into the VA Hospital in Buffalo. As it turned out, this was about a month and a half before he died of secondary issues of bladder cancer. As part of his stay, he enrolled in the Alcoholics Anonymous program. Although he did not have that much time left, he took a step. And although he didn’t live to see the total fulfillment of that step - what he did then has been something that has always encouraged me. His last act on this earth - a positive one to address a life-long problem. As I stand on the threshold of this new life that God has decided I will have, It is these lessons from my Father that I want to remember and make a part of every day I live going forward. I know that the best of him is a part of me. Just like my Father in heaven is going to ensure that the best of Him and His strength is in me each day of this new life He has ordained for me to live.