August 27-The Way We Were

Here we are back in 1962. A family.

Happy Birthday Dad. Today you would be 80 years

old. You are missed.

Another Year Passes

Another year passes without my Dad. August 27, 1929- July 27, 2007

Some day I'll see you again in heaven. How I love you, Dad!

I Have a Photograph

I have a photograph:

My step-mom, MaryAnn, and my dad around December 1985.

Old Friends
Old Friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
Newspaper blowin' through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends

Old Friends
Winter companions the old men
Lost in thier overcoats
Waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy...

Old Friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear

(Musical Interlude)

A time it was
It was a time
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left you

Wordless Wednesday-Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

I still miss you.

Love, Junebug

For more Wordless Wednesday, go here.

Fun Monday

Fun Monday participants:
Janis is the hostess this week.

"Here is the assignment!
Since Next Tuesday is Veterans Day, I thought it would be nice to salute our Veterans and show our appreciation. Photo requirement of something patriotic."

This is in honor of my dad.  Also, I do honor all men and women who have served or are serving in the military.  Freedom isn't free!  Thank God for you!

Here is my dad and his buddies shipping out.  
This is my dad in front of his barracks.  


This is my dad.  Please visit Janis for more Fun Monday.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Birthday, Dad!  I do miss you.  

For more Wordless Wednesday go here. 

Wordless Wednesday-Dad Ad

My dad in Germany during Korean conflict.

He'd make a good ad for beer and cigarettes?

For more Wordless Wednesday go here.

Dad's House

My brothers and I went to Dad's house yesterday.
Time to empty out the possessions of a lifetime.
My brothers found many treasures of their childhood.
Fishing rods, guns, tools, nuts and bolts of an electrician's trade.
I found several treasures in my Dad's little shed.
Things you would not expect to find. Memories of a
time past forever. I cannot quite explain how bittersweet
it is to go through someone's stuff and take what you want
and have to leave some. You feel like taking every little thing
he ever touched. As if that will bring him back. I found some
surprising things that he had kept for 40-plus years. Items of
no consequence to anyone but him...and me. Old business cards with
old phone numbers where he had worked when I was a baby.
I touch these things and remember him. It brings tears to me
right now but it will bring mostly pleasure in the future as I
look at these tiny pieces of my Dad and remember his life.

We sold his house.  He loved the outdoors.  I took a few rocks

and petrified wood and cactuses that were in his flower bed.

His cat was there.  Waiting for him.  

He lived in Texas.

Here he is doing a crossword puzzle.

These are my memories that I took.  The little table was

from his bedroom.  The water can from his shed.  

The big safety pin for his army duffle bag that he had in

Germany.  I remember playing with it as a child.  Why did 

he save it?  The wooden ruler, broken.  These are things

I wanted.  I played with it too.  The business card of the

Continental Baking Company that he worked for when

we kids were little.  He had a little notebook full of little

old cards he kept.  Why?  I mean this was after moving

several times in his life.  This last move was only for two

years.

We sold his pickup a few months ago.  A friend who is a 

car dealer went to the auction to pick it up for us and 

sell it.  All emotional stuff.  

Still I have a lifetime of memories of him.  I got a couple

of his western, snap-front shirts, a couple of his books, (he

loved to read) his boot-jack, and one of his hats.  Simple,

ordinary things.  I'm happy to have them.  

Wordless Wednesday-Treasures

My angels:

Seize the Day!



They're on their way:

My Dad who's gone...I just didn't have enough

time with you.

Seize the Day!

For more Wordless Wednesday look here.

Debonair Dad

Here is my dad at age 45, the day I got married.  How debonair, kind of

like Dean Martin?

Fun Monday

Robinella is our hostess with the mostest this week. What's funny about this saying is my dad would always say "the hostess with the mostest", for some reason he and I thought this was the most hilarious thing to say! Which brings me to this week's challenge, Robinella
wants us to search through our extensive posts and choose "one" that is what we would consider best. I have only been a blogger since September this year so I did not have a lot of searching to do. My most precious post was easy to pick having been the most heartfelt and dramatic thing that has ever happened to me. My dad passed away on July 27, 2007 and I found blogging shortly thereafter. I think it has been a God-send because I needed somewhere to post my thoughts and feelings even if no one but me ever read them. It has been helpful to my grieving process to have a place to post my dad's pictures and talk about his life and mine. So this post on October 27, 2007 says it all:

My Dad, My Hero


After being in the hospital six weeks my dad passed away early one morning after he started bleeding internally and receiving and losing blood as fast as they could give it to him. He finally stopped bleeding, but his heart rate and blood pressure went down to something like 20/30 and his heart finally stopped. We had made the decision that they were to do everything to save him except if his heart stopped, they were not to resusitate. You should have seen the condition he was in, he had a surgery that wouldn't heal. He was cut open from his sternum down to his belly button. He had to have part of his stomach removed to stop the bleeding that an ulcer was causing. He'd had these ulcers for years. He had been being treated for a malignant melanoma on his arm before he ever went to the emergency room with his bleeding ulcers. He couldn't keep anything down in his stomach. He was losing weight. His wife (my step-mom) had passed away less than a year ago. He had so many machines and tubes hooked up to him. I left the hospital once to go get something to eat and came back and they said, "where were you? We were looking for you. We had to put your dad on a ventilator." At least I wasn't there to make that decision, it was made for me. They started asking several times after this, "How much farther do you want to go?" They had to put my dad into a drug induced coma because he was in such pain. I wondered as he lay there just how bad it was for him to be absolutely out of control. I wondered if he was still in pain, if he was crying out to be released, to be taken home. I wondered if he could hear us as we were talking in his room, joining hands around him and praying for him. I wondered if he wanted us to continue or let him go. I told him it was alright if he went. The last thing he said to me before he went into his coma was, "You know that I love you." And I said, "Yes, Daddy, I know that you love me and I love you." At the end when they took him off his pain medications to see if he could wake up and function again because this was an up and down process where they thought one day he was 10% chance of survival to maybe he's gonna make it, don't give up! We lived 5 hours away from him so I couldn't be there all the time, but I came every week for a few days and nights. But at the last one nurse told me that he was getting a response out of him, he would open his mouth to let him swab it out. I wanted to be there to see this and I got to. The nurse said, "Claude, open your mouth so I can clean it." He opened his mouth. Now the most excellent thing about this is that means that he could hear everything that was being said.

Fort Worth National Cemetery

My dad is buried in Fort Worth National Cemetery.

My Dad, My Hero

After being in the hospital six weeks my dad passed away early one morning after he started bleeding internally and receiving and losing blood as fast as they could give it to him. He finally stopped bleeding, but his heart rate and blood pressure went down to something like 20/30 and his heart finally stopped. We had made the decision that they were to do everything to save him except if his heart stopped, they were not to resusitate. You should have seen the condition he was in, he had a surgery that wouldn't heal. He was cut open from his sternum down to his belly button. He had to have part of his stomach removed to stop the bleeding that an ulcer was causing. He'd had these ulcers for years. He had been being treated for a malignant melanoma on his arm before he ever went to the emergency room with his bleeding ulcers. He couldn't keep anything down in his stomach. He was losing weight. His wife (my step-mom) had passed away less than a year ago. He had so many machines and tubes hooked up to him. I left the hospital once to go get something to eat and came back and they said, "where were you? We were looking for you. We had to put your dad on a ventilator." At least I wasn't there to make that decision, it was made for me. They started asking several times after this, "How much farther do you want to go?" They had to put my dad into a drug induced coma because he was in such pain. I wondered as he lay there just how bad it was for him to be absolutely out of control. I wondered if he was still in pain, if he was crying out to be released, to be taken home. I wondered if he could hear us as we were talking in his room, joining hands around him and praying for him. I wondered if he wanted us to continue or let him go. I told him it was alright if he went. The last thing he said to me before he went into his coma was, "You know that I love you." And I said, "Yes, Daddy, I know that you love me and I love you." At the end when they took him off his pain medications to see if he could wake up and function again because this was an up and down process where they thought one day he was 10% chance of survival to maybe he's gonna make it, don't give up! We lived 5 hours away from him so I couldn't be there all the time, but I came every week for a few days and nights. But at the last one nurse told me that he was getting a response out of him, he would open his mouth to let him swab it out. I wanted to be there to see this and I got to. The nurse said, "Claude, open your mouth so I can clean it." He opened his mouth. Now the most excellent thing about this is that means that he could hear everything that was being said.

Dear God, Please Bring my Daddy Home Safely

Dad on his horse

Dad as a electrician

Dad as a father walking his daughter down the aisle
I looked scared and Dad was saying,"Keep that dress
away from my feet!"

Dad and his Ford tractor

Yesterday I saw an old friend of my dad's at the grocery store. We were in the same check-out line so I asked him if he knew that my dad has passed away. He said yes he did. I told him Dad had been in the hospital for six weeks and that they had given him morphine that had caused him to say some funny things. My dad had been an electrician and he thought he was working on the electricity in the hospital ceiling. He had a tv cable in his hands and was looking up at the grid ceiling thinking about fixing it. He asked my husband for tools and was telling us that if he could just get a certain man he knew to come everything would be alright. I said to my dad's friend at the store that this was funny, but this was before we knew how bad his condition was. So I guess this prompted my dad's friend to tell me what a good time he and my dad and another friend who worked with my dad had at the electric company shop. One time he said someone gave my dad a big jar of homemade whiskey. So the three of them sat at the shop in some big easy chairs that were there and passed this jar around and drank it all. He said that he got up to leave and could barely walk out through these huge double doors that you pulled trucks through. I don't even want to think about the driving that he did. So I laughed with him and told him to take care of himself as I said good-bye. After I got into my car I thought to myself I should have told him, "You guys may have been having fun, but you don't know the countless nights I lay awake in my bed praying for God to bring my Daddy safely home." I would listen every night for his pickup to pull up in our long driveway so I could finally go to sleep. We lived out in the country on a county road in a small town (the same town that I live in now). It was quiet and I could usually tell the sound of his pickup coming down the road. I had an upstairs bedroom and I would go to the bathroom window overlooking the front yard and check to make sure his vehicle was coming down the road or into the drive. He didn't always come into the house right away. He usually fell asleep out in his truck. But at least he was home. My dad quit drinking about 20 years ago but he probably drank 35 years straight before that. That's one of the reasons he didn't make it after his surgery. His liver had some cirhosis (sp?) and they couldn't get him to stop bleeding. That's one of your liver's main jobs is to stop bleeding. My dad has been gone for 3 months now on the 27th. I watched him in the hospital, his body filled with fluid twice his size that his kidneys couldn't work hard enough to get rid of. And it didn't matter to me one bit what my dad may have ever done or not done. I just wanted him to live and be well. He was my dad, just my dear old dad. It's hard to let someone go, but believe me I have many good memories of him. I love you, Daddy. I always will.