Thanks, Miah.  I will....

Thanks, Sally.

I lost your number when I had to reinstall the OS on my laptop, or you'd have been one of the people I called as soon as I found out.  Can you email it to me?

Thank you.

Thank you, Amy.

Ne'er a truer word was spoken.  I know that I'll see him again....but it's still painful and it still sucks.

Those are all the words I need.  Thank you.

I'm calling the bereavement counsellor at the hospice tomorrow.

In a way, I'm glad.  I think that his deterioration would have been too much for me to manage.  He'd gone downhill and aged a lot in the past few months, apparently.  As it is, I'll be able to remember him able to get around unassisted by wheelchair or rascal and pain-free.

Thank you.

Again, I lost it when my hard drive crapped out on me.  Can you email it to me again? 

Thank you all for your kind thoughts and symapthies.  They really are appreciated.  This hurts, y'all.  It really hurts.  I keep thinking that I'm having a particularly bad dream and that I'll wake up soon and my dad will be alive.  I keep wanting to call his house in the hopes that he'll pick up the phone.  Knowing that I'll never see him again and even worse, never hear him again.....it makes my heart hurt.  It doesn't help to hear preachers talking about how my dad won't go to heaven because he wasn't 'born again'; that makes me want to punch someone's teeth down their throat.  Yes, he could be a bad tempered old coot, but he was honest and loving and he always tried to do the right thing.  He and I came to an understanding as I got older....I began to understand why he did some of the things he did, and I forgave him for all of the things I didn't understand or agree with.  He, in turn, stopped crticising me and became (along with many other things) my personal gardening guru and squirrel assasin extraordinaire.

I keep trying to console myself, telling myself that he's free of pain now, but it's not working and I keep crying.  Maybe one day it'll work, but today's not that day.  Today, I'm being selfish and I'm crying because I want him back, I want him to last forever, to always answer the phone when I call and to be able to meet his grandchildren when we go over there to visit.....

....but reality is tugging at my sleeve and I know what it's going to tell me...that even dads have to pass away.  I know that this is true, but oh how I wish it wasn't.

He had a long, full, productive life.  He's been on borrowed time since his first heart attack 21 years ago - were it not for timely medical intervention and new drugs, he'd have died in his bed that night. 

I have been.  Today was the first day that I've been able to actually see past the tears and the pain for long enough to realize that his life was full and productive and that I should try and celebrate that somehow.

Thank you.  

Yeah, I'm hoping that I'm resilient enough to deal with this properly.

Yes, he is. 

Thank you.

I do have a request for you JU-ers though.  I was talking to my mum today and she's been really very touched by people sending her sympathy and rememberance cards.  They've somehow given her strength to face each new day....and I was wondering if some of you JU-ers would be good enough to send her a card.  If you think that you can, email me at my gmail addy and I'll give you her address.  I'm not going to tell her that I'm doing this; I want her to be surprised at how far my dad's influence (though me) has reverberated.  I think it would really make her day to know that people from all around the world are thinking about her.

Oh, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to this thread.