The End: Mom answers the call...

On Monday, 29 January 2018, I saw my mother die.

At about 11:27 in the morning, in front of my sister and I, we saw her quietly and without fanfare pass from this life to the next, completing her journey 75 years to the day after beginning it.

That is, she died on her birthday. 

It was the final act of a journey begun on New Year's day when an alarmingly swollen right leg prompted me to take my mother to the hospital. 

It's hard to imagine that an initial blood clot diagnosis on that day led to the discovery of cancer and my mother's eventual death, but here we are.

According to her wishes, we cremated my mother and on Thursday, 08 February 2018, her remains were interred with my father's in Floral Haven cemetery here in Tulsa. 

It's hard, nearly four weeks later, to imagine that she's gone.  Of course, four weeks will turn into six, six into twelve and so on, and life will resume,

It was 20 years ago today: my precious Angel.

The annual post.

She'd be 20 today.  Adulthood eve.  My vision of her is a blonde, blue-eyed young woman in her second or third year of college, working and being the wholesome,  all-American girl her mom and I would be proud of.

Just like every other fifty-ish daddy does,  I'd suppose.

It's hard to believe this much time has passed since that fateful day in 1996 when she was born. 

More and more I wonder how life would have been if she had survived and came to us healthy and alive.   I can't help it.

Movies often imagine how things would be if we went back in time and the history we had were changed off the path they went, and I've been back and forth about how I wou l d handle it if I were offered that opportunity.

Sure, I'd love to go back to the point in time where she could have been saved and born alive but what would that have changed? 

I don't know, and if life were to have been on the same heading would her mother and I split up and divorced like we did? 

If it happened exactly as it did, she'd turn three shortly after we separated and just about to turn five when the divorce was final and I'm not sure I'd want to have her witness how we fell apart.

Especially with her brother being born in between time and all the events that happened within that mix...her grandfather's death in 2002...my illness and amputation in 2008...

I tell you, it boggles the mind.

Hindsight allows us the freedom to imagine the world history in the last 20 years going EXACTLY the way it did but realistically it probably wouldn't.  

That said, when my time comes and we meet in the afterlife I hope she approves of me and how I've lived my life and been a dad for her brother.

I hope she forgives me for what happened with her mother and I.  I hope she forgives her too.  She should know that we have it our best shot, and I hope she's not too upset with either of us for not trying harder to make us work.

There's a lot we'll be talking about when I get there, I fear, now that I think about it.

Every year, it's little harder to write this entry.  No way am I going to stop writing them though. 

Happy 20th birthday sweetie. 

Daddy loves you.  <3 <3 <3.