3/25–3/27/2013 Three Days–Total Blur

(Wilmington, DE)

Monday:  Today we went to the funeral home, mom, me and Billy.  I thought this would be so hard but the director asked all the right questions and at times we actually laughed out loud.  Somehow I never thought laughter would be heard within those walls but I came to the realization that death is very much a part of life.
So many decisions to be made, more than I ever imagined.  This has been an eye-opener to say the least.

This doesn’t feel real yet.

Mom and I are so tired.  Good sleep isn’t coming.

Tuesday:  Lots of phone calls made today, letting friends and family know what has happened.

Our first look at his obituary in the newspaper.

In the evening mom and I went through all the family photo albums and picked out pictures of dad.  Billy and Michelle did the same thing at their house.

We picked out two trophies dad won for the Pistol and Rifle teams he was on during his National Guard years.

We went through a box of ribbons and pins, picking out unit insignia that would give a small indication of his 42 years in the military.

We found the picture taken of him swearing me in the National Guard.

We needed to go through these albums.  We played a lot remember when and we laughed a lot.

Wednesday:  We need a sense of normalcy.  So we did normal everyday things.  We went to the grocery store.  We went to the bank.  We did laundry.

There was one out of the ordinary task today.  I taught mom how to pump gas.  She had never, ever, done it before.  Years ago gas station attendants pumped the gas (and washed the windshield and checked the oil) and then my dad just did it.  If it was running low and she noticed it she just told him, we need gas and he’d go fill it up.  We’ll pump gas one more time before I leave here just to make sure she can do it.  I was dumbstruck when she told me she didn’t know how.

Wednesday evening we went to Billy’s to make up the photo boards for the funeral home.  It was fun but sad at the same time.  Fun to tell the stories that went with the photos but sad because we had to do this at all.