Not what I had planned...

Monday, 11/28, 6:30am
After an extremely restful night’s sleep, with superb caregiving by the nurses at the Yuma ICU, Nurse Cindy woke me to let me know that Dad had given up the fight. Having gone through the last three weeks as we had, and since I'd had my tantrum on Friday night, I think I'd already started the grieving process, so everything was very matter of fact. Still feeling a little distant from the whole situation, I'm sure it will hit me eventually, and I will welcome the grief when it finally settles in. But wouldn't you know it, here’s the way my silly brain processed in the moment: “Doggonit, he’d JUST started his vitamins!” But I was relieved that he is finally at peace and that he did hold out long enough for me to get him back onto American soil so the process could move a lot easier…

Mom and my brother from South Carolina were already working on getting flights into Yuma that day. My brother sadly just changed his to arrive DFW the next day and Mom came on out to help with the details of sending Dad home to WV for burial. Frustratingly, flying standby, Mom missed the flight that would have gotten her in at 6:00 that evening, but thankfully she arrived at 10pm and didn’t have to wait for the 1am! In the meantime, I got us checked into a hotel (discount graciously provided by the New Hope Treatment Center!) and used the downtime to relax a little.

There was an Arby’s at the end of the road and, being that Arby’s was one of Dad’s favorite restaurants when he’d come in for a visit…I just had to go get a Reuben sandwich to share with him one more time. A sweet moment came when, not realizing we were in the flight path of the local military base, a couple fighter jets flew over the Arby’s as I was walking up to it. I just thought to myself, “Ha, Hi Dad!”  (In case I haven’t mentioned it before now, Dad was a jet pilot/flight instructor for the Air Force.) It's hard to see in the pic, but there is a jet in that blue expanse over the Arby's! ;-)

Back to the room for a little rest, then out for a little sightseeing. Yuma is such a beautiful corner of the world! FLAT FLAT! (we say TX is flat, but we’ve got nothing on AZ!) With mountains on the edges of the horizon! And palm trees here and there… just such an interesting texture!

I walked about an hour or so through a little corner of the desert, realizing after a while I didn’t have any water, or even a stick of gum to wet my whistle! Made me think of how parched Dad’s mouth had gotten these last few days.




So I get back to the hotel room to get cleaned up before going to get Mom (on her first attempt to arrive) and there was someone flying a little remote control bi-wing plane outside the hotel! (Dad also liked bi-wings and aerobatics). I just thought it was so neat all these little “hellos” he gave me that day…kinda like “Hey Booger, I’m flying free now! It’s okay!”