Gosh…what a hard cou­ple of weeks it has been. An afore men­tioned friend did indeed pass away last week.  36 hours after he was taken to the nurs­ing home. He told his fam­ily the nurs­ing home wouldn’t be get­ting any money from him, told his doc­tors he would not go back on a ven­ti­la­tor and called his best and long time friend and told him he wouldn’t live thru the night. He didn’t. His vitals were good, he needed no pain med­i­cine that night, and they say he slept bet­ter than he had in weeks. You don’t need a seer to tell you he had made up his mind to go. Some peo­ple don’t believe this kind of stuff. I am a nurse. I have seen peo­ple decide to die and then do it. Don’t ever min­i­mize the power of the mind.

Our friends qual­ity of life would have been immensely dimin­ished. He had spent the last 10 years of his life in a wheel­chair with undi­ag­nosed nerve dam­age. In the past sev­eral months his paral­y­sis, unknown to us, was creep­ing up his body and had entered his abdom­i­nal area, mak­ing it harder and harder to breathe. Pneu­mo­nia was the cul­prit. A tired spirit and body did him in. He would have hated, HATED being in a nurs­ing home despite the excel­lent care and being so close to fam­ily.  They already knew they prob­a­bly couldn’t take him back to his office as they didn’t trust him there alone. He knew that too.

He had expressed a desire to be cre­mated not too long ago and his ashes spread on a moun­tain top. He was a big game hunter, a wildlife preser­va­tion­ist, a vet­eri­nar­ian. Sadly, he was not cre­mated as his wife said it wasn’t in writ­ing and she didn’t want to go to a moun­tain.  I hope he doesn’t mind. I think he prob­a­bly does.

This man was well liked, well thought of, but not with­out faults. Many unfor­giv­able. Many we just looked past.

My hus­band was friends with this man 29 years. That is a lot of evenings of chit chat…lots of drinks raised.…lots of mem­o­ries. There will never, ever be another vet office like his. It should be memo­ri­al­ized. Yet it won’t be. Fam­ily has already started to go thru the mark­ings of his life.  Things will be tossed and sold.  A life has ended.

I know for us, we will never be able to round the cor­ner where his office is with­out a tear. Espe­cially my hus­band. It has not sunk in that he won’t be dri­ving up in his truck to give us crap about some­thing or other, won’t holler out the door for some­one to do some­thing, won’t ever laugh with us again. Maybe some day soon it will, but not today.

So God speed Jerry. Thanks for the mil­lions of  mem­o­ries. And I hope, truly hope, that where ever you are, you are running.