What happened to my break??

Two weeks since my last post? Boy did that go fast. It started out as expected. I got in a couple runs with my dog, caught up on sleep and met a couple classmates at the anatomy lab. We divided up sutures and starting trying to act like surgeons on our cadavers, but quickly realized we had no idea what we were doing. We planned to meet again after reading a guide or manual but events kind of took over for me.

My grandfather's prognosis worsened dramatically when we learned that his bowels were dead around the 14th. No one expected him to regain consciousness. So I booked a flight to Chicago for Thursday the 18th. My brother flew in late that night after I had a chance to see our family patriarch, Papa, in the hospital. I guess I missed the worst of it, when the gout was so bad that even unconscious he would just about sit up in pain at the slightest touch. By the time I got there, he was heavily sedated with Fentanyl. At that point it was just a matter of time, so the goal was to make him comfortable.

Friday I basically said goodbye to him and agreed with the family that we should disconnect his ventilator. Friday night I followed family tradition and got blitzed a bar near the hospital with a cousin and my brother. I spend time with my uncles, aunts and cousins Saturday and we all saw Papa one last time. He passed away early Sunday morning.

Becky and the kids flew in Sunday for the wake on Tuesday and funeral on Wednesday. We visited lots of my relatives (mostly a good thing :-) and showed the boys Sue (the largest T. Rex in the world) at the Natural History Museum. The wake was really a showing of Papa body in the funeral home. No memorabilia, no cheers or old stories. Papa looked horrible (totally unlike himself) and the boys were bored for the seven hours from 2pm to 9pm. I think he would have liked something much celebratory, even if it required some libations. We are a fairly typical Irish Catholic family :-).

The snow storm started Wednesday so it was a cold. As a pallbearer from Arizona, I was underdressed. A black suit with a parka didn't cut it. The procession was at least 30 cars long from the funeral home to the church and then to the cemetary. The Mass was ok except that the priest was new didn't seem to know anything about Papa (who had been an active member for more than 40 yrs) or how to do his job. The boys were gems in their new black suits and my dad, Papa's first son, did a nice talk on Papa's organization skills benefitting the church's Octoberfest's for many years.

At the cemetary we had to have a short ceremony indoors the weather was so bad. Two soldiers dedicated a flag to Papa in a nice ceremony that recognized his service to the country in WWII. In fact he was buried with his Purple Heart which he received over the Pacific in a B-25. He lost most of the muscle and flesh on his upper thighs from a flac shell exploding close to the plane, but managed to fly the plane another 380 miles back to base with his arms (the pilot had lost use of his arms but could operate the petals). We then met at Casey's, his favorite restuarant in Lombard. It was nice but hard to talk to anyone not at your table. And people left pretty quickly because the storm was dumping snow on the roads.

I got in trouble that evening with Becky for taking Dan to my cousins (and leaving here with the kids) to decompress as I like to call it. We played some dice games, had a couple drinks and then I returned to the hotel.

We spent Thanksgiving with my Dad and his wife. First we had a meal at Casey's and then went to my cousins to return her car. Talk about over-eating! But it was intersting for Becky and my parents to see Colleen's house. She's done VERY well in mortgages and has a 6800sf mansion beautifully decorated.

Yesterday we flew home after snowball fighting, one last "world's best" Ever Hotdog at Portillo's and a boring 4-5 hours at the airport. All-in-all we had enough Chicago hotdogs, chicago pizza and alcohol for many months (so much for losing weight over the break). But Papa would be happy that the family he anchored got together and shared many of our memories with him and created some new ones along the way. It will interesting to see how we do keeping in touch and getting together for family reunions now that he's gone.

Time to rush off to do some Xmas decoration and present shopping before Winter gets into full swing on Monday.