That's a Good Question

Barbara and Ed brought us an amazing brunch today.
Ed asked me what I was afraid of, having read this blog I assume. I told him I didn't really know. But I have figured it out.
Being without my Dad.
I wanted to talk about Dad all afternoon, to have Ed read his obituary to know what an amazing person he was. I even offered to share his genes with their daughter, through one of my cousins. OMG! I am really still off my rocker. I'm gonna blame it on the drugs, though I'm pretty much weaned off of them.
For me, this was a really bad time for Dad to die.
Bambi told me last week that she never went to dad in a crisis. She couldn't think of any crisis she had gone through. Becky and I were talking about it today and we did come up with one crisis, when she fell through skylight at Beloit College and broke her back. Dad did not go to her. Instead he was calming down his hysterical female household, which was getting ready for its first wedding, of its first daughter. You remember that walk around Shaker Lake.
He did arrange for his sister to pick her up in Wisconsin and drive her, in the back of the station wagon, lying flat on her back, to Cleveland. She was the star of the wedding, lying, in her bridesmaids dress, on an ambulance stretcher, raised to its full height, at the front of the church. I guess that same ambulance drove her out to the Country Club for the reception. There is a great photo of me and my now ex-husband posing with her while she is lying down, smoking. We do know that we rolled her out onto the porch behind the fireplace where the wedding party was seated and that fortunately somebody remembered to bring her inside before for she froze to death on that cold January night.
That is the same fireplace in front of which we held Dad's service last Monday. Over 250 people came, despite everyone we knew in the world being down in Florida for the winter. It's whereAdmiral Carr presented to our beloved Jane the flag in honor of Dad's military service. How will she go on?
And it's where we held a reception after my mother's service. The highlight of that evening was fireworks, for her, in January.
In the programs, for both my mom and dad's services, was a quote about a ship sailing away. The gist is that the people on shore wave goodbye until she disappears over the edge of the earth. But someone is on the other side waiting there and saying hello.  The ship is not diminished at all just not visible to us anymore.
The photo below the quote Dad perched atop the seat, at the wheel of a little motorboat, full throttle ahead, hair blowing in the wind as he races toward ????
My heart aches without him.
I scheduled my regular Wednesday bridge for here this coming Wednesday. And I'm looking forward to it. I wish I could tell dad that.