Dear Friends:
Time is a great healer, even if it is only a few days I have found peace within myself and have allowed myself to cry, to grief and to laugh. Laugh, yes, as I recall little things that happened in the past few days. How, we were sure John was going to be up and having breakfast Saturday morning as the nurse told us John is strong.
Realizing that John's spirit was so strong that he was strong enough to smile and have a little sort of laugh on his face when I, as I now can think properly and recall the moments at the hospital when we were advised that John would not recognize us, etc. His stroke was bad and yet he opened his eyes and smiled and I asked him do you know who I am, yes, I forgot to mention this, you are my wife, moochie--my sweetheart. The daughters bent over him and kissed him, he gave our son a sort of hi five and was a bit agitated, in pain so the nurse gave him more hydromorphone.
We waited and left as he became more calm, telling ourselves, Dad is going to pull out of this one too and scare the living day lights out of the doctors and us again. He'll be having breakfast when we get back to the hospital in the morning.
Morning came and the two daughters went to the hospital and he as not having breakfast, he was sleeping and his kidneys were not working so they prepared him while the girls went and cleaned up the small room where we would meet in an hour. When they came back about 10 minutes later, John passed and his journey to a new life began and we bid him goodbye. I eas not there as I had planned to come later as I didn't sleep most of the night. Our son in law came from Vancouver to our city to tell me dad had passed and was taking me to the hospital. We live 30 minutes from Vancouver, if the bridges aren't clogged.
We are doing fine, our grandson is taking it hard, 28 years old and he had a special relationship with his grandpa, at this time he is inconsoluable so his dad is helping him at this time as is his girlfriend, Cori,This has been the first death in our family so it is traumatic to him and we love Tyler very much. He was all of our baby as his mother, our daughter, nearly died delivering him, she had a bad blood clot so while she lay in hospital, myself and the 2 daughtgers cared for him while dad worked.
I thank my higher power for all the strength I get from all of you on this message board. Like the song says: You raise me Up. I go to the computer, listen to some music have a cry, read the messages and gain more strength and carry on. I know it will be difficult as I do miss John very much. We are having a small get together at our daughter's home on Saturday, and we are having an anniversary cake for the 59 years John and I were married but just didn;t quite make it together. January 15th, 1956 was a very snowy day in Regina, sAskatchewan. Everyone wanted to know why we wanted to get married in the Winter. Young Love, 'eh. Trains were snowed in, we nearly flew down the stairs of the church but I guess it was to be and we weathered that storm and some of the storms of our lives but we stayed together through thick and thin and as I used to ask John at night as we prepared for sleep; John, do you love me, and he would reply..NOOO, and I would reply I would have been scared if you said yes, so the nights went him saying no and me knowing he did.
Enough of this love story. It is getting late and I am feeling tired so off I go. Take care and be good to yourselves .
Xenia