Aug

28

Letters to Dad – Julie

Posted On August 28, 2008 | Filed Under Family 

Dad I know that it has only been a few weeks since your death, but I miss our bantering back and forth, I am so glad that I was able take care of you over the last several years.

When you had your first stroke you were driving your truck in Michigan and called me to tell me you didn’t feel well, well after many questions, I told you to hang up and call 911, that you were having a stroke and you being you had many other choice words to tell me. It took Dave, Sue and I several hours to track you down to get you the help you needed.

Once you put your mind to it and seceded to do the work for rehab you made a remarkable comeback. To get back out on the road and do what you loved to do, But life dealt you another unfair hand in many more strokes. You tried your best to overcome it, but life had other ideas for you. Those last few stroke took more out of you than you were able to fight,

I was just glad that I was able to have you live with me to help you out at the time, and when the time was right to have you go back home with mom to keep working on getting better. We sure have been through a lot of ups and downs more downs than ups. I know you were very frustrated not being able to do what you wanted to do when you wanted to. You sure did not make life easy for anyone including yourself. I can not recall how many phone calls you called me just to give me your one liners” it is raining, it is snowing, don’t forget to get my coffee, Steve won, tell you mother I am hungry, my butt is sore….., I could go on and on.

Your stubborn attitude could have been used in the right way but instead you used it against yourself. So many times I left your house from taking care of you with 20 pounds chewed off my ass, and most of the time for no reason at all, just the fact that I could not please you. Mom and I tried so hard to help you but you would just cuss us out or tell us to quit your bitching. Yes I know that you and I had a very different and uneuique relationship, one that most would not understand. So many times I wanted to take a frying pan, baseball bat or duct tape to you. But I just had to turn the other cheek and just love you.

The best payback I had was when you and mom lost power for 3 days and I came over with my generator to give you power for the sump pump in the basement and freezer, and power for your electric lift chair which at the time you were stuck in lying down. Oh that was so fun to have control over whether you got up or not. You sure did have a ton of choice words for me when I was not fast enough to plug in your chair. You were so loud yelling at me that even your neighbors heard it. It is ironic that most of the time you just wanted to lay in your recliner, but boy when you could not get up, you wanted up right now.

I have called you Grumpy for a long time…so if the shoe or pillow in this case fits use it. Making that pillow was fitting to your personality. You would not listen to what anyone was telling you to help you get any better, not the Dr, nurses, therapy, aides, mom or us kids, It wasn’t until the last few weeks of you life that you finally decided to get up off your butt and do something, Well you did get up with you walker and made it out to the Jeep for a ride. I got to take you out for your coffee and cigar, Those last 2 weeks were great and I wish we had more time like that.

May you finally rest in peace dad. I love you and miss you.

Give Amanda a hug and kiss for me

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