My dad hasn't called since I got back from Holland. 


Fresh off the press: I shouldn't have taken down the little "eventually" sign underneath the Wil Farm sign on the driveway.  Without putting the dirty laundry out or finger pointing, Dylan and I split ways, may as well say it here, as if there are any secrets in Hermann.  But it does really suck.  More quietness.

On the upside: Blek and Dekker have discovered that they have a bark.  It is quite amusing: this prepubescent pair of dogs pretending they are in the hood, yapping up a storm.

Been quiet on the daily bull. Not so daily anyway, but the last couple of weeks were pretty intense.  
My dad is dead.  It took some doing but he is not here no more.  Got a call on Saturday that he had a stroke,  Sunday the news was not good, and I decided to go, rather see him alive and ailing than dead.  Got my wish, got to the hospital on Thursday and I think he acknowledged my presence yet, by squeezing my hand.  As a family we decided that what was in store for him was not what he would want, to be a transplant in a nursing home and we decided to discontinue the IV and the feeding tube.  I stayed in the hospital with him, and friends and family,  (and we had some nice nights playing scrabble, with my dad on his bed pushed in the corner as the judge) and a bottle of wine, which they sell in the gift shop in Dutch hospitals).  I was present when he passed away, looked in his eyes that were non responsive, but they did open up the last 10 minutes.  As kids and oldest sister and wife and the music he had wished we made a beautiful ceremony, he would have been pleased.  Then made it home in time to run my regular shift and now I am here typing.  Just a little foto of my dad on the counter as a reminder, a freight train running through my life right now.  In the service I shared the one free advice from my dad: treat the serious things lightly and the light things with gravitas.  And hold on to that, I don't know where he got that but it helps me.  He didn't have an easy life, but like my friend Tim says: don't ask for an easy life, ask for a rewarding life.   And I think my dad got that.