9-30-72

It must have been a Saturday or Sunday, because my brother and I were at home watching cartoons. Or could it have been a weekday, and we just weren't in school?

My grandparents had been staying with us (they lived in Connecticut, we in Virginia), because it must have been clear what was coming.

They came home from the hospital first. Didn't really say anything to us, though my grandmother was visibly upset, and snapped about the volume on the TV. I seem to recall my grandfather telling her to leave us alone.

I may have only been 8, but at that point I knew. But my brother and I didn't say a word.

My mom came home sometime after that, and the rest is pretty much a blur. I do remember her taking us into another room to give us the news.

A few months earlier, maybe even more than that -- I have no sense of the time frame at all --she told me he was going to die. She didn't use those words, though. I'd said something about something happening "when daddy gets better." He'd been in and out of the hospital quite a bit, for endless cancer surgeries that now seem pointless.

She looked at me, hesitated for a moment, then said, "Daddy isn't going to get better." I honestly don't remember what, if anything, we said about it after that. But after a moment, I realized what she was telling me and there were many tears.

There still are.

I just realized the other day that he's now been gone for as many years as he lived. That's just.... wow. I don't have the right words.

This picture's been in a frame for so long I'd forgotten there was a sweet little note to my mother on the back. The pic was apparently taken during one of my dad's stints on the aircraft carrier on which he was deployed. It says, "Who IS this handsome devil?" Cute.