Happy Memorial Day

Today is a smorgasbord of emotion for me. As a teen I was too young to be a real hippie, and my parents kept stepping on my attempts at freedom. Like when an older girl I knew had tickets to Woodstock and got to go. Well, her parents named her Violet and they were really free spirits, unlike my Dad who declared that if I ever went to a hippie lovefest he would be waiting for me with weapons of mass destruction when I returned. Okay, keeping it real, there were no such terms as weapons of mass destruction back then, but you get the idea. There were honestly threats of bodily harm. REAL threats. My brother lucked out missing the Viet Nam draft because of a lottery and his birthday came in near the end of the list. I was so grateful. Many guys I did know went to Viet Nam and most of them were changed when they returned. My father was in the Navy (retired and then went on to a great career using his Navy training as a diver to become a hyperbaric chamber specialist) and very proud of his service. When my father was proud of something anyone around him knew it.
Today we will go see him. His eyes are becoming a bit more empty all the time. His words are limited to yes, no and okay. He tries to speak but cannot which frustrates him still. He is slipping away constantly and it is so damn hard to watch. We still go and hope that although he cannot really communicate, he can hear us and understand that we are doing all we can for him. He has had a good life. As an only child he wanted a large family and when he found he had five kids and mulitple teens at once I think he felt he had bitten off more than he could chew. He was a strict disciplinarian. We hated that about him. He always knew best and if you didn't agree then it showed you were lacking judgement. He was headstrong. Once in a great while he will stomp his foot to let you know he means NO. I know what is coming and I know I must get through it but I wish it weren't so damn hard.