And then there were none . . .

Today started out like most mornings here at the asylum:  fighting with the kids to get them up, dressed, fed and to their respective places with minimal injury.

In the midst of the morning chaos, my phone rang and, since it was a number I didn't recognize, I didn't answer.  Later, while waiting in the drive-thru for my coffee, I noticed there was a voicemail; it was one of my cousins in Oklahoma.  Since my family isn't the type to contact me out of the blue, I knew something was wrong and once I was able to call her back, she confirmed my suspicions:  my dad had died.

 

He hadn't been well for a while.  The end of September, he had been in the hospital (third or fourth time in a month) due to multiple minor strokes and heart attacks.  As a matter of fact, it was yet another heart attack this past Saturday that put him back in the hospital.  From my understanding, he'd never taken care of himself and had suffered from severe diabetes and heart trouble; it was only a matter of time before it all caught up with him.

 

We were never close; the last time I saw him was October 1993 and the last time I spoke to him was January 6, 1999.  Despite this, I wish I would have been able to see him before he passed or I should have at least made an effort to call.  I never asked for anything from him, not even his time, but he was still my father biologically and now he's gone.  I'll never know why he chose to not be a part of my life or why his most active hobby was getting married (my brother and I estimate he'd been married 20+ times total with my mom being wife number three).

 

I am now officially out of parents:  my mom died June 26, 2000; my step-dad on April 3, 2008 and my dad this morning, January 13, 2011.  This realization leaves a feeling that I'm at a loss to describe.

 

The funeral will be in Texas sometime next week and he is to be buried near his parents . . . it's a sad fact of life when the closest thing you get to a vacation is traveling for a funeral.  Funny how that works.