03-23-2019, 07:06 PM
(03-23-2019, 06:51 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: My Dad passed away today. He was 94 years old.
I am now an orphan. My mother passed away Sept. '16.
My aunts and uncles are going rapidly too.
I can only imagine how rough that is, especially if you developed a strong bond. Unless he was a monster, you surely developed a bond. You seem like the sort to bond well with others.
My parents were not models of easy-going modernity, and I had thought that I would get out from under their thumbs. I find that they are in my dreams more often than is comfortable. I keep thinking of what they would do.
What's so terrible about being 63? One is expected to be a repository of sage advice, and even with a high IQ and all sorts of learning one can feel inadequate.
When my father was in rehab for a broken hip (he got over the broken hip, but he went senile) I asked him what he most wanted to see.
The Masters (golf tournament). It was spring, and I figured that he would be ready to go on a long road trip to a part of the country in which I had never been. He could no longer play golf, but he could appreciate the beauty of the game. But that seemed reasonable enough. We would get to see the Great Smokies, and maybe Shenandoah together and perhaps take some side trips. You probably heard the story -- he became violent and abusive, and obviously unmanageable and unpresentable.
Remember the best and forget the worst? That asks for way too much.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.