This is for Jenell's blog...

My mom & my mother-in-law died within a couple hours of each other a little over a year ago. My wife was with her mom in Chicago (we live in Florida), and the hardest part of that day was telling my kids, the second time, that grandma had died. I still cry over the memory.

After my mom died, my dad decided he didn't need to live any longer. He made a conscience decision to stop taking all of his cardiac & diabetes medicines, stopped eating any solids, and confined himself to his bed. Ten weeks later, he died.

When mom died, it was sudden, but not unexpected. When dad died, I knew it was coming, and watched the process intimately, first-hand.

I grieved openly and freely at mom's funeral, and had a lot of closure and healing. At dad's, I was pretty much uninvolved. Looking back at the past year I can see how much more his death has impacted me- in very negative ways. I feel like it's only been in the last couple of months that my life has started to return.

Don't know if there's a point to this story, but I think it helps me in some way to share it. Thanks for the opportunity Jenell, you've blessed me again.