So, Selby Sharp, Stacy's father died on November 7th around 10:00 am.
He was 99 years old and just 4-months short of his most recent life goal of making it to 100 years old. It is a combination of sadness and relief for Stacy. Sadness because he's always been there! Relief because at 99-years old his life the last few months was not the poster for "those golden years."
For years Stacy and I kept hearing about his concerns of dying relatively young like his father had, in his 50s. Then it was "just make it to 80," then 90, then 95, then on his 99th last year he pondered just going for it and 100. He dodged Covid, being in Europe during World War 2, the Battle of the Bulge, his unit was on hand for the liberation of a concentration camp. He found that living that long and outliving all of his friends and colleagues from his career as a teacher at Riverside City College as well as friends he'd made over the years also wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
His last few weeks were actually pretty bad. Since I'm no doctor I can only speculate and say my opinion, I do believe a lot of his final issues were due to his obstinance regarding his necessity for oxygen intake. Yes, the nose tubes could be uncomfortable, the long line an annoyance but his body was already not doing so well with getting his own breathing to keep his oxygen levels where they should have been to keep his brain happy!
At some point though, something had to have happened that wasn't something super noticeable to the staff at the assisted living facility, but mentally he went downhill rapidly. Last week of his life he wasn't able to talk coherently or understand things being said to him. He could no longer stand or walk, he was primarily sleeping or just out of it. It did seem that he was at times living through episodes of memories of all those years of his life while semi-conscious. Prior to the last week, he was randomly talking and acting out scenes from his life. I can only assume that as a few times he was saying and acting things that Stacy recognized and I knew of too.
He had his last destination already set up years ago and will soon be sent to the military veteran's cemetery in Riverside, California, to be buried with his son, also Stacy's younger brother, who was killed just before his 18th birthday in an automobile accident decades ago.
Winter is working its way here!
While we have yet to have much snow, and last week we even got a sort of 'heat wave' with temps in the upper 50s, the weird weather from the last few years is still apparently in effect. Two days ago a wind storm came through over two days causing havoc for the region. Thousands of people had power outages, including us from 3:55 pm to 10:16 pm on Monday night. The flooding problems in nearby Washington and Oregon made the national news and were due to the same storm systems. Trees, buildings, all kinds of damage from up to 80 mph gusts, 60 mph locally.
Yesterday, although cold and started out pretty clear to cloud up in the afternoon, and it snowed very heavily for a while. Then cleared up to sunny and very cold overnight, with the morning low of 19 degrees (-7 C) and the high of 36 (+2 C).
The first "snow event" for the season that "might" have a few days of snow on the ground is predicted to be tomorrow night and into Friday. We'll see!
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