Grieving Parent

Tag: Richard

  • Watching Football

    Watching Football

    Football season was always one of my favorite times with Richard – at least during his more adult years.

    While he lived in Lexington he came to most of our pre-game tailgate parties at Commonwealth stadium, when we went to UK games. He didn’t miss much free food. He also liked to come and “discuss” the game.

    We discussed and debated a lot of games. OK, we argued about some of them. But it was always in good fun for us both.

    But anyway, we watched a lot of games together on TV. College games. NFL games. Lot’s of football.

    His room is decorated in a Miami Dolphins theme. He had a Dan Marino bobble-head.

    So this year to celebrate the new season I brought down Richard’s TV set and replaced ours with his. He had a very nice big screen LCD HDTV. According to his cousins – former roommates – Richard was very proud of his TV. It’s much bigger than our little 32″ LCD model. It’s been setting up in his room with all the stacks of his other stuff we brought back from his apartment.

    So now I watch football on Richard’s TV. I’m sure he’s pleased about that. He tried to get us to buy one like it when we got our little set.

    I guess using his TV gives me a little piece of him. A very little piece of him.

    But grieving parents have to take what we can get.

  • Silence of the Birds

    Silence of the Birds

    It’s Halloween. Richard always had a good time with Halloween.

    So after church this morning we stopped in Kroger and got a couple of helium filled Mylar Halloween balloons to take to the cemetery.

    It was a beautiful morning, perfectly clear sky and crisp but not too cool air.

    A hundred feet or so from Richard’s grave is a small grove of trees. There are a couple of real tall trees there. As we left our car and started walking to Richard’s grave we were greeted  with birds chirping. It sounded like hundreds of them, coming from those trees. Reminded me of the old Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds. They were just chattering up a storm.

    So we were standing there holding our balloons and talking to Richard. The birds were making a racket.  We couldn’t see them, but it sounded like those trees were filled with them.

    Finally we told Richard happy Halloween and Debbie and I released our balloons into the air, hoping maybe they would sail up to him in heaven.

    As our fingers pulled away from the strings and the balloons started to rise into the sky – the cemetery went silent. Not a tweet. It was like the birds just vanished.

    We watched the balloons rise higher and higher, until they vanished into the sun filled sky.

    And the birds were still silent.

    We stayed a little while longer, talking to Richard more. And the birds never made another sound. It was still quiet when we left.

    That was really kind of weird.

  • Zombie Shopping

    Zombie Shopping

    Richard spent a few months working at Sears. He was in the tool department.

    He also liked Halloween.

    He always liked to run the haunted house at our church’s annual Halloween party. He was big into fake blood. He liked to paint on all sorts of cuts and bruises, black eyes and missing teeth. He had a very worn and torn t-shirt he always wore.

    Sears is running a special Halloween website. It has Zombies. They use Sears appliances for things most people don’t think of. Like chilling brains in the fridge.

    Richard would have approved.

  • Memorializing FaceBook

    Memorializing FaceBook

    Richard had a Facebook account. Not too surprising, nearly every college kid does.

    It’s sort of a piece of his life, dangling out there in cyberspace.

    Debbie was one of his “friends” on Facebook. I wasn’t.

    Facebook started out being limited to students only. Later they opened it up to everyone, and all us old people invaded the young people’s turf. I didn’t request to be friends with our kids or our nieces because I didn’t want them to feel like I was snooping. I decided to let them make the first move. Richard never sent that friend request.

    Debbie likes to go on his profile from time to time. His friends leave comments. It’s important to us to have his Facebook profile stay there.

    But he hasn’t logged on in a long time. Facebook has made many changes and Richard hasn’t been there to respond.

    So we’re worried his profile might be deleted someday. Debbie says that would feel like losing him all over again.

    So we looked for some way to protect his account. And Facebook has something.

    You can memorialize the profile of a deceased loved one. The “wall” remains active, so family and friends (active Facebook friends only) can post to the wall. The account is secured and locked down.

    So we requested to have his account memorialized.

    If you need to do this for someone you love here is the link to the Facebook form:

    http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=deceased

  • Mr. Honesty

    Mr. Honesty

    Early in our marriage we decided to become a one-income family so Debbie could stay home with the kids.

    This of course was tough for our young family to do. Money was tight. We had to do without and find bargains wherever we could.

    Debbie and the kids were grocery shopping.  As they wheeled down the sugar isle she was delighted to find a bargain price for sugar. I don’t know how it is at your house, but with three kids, we went through a lot of sugar. This was one of those special deals, a super low price, used to get customers in the door. It was much lower than the normal price.

    It was an ideal time to stock up.

    One problem – the special price was limited – one per customer. But with Debbie and the three kids as customers, she could get four bags at the super low bargain price. Great!!

    She put a bag in the cart and started passing each of the kids a bag, so they could take it through the checkout line.

    Time to save some money.

    But Richard didn’t want to play along. “I’m not a customer mom.”

    Debbie tried to explain how to play the grocery game. How he would be a customer when he bought his bag of sugar.

    “That would be cheating. I’m not really a customer. That’s lying.” Tears started running down his cheeks. His ethics could not be swayed.

    We got one bag of bargain sugar.

    Just for the record Richard, if you get the Internet up there and you’re reading this, I think it would’ve been OK to get the cheap sugar. You really would have been a customer if you only bought one bag of sugar.

    And also for the record, I was always really proud of your honesty and integrity. Even when it cost us money.