Last night we were all sitting in the living room with Mom. It was Lisa, Rachelle and I, along with Rick & Linda, Randy & Christine with their kids Katie and Jacob. Sasha and Josh were there too, along with Stella [A great-grandchild.] We missed Jenny and Jeff \u2013 though Jenny had joined us the evening before via skype [and when that eventually failed, facetime.]<\/p>\n
Many of us had had a difficult day. There are so many things that remind us of Dad and that brings up the uncertainty we have about him\u2026all the questions one has: What happened? Why? How could that happen, or how could we have prevented it. Why us? When will we see him again?<\/p>\n
You know, all those hard questions that there aren\u2019t any great answers for right now.<\/p>\n
But that doesn\u2019t stop us from wanting answers. It doesn\u2019t stop us from thinking about it. And it is hard feeling these feelings and watching others struggle with many of the same feelings.<\/p>\n
Yet, even with the hard emotions, this weekend was a really incredible experience where we enjoyed the friendships and care with all these truly precious people who are part of our family. We feel incredibly fortunate, incredibly blessed.<\/p>\n
I got to sit at dinner and hear the grand-kids talk about their camping trips with Granddaddy [Jay] and all the crazy things that happened. [And I\u2019m sure I only know the smallest part of it.]<\/p>\n
In closing, let me say. While it\u2019s one of the hardest weekends I\u2019ve had in a long time, it was one of the most rewarding too.<\/p>\n
I wish I was closer to all the kids \u2013 Jenny, Jeff, Katie, Jacob, Sasha. Each is so wonderful to watch and brings their unique personality. [Sloop Grand-kids: Should you ever need something, someone to talk to \u2013 I\u2019d be honored to be the person you come to. I wish the best for each of you.]<\/p>\n
I wish I were closer to my brothers too. It\u2019s not, at all, like we\u2019re estranged \u2013 but life and a million other things that, at the time seem terribly compelling, always seem to come between us and really connecting. I\u2019d like to change that too. So, I\u2019ll try. I may not succeed, but I\u2019ll try.<\/p>\n
Anyway \u2013 the summary is; Along with many sad times, we also really had some enjoyable and very meaningful times too. It would be really nice to keep doing that, and even better if we could do it with Dad too.<\/p>\n
-Greg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night we were all sitting in the living room with Mom. It was Lisa, Rachelle and I, along with Rick & Linda, Randy & Christine with their kids Katie and Jacob. Sasha and Josh were there too, along with Stella [A great-grandchild.] We missed Jenny and Jeff \u2013 though Jenny had joined us the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sloop.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}