230607 Life's Greatest Mystery

I’m not sure how this post will be perceived, whether sad or cold on its subject. This is a true story that I wanted to tell. It happened and I’m fine with my feelings on the subject. It’s all in the past as soon as I tap the send button.

It is written that no one will know when their time of death will be.

I’ll agree that the time someone dies as far as the hour of passing will be.

Here I will present two cases which defy the hour of death, but one prediction of the day and another of the week. I know both to be true because one was my mother and the other was my father.

My father was in a hospital about 90 miles away from where I was living and gainfully employed. On Sundays I could get away and drive there to visit him. I had been going there for several weeks. One Sunday as we finished our visit, I said, “I’ll be here next Sunday to see you.” He looked at me and calmly stated he would be dead before then. I told him he would be there next Sunday. I was wrong. He died on Tuesday. I took off work and went to help mom with his arrangements. Somehow dad knew he was about to die.

My mother was in a care facility. One Friday morning she called her sister, who lived in Arizona and mom told her to get in her car and come see her because she was going to die on the next Friday. Her sister did come to visit mom. Mom, always true to her word, died the next Friday.

Mom and dad are both buried in the veteran’s cemetery nearby. I was there for the interment and it was rough to handle. I continued to go there to their gravesite for a long time, but now the mere thought of it still brings me to tears after 22 years.

I have Joyce’s and her mother’s ashes here in my apartment. Some day, mine will join them on a shelf. I loved them every bit as much as I loved my parents, but the presence of them so close doesn’t bother me at all. Perhaps with mom and dad, it’s the fact that they have a grave marker with their names on it and they will be in that ground in perpetuity. Joyce and her mom will be with me for as long as I live and I’ll be there next to them some day. Whatever the kids choose to do with them is fine with me. They can mix all three together or they can toss them on their property. As long as we are remembered, I’m happy. Joyce, me and her mother will be like footprints in the sand, most people will never know we ever existed and that is my and their desire.