A Morning After
The world always looks different the morning after you get one of those middle-of-the-night phone calls. Even when they are expected, they still change the way things look in the morning. People are going everywhere, doing their normal business as if nothing has changed. Which it hasn't... for them. For you, on the other hand, the world has an emptiness that wasn't there when you went to bed. Someone is missing.

We got one of those calls in the middle of the night- early this morning. My father-in-law ended a realatively short struggle with a bunch of different illnesses that were more than his almost 89-year-old body (and soul) could handle. We knew it was coming since he was in hospice care. Our mental preparations had been going on for several years now, as each passing year brought a gradual slow-down. But one is never prepared in the end.

Just sad. Especially when you look at the world and know it's one person less today. We will go about our business, too. We will still eat and sleep, talk on the phone and go to work and all the other things that we do. Stan won't have to. May he have the loving grace of God with him for eternity.