I posted this to the cooking ng I frequent.  I wanted to post it here, as
well.  There are no favourite ngs but I'd been talking with them for quite a
while about how to encourage him to eat, and how to interest my mother in
making sure *she* eats when I'm not here.  So here it is:

He'd been under hospice care with comfort measures only for the last couple
of days.  His death was not unexpected, but it was so very difficult to see
him as mere shadow of his former vigorous self.  Still, when we saw him two
days ago he squeezed Mom's hand tightly.  And he gave me a little wave.
We'd gotten him a small stuffed animal (a bunny rabbit) and it was next to
him on the bed.  The nurses said he wanted them to keep it there.

Mom is doing okay.  She cried into her pillow when I woke her to break the
news.  But she stopped.  And she'll cry again.  We both did, we both will.
It's a process.

Dad was a very strict (and not always fair, being all for the
gender-specific double standard) father.  I suppose that could be said of
many of his generation, not to mention the military mind-set.  I'm his only
daughter.  I wasn't allowed to go to HS football games or school dances or
things like that.  And Mom, bless her, thwarted his attempts at keeping me
sheltered me every chance she got. <S>

I never actually saw him until I was a year old; he was stationed in Okinawa
when I was born.  But when he came home he brought me a little red stuffed
dog, which I named 'Woo Woo'.  He asked me out of the blue about a year ago
if I still have it.  Yes, I do.  I brought it with me when I was here last
December.  The "dog" he remembered.  He didn't really know who I was.

There are rare moments, sides of him he didn't always let show, that I've
been reflecting upon.  When they still lived in Memphis there was a little
girl who lived down the street from them.  She was, perhaps, 10 or 11 years
old.  She had leukemia.  She was dying.  She always said she wanted to go
fishing and Dad found out about it from her father.  So Dad and a friend of
his took her fishing.  I'll never forget her shining face as she walked up
the driveway when they got back; she was so excited.  "I caught a fish!"
She died not long after that.  He was able to bring a little joy into her
last days.  For that, I'm grateful.

And about the bunny rabbit stuffed animal we took to him in the hospital...
When they lived in Memphis they had a low brick wall along the front porch,
with drainage holes in the bricks.  A teeny tiny rabbit took up residence in
a hole inside those bricks.  Mom and I were sneaking "rabbit food" (heheh,
lettuce, carrots, etc.) out to it.  Dad had a wonderful garden in the back
yard and we were so afraid he'd try to somehow dispose of the baby bunny if
he knew it was there.  One day I was looking at it out the front window and
he growled at me, "What the hell are you looking at all the time out there?"
I said, "Shhhh... come look."  He muttered, "Better not be a cat!"  "Shhhh,
just look!"  He looked.  And he MELTED.  "Awwww, it's a baby bunny!  Do we
have any lettuce?"  <G>  Yeah, he was a softy at heart.

He never let us have any pets when we were kids, except for parakeets.  He
got me my first parakeet when I was 6, in Lakehurst NJ.  So when I moved
back in with them briefly after my divorce and brought my little mutt dog
Sampson with me, he naturally put up a fuss.  "If it craps in the yard you
have to clean it up!", stuff like that.  Next thing I knew he was on the
floor playing with the dog and telling me off if I scolded him.  He snuck
him bits of people food and didn't even fuss when Sammy hiked his leg on the
chives he'd planted out back.  He cried when Sampson died at the age of
nearly 18.

He always said he hated cats.  That changed as he got older.  He used to
love getting photos of my cat, Persia, and drank coffee out of a mug with
her photo on it.  Their neighbor here in SC has two black cats which he
enjoyed watching through the window.  He claimed the cats sat out there
listening to the television.  Maybe he was right :)

Dad will be cremated and his cremains interred at the Beaufort National
Cemetery.  He will have military honors and a simple graveside memorial
service; date and time still to be determined.  (We made preliminary
arrangements last week.)  His military commendations include a Silver Star
and a Bronze Star, 2 Purple Hearts and the Legion of Merit.  He served in
WWII, Korea and Vietnam.  Colonel Max McQuown, USMC Retired.  Bless you for
everything you did for your country and for your family.  May you have found
peace.

Jill