Saying good-bye

Ready, aim, fire.....this was very moving.  It was well deserved.

This is the last picture taken of me and my Grandpa :(  The nursing home shaved his head.  He always had a great head of hair, but they didn't want to deal with it.  He looked SO different.

This is Grandpa meeting Caleb for the first time.  Grandpa was not much of a kid guy, but I always wanted him to meet all my boys.  Sorry E never had the chance.

A week ago this past Monday I went on a NILMDTS call.  It was a hard one.  This beautiful little girl was a week old and passed just a little before I arrived.  Heart breaking.  I checked my phone when I got in the car and saw that my uncle called.  I was already in tears and called him back.  I found out that my Grandpa Brown had a day to a week to live.  I totally did not see that coming.  So, I was up the next two nights to work on the session I just did so the parents would have images at their daughter funeral.  Thankfully I have a wonderful photographer friend (yeah you, Kim) who let me pass the editing of that session off to her so I could finish up a few other things.  I was up til 1am Tuesday/Wednesday morning and got the call that my grandpa passed at 1:30am.  It was a hard night.  I did not sleep much after that.  Kim and I together got the images to the NILMDTS parents on time.

Saturday my brother, my mom and I got in the car and headed to Ohio.  The drive was OK until about an hour and a half outside of Cleveland.  The road was covered with ice.  We had to stop, so we did.  It was early and there was no where to go so I went to bed early which is what I needed to do.  We finished up the drive the next morning.  It was good to see my Grandma Burge and my uncles and aunt on my moms side.  Then we headed over to my dad's side of the family.  That was good and bad.  I don't get to see my Aunt Jan very often so it was good to see her and the rest of the family.  It got bad when we had to sort through all Grandpa's stuff.  Greed showed up and that was not cool.  Can't go into it, but it was a hard time.

The funeral was Monday morning.  The service was nice.  It sure made me proud to have him as my Grandpa.  He had a 21 gun salute and the navy did a service with flag presentation.  He was in 2 wars and was proud to serve our country.  My favorite memories as a child are going to my grandparents house for the holidays.  We had SO much fun.  After my grandma passed away things changed and my grandpa moved to a small apartment.  We could never all stay together at his place again.  Anyway, once I started having kids it was really hard for me to see him.  I felt so bad about that.  Noah and Caleb got to meet him, but Elijah never did.  All year I felt a pull to go see grandpa. In October I was able to visit him with my brother.  It was a short, but nice visit.  I was sad when I left him and kind of knew that would be it.  I know it was a God thing.  God is SO good to have sent me there before it was too late.  Anyway, I'm not feeling much like blogging, but I just thought I'd give a quick update.