Life…and Death
Is it really the holiday season?
Maintaining an attitude of gratitude this “holiday season” has become ever harder in the Dennison household.
At Thanksgiving, I looked for the good in all the challenges my wife and I had been facing in recent weeks, and I found my way to gratitude. The universe, either unsatisfied with my effort to locate silver linings or wanting to push that envelope to see what I could balance, dropped another bomb on us the very next day.
“Dad is dead,” came the loud cry across the smartphone my wife held to her ear, as her knees went weak.
I helped her to the chair for the remainder of the short phone conversation with her sister, who was in near hysterics on the other end of the virtual line. After several minutes of full body weeping in my arms, my wife collected herself enough to call his wife (not her mom but her dad’s second wife…a marriage of some 38 years now).
David had had an incredible and trying life, but he always managed to survive.
He survived a father who physically, verbally, and mentally abused, no, terrorized his mother and him. He survived two tours in Vietnam (including some still classified missions) and a dozen more years of army life. He survived stage 3 throat cancer. In recent years, probably somewhat related to the throat…
