Today was spent at the mortuary making sure dad was in good enough physical shape to be viewed. Mike Jameson was taking care of dad and it was so hard on him to even talk to us. I really admired his strength and could tell it was all he could do to keep it together. Dad and Mike played on basketball and softball teams for years together, referred ball games together, and watched the high school ball games together. Mike wasn't sure we would want to have an open casket, so we had to look at dad first. I was so scared to look, for fear I would see him in bad shape and not a memory I wanted ingrained in my mind. He really didn't look bad though, so we decided to have a viewing. That was so difficult for all of us to see him for the first time. Afterwards we went out to the sight were he had wrecked his pickup. He had been having a lot of emotional problems for the past few years with lots of depression and bipolar behaviors. He had started drinking heavily and usually went to the Byron bar on the weekends. On his way home Sunday night, he lost control coming around the corner and over the hill just before coming to Midway Motors and rolled his pickup a couple of times and was thrown out into a field. He was found by a passerby around 9 pm and when the ambulance and fire department arrived he was pronounced dead. It was really hard to see the skid marks on the road, the broken glass and pieces from his pickup, his minnow trap and hat in the field, and the blood where he lay to rest. I really struggled with the fact that he could still be with us if he hadn't been drinking and driving.
We stayed up until 1 a.m. with all 5 of us kids (Patrick was in prison and could not be there) and mom writing down thoughts and stories for his life history. We did a lot of laughing about good times. Our dad was such a fun guy with a great sense of humor.
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