Father; Father-In-Law

My father gave me one day notice before driving up, and my boss graciously gave me the rest of the week off. I put Dad up in the master suite as I always do, which is a vertible depriviation chamber - he likens it to a hyperbaric environment as it is completely void of light and sound, with fans acting as white noise generators; says he sleeps better here than he does in his own bed.

The first night he was here, he accidentally took a prescription diruetic with his night meds, which caused him to get up out of bed once an hour, ever hour, and in the pitch black making the trek from the bed to the bathroom, eventually fell. I've really been dreading him falling - he hasn't fallen in over two years - and the first night he's here he falls. Woke me from a dead sleep. I jumped up to check on him, scared to death of what I might find.

Confident of his recent cyborg titanium hip replacement, and with a twinkle in his eye he says, "Watch this..." and jumps right up from the floor. I was honestly quite surprised, and awfully impressed at his new-found agility.

Then my father-in-law completely and unexpectedly passed away!!! This one shocked everyone as he was only in his early 70s. I jumped in to help out any way I could, as there was a lot to coordinate and accomplish in a very short time, as well as comfort and shuffle the children. I accidentally recieved a text from my son meant for his best friend in relaying the news, "Ima gonna miss his fish."

Dad chose to drive back to Texas given the shift of the focus of my time, but during the drive back from Northeastern Kansas, my boss' boss' boss called me, pressing me into service for the latest round of production outages we've been fighting the last month - the overnight shift for the 24x7 Task Force he put together with all the vendors. So I got home, went right to sleep, grabbed an uneasy couple of hours, and placed my nose firmly against the grindstone once again.

The adventure continues.