A voracious reader

Dad always was a reader and so was I.  When we lived on 10th Street in Nevada he brought home the My Friend Flick books from the library.  As soon as he finished one, I got it to read.  Over the years we read many of the same books.  He had a collection of books by Zane Grey.  I read some of them, but they did not appeal to me, too old fashioned.  He had all the Edgar Rice Burroughs books so I read about Tarzan's adventures.  He had all the John Carter Books so I went to Mars and met Tars Tarkas and Deja Thoris and all the other wild and fabulous creatures of Mars.  We read all the Black Stallion books.  He had lots of Science fiction books and so I was introduced to Isaac Asomov and Robert Heinlein.  He had all of the James Bond books so I fell in love with Ian Fleming's James Bond.  My daughter is named after a character in Diamonds are Forever, Ms T. Case(The T stands for Tiffany).  I think Westerns were his favorites and we read all of Louis Lamour's books about the Sacket family.  After I grew up and left home he started reading spy books and what I like to call "macho man" books that did not appeal to me.  I tried reading a couple but never developed any enthusiasm for them.  But then we got back together with Ann McCaffrey's series about Dragons and Jean Auer's Clan of the Cave Bear series.  We shared the books.  When a new one came out, one of us bought it and read it, then sent it to the other.  Dad lived with me after mom died in 2013.  Karen ordered books for him from the library.  I would pick them up 10 at a time!  He read one a day except during baseball season, when he slowed down a bit. 

This picture of dad was taken at the eye glass store when we were picking out his glasses.  He went back to an aviator style frame that came with clip on sunglasses.  He looks very cool, like a hero in one of his adventure books. Over the last year (2015-2016) he had stopped reading.  The illnesses and surgeries had taken a toll on him and it was getting too hard to see and hold the books. He was hoping these glasses would allow him to read again.  Sadly, this did not happen.  Shortly after he got his new glasses he started feeling poorly.  His lungs were filling up with fluid again, his heart, which had only worked at 30% for the past 28 years was unable to keep his blood circulating.  Just after Christmas he was back in the hospital and he made the decision to refuse rehab and enter hospice care. 

I walk down the hallway past his room, see his empty chair and my loss hits me over and over.  I am grateful for the blessing of having him with me all this time.  I remember when his heart problem was first diagnosed in 1989.  As I drove home to Wisconsin after I visited, each time I thought it might be the last time I saw him alive.  None of us expected him to live and yet somehow he did live another 28 years.  Lived to see weddings, parties, holidays and great grandchildren, Lived to enjoy Mom's retirement and a move to a condo in Ankeny with Mom.  He lived to travel to the Grand Canyon with Steve, to take a ferry to Washington Island, to take a charter fishing trip on Lake Michigan and to make a move he never expected to make to a condo by Lake Michigan in Wisconsin with me.