It is two days before your earthly 75th birthday and 5 1/2 months since you said goodbye to us here on earth. I did not think you were going to go, even though I knew you had to.
I was finishing up my job at SI when you got sick. I was on my way out, partially forced, partially by my own maneuvering, but in the end, was definitely the right move. I'd worked there for 16 years. You were never really on board with my sales job. You asked me when I first started if they are a manufacturer's rep but I assured you that they had an engineering group and a couple patents with more on the way. That job sucked my soul at times. One Friday in February, two weeks before your last weekend, I was on my way to MKE from Richmond, VA. I was going to head down to Kenosha to stay with my little fam for N's volleyball tournament and come up Saturday morning and spend the morning with you. RIC is a small regional and my 6pm flight that I booked it from UVA to make was cancelled due to mechanical problems. I thought I was going to lay out the young, free traveling lady who was blabbing with the agent for updates. I finally got my hotel voucher for the Richmond outdoor corridor Motel to stay until my 6am reschedule the next morning. By the time I got to my luggage, I was looking like a raging hag. I wanted to go home and I knew this was my last trip with many plans waiting at home. There were two German businessmen also collecting their luggage who had the presence of mind to sweet talk the agent to the full service Radisson hotel with a bar. They saw me and brought me in on the deal without me even saying a word. It was a little traveling guardian angel moment that came few and far between during my 16 years of travel. It is a stupid first world problem, I know. We sat at the bar, they asked me if my education was in quantum physics due to my product line. They sell chocolate manufacturing calibration equipment and travel 75% and had family complications I couldn't begin to manage so I was humbled. It was time for me to leave my job though and that was my last trip. I got into MKE at 9am and went up to see you in your room at Froedtert. I hung out all morning and you talked about your career, your job at Simplicity and how you and your team once pulled an all-nighter but got the project done. You talked about how your employer Gehl "hired Jimmy right out of college." You didn't even take credit for the being the who you know in that networking equation. You had a really nice nurse who grew up in Green Bay and her parents ran a bar. You always got the nurses talking folksy and at Froedtert, they were the best. You were so skinny and your veins were so weak that they couldn't complete a painful draw they tried to complete in your hand. You had been intubated twice and the second time you pulled out the tube when the doctors and nurses were talking with Mom, Missy and Tim about the ramifications on your ribs and bones if they try to jump start your heart, or intubate again. You pulled the tube out and said, "I want you to start my heart." You wanted to live and you had spent 13 years with lungs so compromised that many would have given up on the discomfort many years ago. You didn't like the effects of pain killers, ever. You worked hard to sell your business when you were really sick so we didn't have quite as much to deal with when you knew it was your time.
The Friday before you died you were on a liquid diet due to recurring pneumonia and very weak swallowing muscles from having been intubated for multiple days, twice. We were having a conversation with the hospice support team about moving you to a facility where you wouldn't need to be tested and poked and tubed and monitored to the point where your body couldn't even produce any markers. You heard some of it. I had brought you some of your favorite PB sandwich cookies from C's girl scout sales and you wanted to eat. You rallied and ate that whole box, and had a root beer and a coke and sirloin tips and gravy over mashed potatoes and saw your mom and brothers before you left on Monday.
You traveled from Froedtert to Sharon S. Richardson Hospice in Sheyboygan Falls on Monday night, February 22. Troy and Dr. Lipchik were with you when you left. You asked your pulmonologist of 13 years if there was any other hospital, any other place he could send you. He told you they would just say the same thing. Dr. L told us the Friday before that he would not put you through another intubation that would combat what was now an overflow of CO-2 that was going through your lungs and body. On the way to hospice, you drove through all your counties, Milwaukee, Washington and Sheboygan. You met Mom and Missy and chatted and were happy. They gave you a little oxygen and an almost clinically irrelevant amount of morphine to help you sleep when they left. You woke up the next morning and said you would take pancakes and then went to sleep for the day. When I got there mid-day, Tim was still there and he was suppose to have left to come back the next day. We were all asked to stay. You slept all day. I didn't talk to you very much even though they said your hearing would be the "last to go." I just looked at you sleeping and one of your eyes stayed partially opened so I thought you were looking at me too. I prayed for forgiveness and told you silently I was sorry for being such an awful kid sometimes. I am sorry. I know that you gave so much to the world around you and I was too self absorbed to appreciate, or even know the depth of, your struggles as a human being. You aren't any different from any of us and I am sorry I ever drew a line.
I know you are in Heaven. I hope you will watch over us and help us with our struggles. I pray for you and 2016 was so profoundly sad and moving. I am grateful that you helped give me life and I promise to make the most of it, instead of living in analysis paralysis. Thank you for life and joy. We miss you but will always be inspired and hope we can make a spiritual mark on this earth like you did. I hope to be a better person in your honor.
