The Elephants in the Room . . .

I want to start by thanking all of you who responded to my request in the last post for direction on where to go next -- and what to do with a cell phone full of pictures that go with untold show and travel stories from the past eight or nine months.  The vast majority recommended that I move forward, and intersperse the older stuff in as I saw fit.

Works for me.  But enough of you had no idea what was going on in my family until two days ago – and your support has meant so much to us over the past ten years – that I need to address the elephants in the room first.  So today I will bring you up-to-date on Mom and Dad, and in a day or two do the same with my prostate cancer.

This was our 2018 "Christmas Eve Eve" family picture -- we have done this every year since the boys were born.  It has been fun over the years to watch the family grow -- and we already knew that the 2019 picture was going to be very different, since both Gina and Jordan were expecting here.
Six days before, Mom had moved into an Alzheimer's facility about five minutes' walk from their condo here in Ohio.  Dad had taken care of her, mostly 24/7 by himself (his choice), for three years since she reached the point where it was no longer safe to leave her by herself.  But Mom had reached the point where she needed more specialized care, and frankly Dad was worn out.
Mom is very happy and very active here – we visit often, and the staff tells us how sweet she is and that she goes out of her way to help people.  She has good days and bad, but most of the time she recognizes me when I come in and we usually take long walks in the hallways together.

In late January, Dad decided that he needed to go back to Arizona for a while – he hoped that some time hiking in the mountains that he loved so much surrounding Tucson would help to clear his head and relieve the stress of caring for Mom the past few years.  On February 5, he went hiking in Madera Canyon – an area he had hiked many times in the past and an area that Blake and I hiked with him eight years ago.  Somehow he lost his way and couldn’t find his way back to the trail.  He called 911, but despite a massive search over the next week in subfreezing temperatures and snow, rescue teams were unable to find him.  I listened to the 911 call several weeks later, and suspect that he may have had a mini stroke, because he couldn’t tell the operator the names of the trails he had been hiking.

A few weeks later, Blake and I went to Tucson to wrap up Mom and Dad’s 30-year retirement life there and thank the sheriff’s deputies who led the teams that put their lives on hold while searching for Dad.

We took some breaks along the way to hike some of Dad’s favorite trails.

Life went on – life always goes on – and months went by.  The deputies told us that they planned to hold search and rescue training exercises in the area where Dad got lost, but the Arizona winter was so unusual that four feet of snow were there until well into the summer – in an area only 20 miles from the Mexican Border.

By early July, I started telling people who asked that if the mountains surrounding Tucson that Dad loved so much became his final resting place, I was fine with that.  And then a hiker (ironically from Ohio) got lost in the same area, and while trying to find his way back to the trail stumbled upon Dad’s belongings. 
Two days later, he took a search team back to that spot, and it took only a few minutes to find Dad’s remains.  These pictures are from that hiker’s blog – he was very careful to post pictures that would not show anything upsetting.  We are very grateful to him for his efforts.  About three weeks ago, Dad’s remains finally arrived in Ohio and were buried in a local cemetery.

Along the way, we discovered that there is a blessing to Alzheimer’s – Mom has no idea what happened.  We are very grateful for that, too.