Closing credits

So... it's been a whole week since Mrs Neo's Dad died. We're still prone to spontaneously blurting out our favourite G-Dad stories... but more often these days with a smile than a tear.

The whole family traveled to Toronto and retrieved G-Dad's ashes the other day and he currently sits... once again uncomplainingly... in his favorite chair looking out on the bird feeder. Even that brings a smile to my face... because despite the fact that it was a fairly expensive custom-made motorised lift chair... G-dad, in his year and a half plus with us... resolutely refused to even once use that feature.

That was, you see... for old guys... and he was having none of that.

We have also since learned that the last independent act of G-Dad's life was to redo his will and, amazingly, climb into his car and drive to a former law-partner's home to have it witnessed. Given his horrendous physical condition, which we discovered just two days later (6'2" and 125 lbs.)... which prompted us to travel to Toronto, kidnap and bring him back here to live with us... it was an errand of heroic proportions.

It's obvious to us now that G-Dad was feeling so physically precarious that he just had to tie up this one last loose end. While you or I would have been dialing 911, or looking for someone to drive them to the hospital... G-Dad just had to perform his last lawyerly duty.

It's just so typical... so utterly him.

I'm sure he had no idea that, with a little medical intervention, he had any significant amount of time left.

I'm just grateful that we got to spend it with him.