Papa

This is not how our summer vacation was planned.  I didn't even get a picture of Eric's birthday on the 4th-I missed his parent's coming by with his present(s).  We hadn't been over much, Memorial Day, and then a cold kept us at home for a bit.  But when we finally were able to make it to Nana's and Papa's on the 10th, everything changed.

We came to swim, not on our usual day, but we missed the water.  The girls went out to the radio room to see Papa and ask him to open the pool.  Thankfully, they're too young to understand anything more than Papa was laying down talking funny.  The paramedics came very quickly, within a few minutes of the call.  A massive stroke.  They took him to the hospital at 1:35.

I was able to get a hold of my husband and his brothers and sisters, they left work as I filled them in.  Everyone headed to the hospital, while I took my little ones home, far from the scenes they had just witnessed.  By 9:30 he was gone.  It's still to wrong in all of our minds, and I can't bring myself to say much more.  But he was my other dad, and treated me as another daughter-I always knew I was loved.