Results tagged “Dad” from Debi's Journal

This is the part where I get to quickly review the past 366 days. I only have a few minutes before I nod off, the first time I can remember in a long time not being awake at the stroke of midnight of the new year. I will probably skip a plethora of interesting events. Oh well!

January: I have my final two weeks of student teaching for a 1st grade class; the teacher and the students are wonderful. I panic when I learn my next student teaching assignment will be with a 5th grade class.

February: Mel and I dine at our first all-Vegan restaurant (I love it, Mel hates it). We also go to the La Brea Tar Pits for the first time.

March: Utterly forgettable, and forgotten, except for the part where I teach math to a bunch of 5th graders and like it.

April: Grand Canyon at the beginning of the month. Camp WiWoCa at the end of the month.

May: I present my teaching portfolio. Mel and I clean out stables at a farm animal rescue haven. Ugh. Gross.

June: Melody survives the 7th grade with a 3.5 GPA for the final semester. Doesn't get a flipping bumper sticker from the school, however.

July: Fireworksbirthdaystravaganza, but this is the same every year. And Mel misses them all, but this is the same every year. CELDT (pronounced "selt") all month long.

August: Mel is home for her birthday for the first time in around six years, and only because the beginning of the school year was pushed up a week. She starts 8th grade. Dad goes on a square dancing cruise to Alaska.

September: A boring month, considering the biggest event was finding a couple of year-old grapefruits still in the tree. Oh wait, there was Mel and her insanity with food at Disneyland as well...

October: My grand plan of having an awesome Queen of Hearts costume ready for Mel by Halloween doesn't pan out.

November: Disneyland, part two. Dad passes away. The rest of the month is miserable.

December: Mel goes wild at her school dance and then marches in a parade the following night. Everyone else still mopey. First Mel, then my sister, then I get hit by a nasty stomach virus of some sort, with me the only one unable to recover in under two days. The family visits the cemetery on New Year's Eve because of a 49th day Buddhist tradition; technically it's still 48.75 days, but going on New Year's Day does not appeal to anyone.

Good night.

The actual time for the full moon today in California is 8:37 a.m., just a couple of hours after sunrise. It is the closest and largest full moon in 15 years.

Dad died under the previous full moon, and I mean that literally. The Frosty Moon is November's full moon, and the temperature dropped to 42F degrees that night. It shined upon him from midnight 'til dawn, when Mom found him as she stepped out to get the newspaper.

So it's been a month already.

His official cause of death was natural causes. He had been out to a dance earlier that evening. Several people in attendance said that he had been suffering from a bad headache and didn't feel like eating. As a diabetic, it was important for him to maintain his blood sugar level, made all the more difficult because he hadn't felt an appetite for food in several years. Over the past few months he went into diabetic shock multiple times, which for him is basically a completely helpless state, but he was always around people who would feed him chocolate or orange juice or whatever to get his blood sugar level up.

The dance ended around 9:30 p.m., but he didn't come straight home. He went over to a friend's house, I believe in Yucaipa, and didn't leave there until around 11:30 p.m. He was able to drive the entire way home without incident, park his pickup truck, close the gate (by remote), and gather up his file box and camera case--the two accessories he nearly always had with him when he left in the early evening, and when he returned home late at night. He was wearing a dress shirt and a nice pair of black slacks, but no jacket.

He almost made it across the driveway before he carefully set down both the file box and his camera case next to the rose bed and collapsed.

Douglas Carroll Parrish
a.k.a. Paka
Beloved Husband, Father, and Grandfather
November 7, 1938 - November 13, 2008

We miss you so much.