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.
