(130/366) White to Wash Away the Pain

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May 9, 2012 – Nothing is ever easy. Particularly losing a parent. I took this photo earlier today, pink against a blue sky with dashes of bright green. But when we came home late this evening and found out there had been a loss, the colour seemed inappropriate.

It’s been a rough week or so for Kirk. He’s healing physically, but now there is an emotional wound too. His father passed away. Bob had been in the hospital for knee and hip surgery and had not been in good shape physically, His overall health was very poor. But when Kirk and Kim tried to check up on him at the hospital, they discovered that he had discharged himself, and wasn’t really in any shape to have done so. They had been worried about him for a couple of weeks, there had been no word; he hadn’t returned any messages, and no one had seen him in some time.

In some ways it wasn’t all that unusual, Bob could be an angry man and was proficient at alienating people and excising them from his life for years at a time. A few days ago Kirk called the Teamsters Union to ask if they could look in on him, and yesterday he called a woman who used to clean his home if she could stop by. She did, and found him.

I’ll remember two sides of Bob. As I say, he was an angry man, bitter at many things, and wont to hold on to insults that people had delivered long, long ago. He had an unhealthy way of dealing with people and he never let anything wash away.

And yet he was charismatic when he chose to be. He had a booming voice, a Burt Reynolds laugh, and even though he rarely showed it in recent years, I know he loved both of his children. And he loved little dogs, he doted on them when he had them. He was a colourful personality in so many ways.

He suffered a great deal of unhappiness that he couldn’t seem to ever let go of, and his body gave him a great deal of pain in the past few years.

Rest in Peace Bob, your suffering is over.