The only reason I'd want to leave Spain early...

...is to comfort a friend. 

Today Stefanie messaged me on Facebook to tell me that her dad died this morning. I don't know who reads this, but some background information: Stef's dad Bob was basically the voice of little Orange, CT. He was really active in the community, he was the name everybody knew. He was on the heavier side though, so he got this gastric bypass sometime in 2008 or 2009, and after that it was all downhill. 

Soon after the surgery he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease - also know as ALS.. i don't know all the details, but it's basically a disease that slowly shuts down all the muscles in your body. (I'm convinced there is some sort of correlation between the surgery and the disease). Within less than a year he was very skinny, not the jolly-looking Bob everyone knew. He was much weaker, and had already taken a couple of falls, and was having trouble walking. At first he tried to keep up his spirits, writing letters to congressmen and the FDA to get him into some trial program.. actually, he did all that till the very end. 

But every time I saw him he seemed to be getting worse. He went from walking slowly, to walking with some sort of cane or walker, to a wheelchair, to an electronic wheelchair. Soon, I couldn't understand him when he spoke. He couldn't drive or work anymore, so he spent a lot of his days in front of the television or computer - something he was NEVER used to - he had always been active, out and about! And when someone all of a sudden cannot be as active as they used to be, it messes with you, it depresses you, it makes you desperate. His friends would visit from New York to take him out, and that always cheered him up it seemed. But it was of course still hard.

This past summer, he lost the use of his voice. The family got some sort of device that could measure his eye movements - so a computer started speaking for him. There were times, though, where doctors thought he might be getting better, slowly.

This week Stef's family adopted a dog for Bob, as he had always wanted a big dog (it's a black lab). But they had to have him (Bob) stay out of the house, at some sort of convalescent home while they smoked out the house to get rid of fleas. I'm not sure if he ever got to see the dog - he passed in the convalescent home. Thankfully, his wife and Stefanie's siblings visited him a lot over the weekend. But Stefanie told me she hadn't seen or spoken to him since his birthday, which was at the end of September..

It's hard not to be there for a friend, especially once that's always been there for you. I told her to message on Facebook whenever she wanted, if she ever wanted to vent, and that I'd always respond. I wish I could go to the service for him, because he really was a loved man, even when things got hard for the whole family at the end. I think my parents are going to go though, so they will send my condolences of course.

High school graduation!

The saddest part of all is that Stefanie always joked with him, 'You have to stick around for my graduation!', and 'You have to stick around to walk me down the aisle!' The last one especially is really important to her.. she always called herself a Daddy's Girl.. I know she'll be alright in the end but it's still so sad the way everything happened.

I think this was his last Hoedown.. always so fun

Rest in Peace, Bob