It's Halloween 1973

It's Halloween, 1973---Wednesday, October 31st--about 5PM.


It's dark, as we have set our clocks back the previous Sunday.


I have driven to college today, and about 10 miles down the road is Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital. That's where my father is. He has had surgery to remove his Prostate.


Its's dark--I enter his room and he is heavily sedated and sleeping peacefully---with a tube of some kind coming out of him.


He doesn't waken, and I don't try to wake him.


When I return home, the house is like a morgue.

Bob and Pat Smiley marry

My brother Bob and his fiance, Patricia just got married---congratulations!

My mother tells me my father has cancer

Sometime after dinner, my mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and she asked me to walk down to the Pharmacy on Orthodox street and pick up a prescription.

I guess I was a little puzzled as my father does all the errands---at that point, she told me my father had prostate cancer.

I didn't really know what to think---I didn't even know how to spell it (prostrate, prostate) and there was no Internet.

As I walked the two blocks to the Pharmacy and the two blocks back, I sensed that my childhood had just ended.

A little less than 2 years later, my hero, the man to this day I still refer to as the most saintly person I ever met (my mother is saintly too, but her temper and language are a bit stronger), was gone.

Everyone is here for dinner

It's a Monday, and everyone (mother, father, Joe and Annette, Bob and Pat are here for dinner).

What's going on?