Hi Brian,

I thought I saw you at the Indiana State Fair on last Friday the 8th. I was going to approach you and say "hay", but It's been 10 years since I've seen you and I wasn't sure if it was you. You may remember me back 10 years ago we meet at a Indianapolis Song Writers Association meeting in the basement of a church. I was the guy who alway brought a boom box and played pop songs. Well anyway, I wanted to express my deepest sympathy for your father frown . I lost my father back in 2002 and still seems like yesterday. When he died, something changed inside me. It was like a turning point in my life. My dad died of old age and diabetes at the age of 83. It feels like he has gone on a vacation and has never returned and never will. I had a dream one night (when he was still sick before he died) of him getting on a bus and saying good bye to me when a tornado was just about to hit the area. I can still see and feel the inside of that bus and the urgency of telling him I loved him to this day. I love my dad more now and can admit it easier then I could when he was living. It's been almost 6 years now since his death. I can remember my dad vividly in my minds eye at the age of 50-60 the best. Those years were my childhood years that defined who I was. He didn't make as much of an impact on my life when he was older (75-80), because of him slowing down. He was everything to me and I did even know it at the time.

It was more of a relief when he died, because he had dementia and was hard to care for. We had no health care that could keep up with his needs at the time. He would say these weird things that would have an ounce of truth but would be mostly made up fantasies. It was hard to see him in such a fallen state. I remember looking into his eyes a week before he died and seeing a cold blank stare gazing back at me. It was as if he had died already. I will never forget the night he died in the hospital. He had my wrist in a death grip and could not talk clearly but he mumble at top of his lungs the words "I love you!". His face was all dehydrated and he looked like a character out of a scene from "Dawn of The Dead" because he had refused to eat for a week at the nursing home he came from. His teeth were showing because his lips had shrunk back so far because of the dehydration. It felt like cold ice was poured on me to see him in such a fallen state. He didn't die in my arms then in the ER, but later that night in bed. I had no idea that was the night he was leaving us forever. I thought the doctors would just patch him up and he would be on his way again. He had been in the ER 3 times in the last 3 months. I remember feeling so hopeless in the elevator after this meeting in the ER of not being able to do anything about his fallen state. I could not talk to my own father anymore because his speech was so slurred because of dementia and dehydration.

It felt like my dad was butchered by this thing called old age and diabetes. It was like he was chopped down like a tree and I or any other family members or doctors could not do anything about it. The lowest time of the whole situation wasn't at the funeral it was out at the burial site. When the 21 gun salute went off, each gun shot felt like somebody pounding a steak through my heart 21 times with a sledge hammer. I could feel the tears at that point well up at that point but they didn't come out. But, my mother did fall back into her chair because of the trauma and gravity of the situation. She just fell apart like putty in my hands. I remember grabbing her before she fell on the ground to sit her back in here chair when every body else remained standing though out the gun shots. It's everything you would see in a movie but with your own family members playing the role of each movie character. Now I know how the Kennedy's felt when JFK was shot. It was like a page of the time was ripped out of the 60's and I was playing the role of John-John. The greatest fear my dad had was me being just a boy when I would see my father die. He wanted me to be a grown man to face the gravity of his own funeral. That's what he wanted for me all along. Because he knew he would someday die and leave me here on this earth when I was either a boy or still a young man, because I was born when my dad was 45. John-John had to be a man at the age of 4 to face his dad's funeral. I still can't believe I did not cry at the funeral. I didn't cry because I didn't have any feelings for him (I really did) but it was more of I knew he was in a better place and I was a grown man now and I could sustain the sadness of him leaving.

Kip