Joe peacefully passed away last evening in the utmost comfort and with great dignity.....
THANKS SO MUCH to the amazing staff at Allied Services
Hospice Center who kept him calm, comfortable and pain free....
Dear God, I truly think I am strong enough now....
The last 5 weeks were filled with physicians, hospital and ED stays, medications and tests and more tests...
Through it all, I held my ground....
I tried to set an example of strength for my family and I carried them all on my shoulders and tried to prepare them the best I could for what I knew in my heart was the inevitable...
Even though these last 5 weeks were the most stressful time of our lives, they were a GIFT!!
We were allowed to spend time with Joe, tell him how much we all loved him and what he meant to all of us....
It is a Gift that he got to see our twin granddaughters and even helped to bring them home from the hospital when they were born.....
And
to see them and hold them ....
And to play with our grand pups...
A Gift that he was able to spend a few last days at home between hospitalizations...
The day he left the hospital to come home for a few days....
A Gift that he gave me the instructions on what I need to do to move on in life without him...
In the end, as I did with my mother, I gave him permission to go...
Told him we would all be alright and would never stop loving him and never ever forget him..that we would tell the Twins stories about him to make them laugh...
That his Mom, his sister Barb and BIL Rick, my Mom and Dad, my nephews Craig and John were all waiting for him...
That Cassie and Savanna were also waiting at the Rainbow Bridge for him...
He passed peacefully 5 hours later....
Even though these last 5 weeks were the most horrific weeks of our lives, they were a GIFT that many do not get....
And for that, we are forever thankful that we got the chance to say Good Bye.....
It was Joe's choice to go to Hospice because he knew that he would be made comfortable and pain free, be treated with the utmost respect and dignity and most of all, that we could remain his family and not become his caretakers.....
And that was the biggest Gift of all....
THANK YOU for all of your prayers and support during this difficult time...
It is gratefully appreciated....
And PLEASE understand that we will be saying our last Good Bye to Joe PRIVATELY as a family....
It is what we need to do to deal with this tremendous loss in our lives.....
I will be taking a break from Blogging for a bit to deal with all of this....
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