When good men lose hope they wither and die

Dads life had been anything but easy. To his credit, he rarely complained about anything, he simply wasn’t wired that way.

As a teenager, he broke his back and spent six months in a cast. As a result of that early injury, he spent the rest of his life in constant pain. Although you would never realize it because he absolutely point-blank refused to complain about it.

As a way of coping with pain, he often used humor. Some of his jokes were so bad they were actually quite funny. I once asked him how much it cost to get married and without missing a beat he said, “I’m really not too sure son, I’m still paying for it.” He’d been married to my mom for more than sixty years and with some degree of predictability, he always joked that the first fifty-nine were the hardest.

Mom and Dad were inseparable best friends, in all their time together, they never spent a night apart. So the day Dad complained of chest pain they even went off to the doctor together. The doctor shook her head and immediately sent them to the hospital for more testing. Legend has it that they even rode in the ambulance together, holding hands.

Once there, Dad was put through a pretty intense examination. It was then deemed necessary to keep him for observation. Now separated from each other, Dad quickly found himself being…