Back in January, after reading this entry in Waterbelle's diary, I decided to have some fun and try making my own "mini-me". It was kind of cool, if a bit annoying. Their Java thingy didn't want to work too good for me, guess it didn't get along with my browser. But, I was able to make a couple of versions of me. The first one is what I look like normally, bad hair and all, and the second one is me, a little more "au natural". I like 'em both. How about you?

It was actually kind of interesting to look through all the different hairs, eyes, clothes and stuff and find something that actually fits you. Luckily, they don't have a "fat" body, they're all the same shape. What a boring world it would be if that were true, eh? Anyway, if you're interested, go try it yourself and see what you come up with. The only rule is that you have to share with the rest of us D-landers. Ok? Ok. Buh-bye. Buh-bye now. Good.

This has been kind of a bleak week for your everlovin' 'Bear. I received an e-mail yesterday from my mother telling me that a longtime family friend had passed away Monday night. Mr. O, as I'll call him, was a friend of our family for as long as I can remember. He went to my parents church, he did our taxes, he and his wife even babysat for me and my sister a couple of times. Hell, he was the guy who sold my dad the Sears catalog store that we ran for about 12 years. My dad is in his middle 50's and I think Mr. O wasn't too much older. For a while, my dad even worked for him at his real estate office and, after he left to go to Forbes, they partnered up to buy some fixer-upper houses to use as rentals. That's how I knew his health was failing though. I "talk" to my mother every weekday through e-mail and I would hear about how my dad has had to do more of the work on the houses because Mr. O is getting worse. It was a tough time.

Mr. O had diabetes, plus a few other problems I'm not 100% sure about. I think he battled with cancer too. But it was the diabetes that, a few weeks ago, caused him to have to have one of his legs amputated from the knee down. Everything had gone fine and he was in the midst of a good recovery when, as I'm told, complications arose and he was rushed to the hospital Monday morning. He died that evening. His father, Mr. O Sr. is 98 years old, and it was pretty much assumed, would outlive his son. Things like that sometimes make me question the ways of the world.

I think the reason that this has been such a dark week for me has been that I've been thinking about my grandfather a lot lately. My mother also told me of another family friend who passed away, an elderly woman who I can't really recall, but one of her sons, she said, was asking about me. The woman was a friend of my grandfathers as well. When I think about my grandfather, the one on my mother's side, I get a kind of pit in my stomach. I lost my grandfather on my dad's side to cancer when I was 5 years old. I didn't even know what was going on. First, grandpa is up, walking around like a normal person, still delivering spankings when I deserved them...and I almost always did. Then, he was in a hospital bed that had been brought into their home. Then he was gone. That's the only way I can remember it. I remember seeing him lying in his bed, complaining about his catheter and looking frail and sick. Then I remember the bed being gone, the chairs and lamps replaced and him not around. I don't ever recall knowing he died. He was just gone.

I lost my grandmother on my father's side around '92 or so, the date's kind of fuzzy. I was her favorite grandson (and I'm not just saying that, others told me so) and I took it very hard when she passed. Then, in 1998, I lost my grandmother on my mother's side. That was tough for my grandfather to handle. It was in the winter. She was in the hospital and he was home alone and to keep his mind off of her, he decided to get out and do some work, that he knew he shouldn't be doing. He slipped on the ice and broke his hip. He was in the very same hospital that she was in, was there when she died, and didn't get to see her. He never really handled her dying very well.

My grandfather grew up on a farm, and if he had his way, he'd die on a farm. He and my grandmother had 6 kids and after each was grown and had moved off the farm, things kind of slowed down. He was used to getting up early and doing chores and working hard while grandma, who worked just as hard, did the cooking. No one could cook like my grandma. It was with great trepidation that we finally got them to move into town, off the farm. For a while grandpa bitched, but he soon dealt with it. Problem was, he became kind of lazy. Grandma still did the cooking and cleaning, but since they didn't have any cattle or a large plot of land to work, grandpa didn't really have much to do. He owned a few houses in town that were rentals and had a garden at one or two of them which he would tend, but other than that, nothing much. It may sound bad but we hoped that, if one of them had to die, that it would be him first, because if grandma went first, he wouldn't know what to do. He wouldn't have anyone to take care of him. Unfortunately, that's what happened.

Nowadays, he sits at home, alone and watches the time pass. When I think of him, it hurts inside, I can almost feel the lonliness. Sadly, not only did grandpa lose his wife 3 years ago, but in 1999 lost his brother, and then last year lost his brother's wife. Most of his friends are now gone. The only visitors he has are my mother and his other kids. My mother is the oldest lives in town and visits him every few days. Her brother, the only boy, lives in a town about 30 miles away, but he and his family come almost every weekend or so. The next oldest, Linda, lives just outside of town, but works at the local bank and visits him every Thursday. The rest of the kids live farther off, but still come very often to visit. His only other visitors are the nurses who check to make sure he's taking his pills and the cooks who come to fix him lunch everyday. So, when I think about him, it hurts.

When I went back in October for my football team reunion, I made sure to stop by and see him as often as I could during my 3 days there. The look on his face when he got to see his new great-grandson was priceless. I just wish I could have taken the whole family with me. His face actually seemed to light up while I was there. And he's full of stories, stories about the war (WWII), stories about farm living, stories about life. It's hard. Somedays, I sit here and wait for the e-mail from my mother that says she went to grandpa's for lunch and when she found him he was asleep in his chair, or so she thought. He had actually passed in his sleep. Or something to that effect. On one hand, thinking of that kind of lifts a burden from me. I know he feels lonely and that he's not truly happy, but at the same time, I also don't want him to go. I'm not sure how I'll react when that time really does come. I guess only time will tell. Seems like most times, I don't have enough of it, and that it's all that he does have. Time...