JMGarciaIII

This is the story of how it came to pass that I will be traveling, Deo volente, to the High Country. My views on The Great Outdoors are a very poorly kept secret. But Woman wanted to get away and Woman loves the Mountains and the Prairies (whereas I reserve my love primarily for the Oceans, White with Foam) and a friend offered their cabin in the Blowing Rock area. She said yes, immediately, and then told me that I was to say yes. Then she started circulating the news of this cabin's availability to our family circle, suggesting A Family Vacation would be a delight, and how we didn't see these people but once a year (somewhat inconveniently forgetting there just might be a really good reason therefor) and wouldn't it be lovely? A cynical person would think this was a classic, textbook definition of a passive-aggressive gambit. Not I, obviously, but a cynical person. But! She didn't know I had an ace up my sleeve. The lovely and gracious Karen Hall lives, like,

On April 25th, at +/-6am, after fighting Alzheimer's AND Parkinson's...my dad died. From a stroke. (A rather in-character thing.) It has been, among many other things, surreal. Given the fact he suffered from both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's his death was something frontmost in our minds, but we expected more of that long, slow decline. (Dementia-wise, we was 80% gone, so we still had some time to go in that department.) Earlier in my life, my dad and I didn't have an eye-to-eye relationship. Not something worthy of a book or film, but we had not-infrequent moments of friction. We had different personalities, and not always compatible ones. He had reached some rather lofty pinnacles on the strength of a forceful personality and it drove him crazy I didn't respond to that personality the way he expected me to. My sister was the one of us he "got" the best. He simply didn't know what to make of me half the time. I think it frustrated h