Yesterday, our new good friend Jeff was in town. He had a doctor’s apt at 5:00pm so he showed up around 10:00am to see what we were doing this weekend.
I tell him, “I was in the mood to go hiking in our backyard.”… Iao Valley.
Right at that moment, Jeff’s doctor’s apt calls and asks if he could come right now to get it over with and out of the way… Perfect! We can go hiking and play all day like a local!
By noon, we are hiking up the needle. A great tourist spot… but… Jeff knows of a “shortcut”… which I have learned in my Daddy Randy’s language, means a groovy right on way to check something out. (And yes, Jeff does always say shortcut in the same meaning as my daddy)… We get to the tourist top of the trail and see a sign posted that says, “Do not go this way, stay on the paved trail” … you know one of those signs that my children have always thought were posted to notify them where the real way to go lies… Well, this was the shortcut Jeff spoke of… I loved the rebellious local act, that I now am, in front of gasping tourists.
We hike up on a well traveled path into the real hiking that I have been brought up with living in Utah.
The whole way, after we crossed over onto the local side of the hike, the boys and I kept commenting how much it feels like we are hiking at the cabin with Grandpa Randy because Jeff is so much like him and we are hiking the type of terrain he would take us on.
After the hike to the top of Iao Valley, we head to the beach near our house, taking the “shortcuts” so I don’t travel the tourist routes. This Jeff character is better than my smart phone navigator feature.
We get home and my daughter calls me and says, “Mom, Toni (my sister, who she lives with) is crying really bad, I don’t know what is wrong, something happened…”
While on the phone with her, Elden (my nephew who lives with me) comes in the room and informs us, my father, “Grandpa Randy died”…
Wow, okay, we were expecting this, but wow, it really happened. I love how we had felt like we were hiking with Randy at the cabin that day and it just so happened he died up at the cabin that day.
I seriously was shocked of my lack of feelings… But you figure, my father had already over dosed in 2009 and the paramedics were able to revive him. Now, when I had first heard of this… weeks after the fact… my brother in law had ran into my father at the plumbing house and he had told my brother in law, “hey, did you know I died a few weeks ago?” and then proceeded to tell Russ the story of his survival. Well, when my sister had called me up she started and said, “Did you know that Randy died? And…” …well… I screamed hysterically and it took her a few minutes to be able to calm me down via phone to inform me that the paramedics rescued him but that wife of his didn’t bother to let us know, which is a whole other drama filled story, some other time…but is what I am trying to say… I seriously processed my father dying that day in 2009. I had sobbed uncontrollably and called his home, leaving a message on their home answering machine of my obvious upset of finding out two weeks after the fact that my father overdosed and no one bother informing his two daughters!
Well folks, one can’t recreate something as genuine of reacting to hearing that your parent has died… When it is a false alarm and then they really do pass, if you are like me, I had made sure I had apologized and tried to make things right. Even if he did not receive me, I have a clear conscience how I left it.
Interestingly enough, being the picture freak that I am, I did not bring one single photo with me… I brought everything on my little passport computer thing and laptop… My two copies of my whole life… but not one single photo, on paper, in the physical realm, did I bring… The only photograph that made it to Hawaii, was Grandpa Randy’s graduation picture that Dallen grabbed at the last minute.
For you see, Dallen is looking more and more like his grandfather every day... Dallen’s beliefs and truths are developing more and more like his grandfather’s every day… well the daddy Randy’s beliefs and truths that I remember them to be… After my father quit smoking weed, he found a woman that wanted to get married in the temple for all time and eternity, so…he had to take seven prescribed pills to replace what Marijuana was able to do for him… I feel prescription pills and the religion ruined him. I felt a relief when I heard my father had died… He is free.
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