{"id":22401,"date":"2011-08-24T08:17:04","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T15:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=12798"},"modified":"2016-09-17T17:39:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-17T14:39:45","slug":"the-62-that-never-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/the-62-that-never-was\/","title":{"rendered":"The 62 That Never Was"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My father would have been 62 years old today. He died of colon cancer in February 2007 at age 57.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_12799\" style=\"width: 385px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/dadandme.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12799\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12799\" title=\"dadandme\" src=\"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/dadandme.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-12799\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">my dad and me (age 10 months) on January 25th, 1980<\/p><\/div>\n<p>My father had a difficult life. He certainly didn&#8217;t make it easy on himself, but there were a lot of external forces against him, too. He was old and bitter and falling apart by his 40s and I knew I would lose him young.<\/p>\n<p>So I was not surprised that he approached death the way he did, with open arms eager to embrace the mystery, but was surprised by how prepared and matter of fact he was about the whole thing. That his life was ending was logical, all lives end, but he could make it easier for those he left behind.<\/p>\n<p>In those last days, he taught me that the only true wealth we gather in this world is our memories of a life well and richly lived. I honoured my promise to him that I would make changes that would enrich my life and make it happier. The wealth of memories I have accumulated in the last three years would be enough to satisfy me for a dozen lifetimes.<\/p>\n<p>Time has marched on since that bitter cold February morning and now I sit on this fifth birthday of his without him. Five birthdays. Four and a half years. I miss my father terribly, but I know that he would find satisfaction in seeing what I have made of my life since he died.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My father would have been 62 years old today. He died of colon cancer in February 2007 at age 57. My father had a difficult life. He certainly didn&#8217;t make it easy on himself, but there were a lot of external forces against him, too. He was old and bitter and falling apart by his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}