Another phone call. Early this morning.
When I saw the telephone number on the caller ID I knew.
D’s daughter was calling to tell us that her dad was gone.
He died last night. “Peacefully”, she said.
She was as calm and matter of fact about it as he had been back in mid-February when he called to tell us that he had brain cancer.
Because they physically can’t call all of the thousand or so people who loved D, they’re sending out a blast email with the funeral arrangements.
He was the mayor of his small town in northwest Missouri.
He was the owner of a highly respected senior care company.
He was the touchstone in the lives of so many.
There’ll be a lot of people at D’s funeral.
High muckety-muck Washington politicians from both parties will fly in, because they called him friend. But, so did the nurses aides and housekeepers and cooks in his company’s retirement communities. Because he gave them the tools to prove that they could honorably care for the nations frail elderly and he never let them forget how important they were.
The funeral will be Monday. We will go.