Today I am going to be an expert on something that I have no business claiming. To make things doubly worse, this is the area that my wife excels in and she is in Texas. Just like most things in my life, we are here now so lets see what we can do.

It was 4AM, when my wife called. As you would expect, I was asleep. It took me a couple of seconds to process that Frank had died. You would hope that in these situations, the person on the phone would provide some level of comfort and assurance (that would be me giving it). Again, another thing that I am not good at. In my defense, I was half asleep and shocked as well as being not my strong suit.

Being the ‘do everything now’ person that she is, she wanted to me to wake up the boys and give them the message immediately. Which I did. The hour between 4-5AM was kind of a blur. There was silence, then praying, then my kids went in two different directions. One claimed that Grandpa would want a party and so we should celebrate and the other shut down and started crying.

Olivia called again around 5AM and we all talked together for a couple of minutes. After the call, I suggested to the boys that I make breakfast since we were all up. My thought was trying to keep us all together so no one gets too low. Surprisingly, they both wanted to go back to bed. I kind of wandered around trying to figure out what my next steps should be.

While they were sleeping, I hatched a plan that we were going to get out of the house together. Unfortunately because we are in quarantine our options are extremely limited but we could drive and we could be outside. My goals were to keep us together and provide an opportunity to grieve and share and open up away from electronic distractions

My first thought was to go to the beach since it was going to be over 100 degrees here. When I posed the idea to my son, he said that we should go to Bend (east and not west to the beach). I started thinking and I also wanted to go that direction. I had yet to see what the results of the wildfires last year.

Post Labor day weekend last year, millions of Oregonians experienced the wildfires. For several thousand (in this area of the state), their lives were shattered. Kind of like ours were yesterday. We saw a town that used to exist and 75% was roads, slabs and foundations. On the positive side clean-up was ongoing and new buildings were in various stages of completion.

I think that this is a good story to make a corollary. Grieving is a process. The acute event is bad but we have to know that the damage is slowly repaired over time by taking deliberate steps. I can’t just take one day off and everyone will feel better and be OK. I was around 20 when my Grandfather died. I still thought about him for years afterward. He never saw me graduate college or get married or see his great grandchild for whom he was named.

We ended the day in Central Oregon, explored some caves and made a list of new things that we wanted to do when we came back. We stopped and looked at things I always wanted to do but never seemed to have the time. We listened to music that we thought represented Frank or that we knew he liked. By the time it was dark, everything was a little bit better.

End Your Programming Routine: This was a win for me. I started the day not knowing how to relate to each child in the way that was best for them. By the time that it was over, I think that we all felt that we took a step in the right direction. We all feel remorse that we didn’t have a chance to say goodbye or one last thing. God willing, he hears us now.