Drear

It's dark. It's cold. It's raining.

Pretty much matches the mix of emotions swirling inside me right now.

My nephew died this morning. I don't know when, I just know it was early. My father-in-law called me at 7:00 am to tell us, and I called my wife at work to let her know. We then had to tell the kids and they took it with a mixture of emotions. My daughter was sad; my son was happy that little John McMillan would become an angel. I think that thought kind of calmed us all.

Without getting into the medical side of it too much, John McMillan was born with some calcified spots on his brain, much like my sister. Whereas my sister would have a seizure or two or sometimes three a day, my nephew had them about every thirty minutes, and that was if he was lucky. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law faced some really tough decisions--ones I thank God every day that I never had to make--and they filed do not resuscitate papers back before Christmas. While we had been expecting this phone call for months, it didn't make it any easier. The only good thing was that it wasn't too much of a shock to the kids because we had explained it to them a long time ago.

My wife went down to Atlanta to be with her family--naturally, on the day the biggest blizzard of the season--and definitely the worst in the past six years--hit the southeast. I'll be here with the kids for the next three days or so. Sorry, it's really snowy and crappy, otherwise, I'd throw a kegger. Fuck, I might just do that anyway and just invite myself.

Also, I want to say now...while I've never met most of you folks, I know what kind and caring people you can be. This is one helluva blog community we've built up around ourselves, and it's one that I'm very thankful to be a part of. So, I want to say thank you ahead of time, because I know that you're all going to offer prayers and thoughts and kind words for me and my family. My wife reads this, too, so I know she'll appreciate it, as well. Thank you all, because you're awesome and you'll make me feel better. I'll try to get back to my perky self soon, but in the meantime, I'm going to work through some sadness.