I Was Right

Do you guys know what I like? Well, yes, boobs. And butts. Oh, and legs. Don't forget college basketball. And bacon. Sweet, sweet bacon. *drools Homer-style*

Sorry, got off course. Helmsman! You're fired.

While I like all of the aforementioned--some, a little too much *slaps belly*--one of the things I like most is being right. If you go back and read the last paragraph of my previous post, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I'm going to backtrack a little here. When my sister died in September of 1997, I was a sophomore in college. Now, I went to a small, midwestern Catholic college where the community was fairly tight-knit. Yeah, there were some douchebags who went to school there, but most of the people there were good, kindhearted people. I learned this the "hard" way. My aunt and uncle got the call on that Tuesday morning with the news about my sister and they sped off to St. Joe's to pick me up and bring me back home. My school was only a few miles up the road from Purdue, where my cousin Scott attended. My aunt and uncle had often said they might pop in to visit me on their way to visit Scott, so I thought nothing of it when I saw them in the hallway in front of the cafeteria. Of course, a couple minutes later, I knew why they had come.

Being that it was a small school and fairly tightly-knit, and that the news was delivered to me in the cafeteria, people knew something was up. I finally found the strength to drag myself to the computer lab to email my professors and let them know I would be gone for a few days--bawling the whole way, despite the fact that I have this illusion about myself that I'm the emotional rock that others can cling to during a storm. Apparently, while I was in the computer lab, the news spread as to why I had been reduced to tears like that and...wow...the caring outreach that was offered by people I hardly knew and--guiltily--didn't really like struck me hard. Every person who came up and offered kind words or a hug or offered to help in any capacity caused me to choke up once more. In fact, I'm a little choked up now.

The reason why I tell you this is because I had the exact same reaction whenever I got a new email telling me that one of you, dear readers, had the same effect. I knew it would. I knew you all would be absolutely as kind and wonderful as you were. And still, it choked me up to no end.

Thank you. Thank you all. That's all I can say. I would go back and thank each and every one of you personally...but let's be honest here. You know I'm lazy. Plus, it'd be really boring to say "Thank you" 30 times. Just, please, know that I am eternally grateful to all of you, but, best of all...I was right about you all. And that made me happy.

The funeral for little John McMillan was today. My wife read at the funeral, and she said it was one of the hardest thing's she's ever had to do. Couple that with the fact that she is coming off a nasty cold, and her voice is pretty hoarse, to the point where she sounded like a teenage boy going through puberty. I told her if things got too bad, she could just bust out with "When it's time to change, you've got to rearrange." For some strange reason, she declined...not sure what was going on there. I guess the funeral was beautiful and awful at the same time--beautiful because it was so well done, and awful because he was a baby. So, now we're all going to begin the coping process knowing that he's in a better place now where he doesn't have to suffer any longer.

So, once again, thank you all. You're the best friends a blogger could hope to find and please know that your kind words and prayers and thoughts were received warmly and that they made me feel better over the past couple of days. Tomorrow, I'll try to get things back to normalcy around here.