Changing of Seasons

Labor Day came and went...we enjoyed a nice holiday weekend spent partly with my parents, who came up for a visit. They spent some time with my brother Josh and his family, and then Monday came back our way and we visited Minnehaha Falls. This is a favorite spot of ours because it's where Husband proposed. It's a beautiful little park, and the water was high, so the falls were in full force. As we enjoyed the park we commented on the cooler temperatures and how it felt that summer was making an exit and fall had started to sneak in.

As my parents left that Labor Day, my dad received a call that my grandpa was in the hospital. That call was the beginning of what was to be another change on life's grand scale. My Grandpa Leo moved on from this earth on Friday, September 10th. He passed quietly in the early morning; unassuming, quick...just the way he wanted to go, I suspect. He'd been having some troubles in recent months, but had been in relatively good health until entering the hospital that Labor Day.

It was very hard for me to believe at first, and I actually had a hard time getting in the car to make the drive to Iowa, because I knew when I got there it would be real. No more hugs, no more listening to he and my dad talk, no more mischievous grins...but the thing that kept getting to me was that nobody was coming back to live in that house. With his passing is the passing of a generation, the end of an era in this family's tree.

And yet with this sadness there is joy, because he is with my grandmother now, and he is in no more pain or discomfort. There is also a sense of comfort, because the generations march on, made obvious by all those who filled the church and called themselves children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. I have written before about this big bustling family, and couldn't be prouder of all of them than I was as we bid Grandpa goodbye.

As the season changed, so has life...my heart still hurts but time marches on, and now we have another special angel to guide us.

4 Generations - Leo, Mike, Jason, Dylan

Me and Grandpa

Grandpa meets Lucy - July 4, 2009