Mission accomplished.

Not mine. The children's father's. Ten years ago he experienced several severe bilateral strokes. They were probably not his last. They were definitely not his first. The TIA's began more than 35 years ago, before he began chiropractic school, before LittleBit was conceived. Back when I still had some hope that the marriage would end as it began, rooted firmly in eternal covenants between us and our Maker.

The marriage died long before I divorced him. It sounds clinical on paper: he stopped loving me when I stood up to him and brought the US Postal Service into it. He stopped listening to me. He stopped touching me. He fell in love with talk radio, if only to boost the testosterone level in our home and to tune out the needs of a wife and five children. My mother died. I suddenly had money that was mine. I bought my freedom, paid off the IRS and the dentist and the midwife and I don't remember who-all else, and I told him to go.

The children were angry that he had to move out on his birthday. I got it then, and I get it now. I was the bad guy then. Our ward did not understand it. I later learned that there was gossip that I was having an affair. (I was not.) Or that I divorced him to protect my inheritance. (Partially true, but not the only or even the primary reason.)

His personality, always quirky, darkened with each successive stroke. At the end he was passive and defeated, but verbally abusive to the two of our children who had his medical and financial powers of attorney, and to the staff at the assisted living center where he got moved when the nursing home in Fort Worth could bear him no longer. Our two eldest would no longer visit him without one or both husbands in attendance.

He had been in and out of the hospital several times in the past few months, most recently with cellulitis. He could not or would not care for himself. He refused to eat the diabetic-appropriate meals, preferring to do without. I have prayed recently, if he crossed my mind, that he would live to complete his mission, though we didn't understand why he was still here. I'm grateful that I was able to pray without bitterness. There have been occasional spikes of irritation over the past ten years, but for the most part I made my peace with him when we thought he was going to die a decade ago.

He only stopped asking what it would take for us to get back together when I went to visit him after Beloved's diagnosis and told him that I didn't know if I would be getting a proposal, but that if I did, I would be accepting it. Before that, he brought it up every Thanksgiving and Christmas, sometimes asking the kids to intervene on his behalf.

Sorry, y'all. So much good and bad cycling through my mind as I wrap my head around the fact that the man with whom I made five precious babies is gone. He passed peacefully in his sleep overnight. Today would have been Mom's 106th birthday. It's two days before what should have been our 42nd anniversary. It's going to be a complicated grief for all of us. Middlest and I have picked out the music for his memorial service. We had a conference call this afternoon to hammer out some details. He was a veteran, so there'll be a place for his ashes at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.

Please pray for our kids and grandkids. I may be AWOL for awhile.