And thus, our 30+ year journey has ended. John passed away last night around 8:30PM. 

We have definitely been on both ends of that “for better or for worse” vow over the course of those years. John has battled chronic illness for well over 20 years, beginning with ulcerative colitis, which led to a host of other issues, multiple surgeries, innumerable doctor’s visits, an endless stream of medications and many a painful time.  He bore all that with grace, patience and good humor that I think few others could have brought forth.

On the “better” side, the past several weeks has proven without a doubt that we somehow managed to raise two young adults who are incredibly strong and amazingly compassionate.  That is the legacy he was most proud of for sure.

I have always been skeptical of the pat phrase you always read “….passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones.”  But that was indeed the case.  He had been pretty much out of it the day before, but was at that time still able to squeeze our hands, so we knew he was listening to our goodbyes.  Greg’s wife Erin had flow in the afternoon before, so the 5 of us were sitting in the room watching some B.S. TV show called “Celebrity IOU.”  Melissa McCarthy was making us laugh at a bad time a least. The dog even crawled in under his bed. His breathing got increasingly irregular as the evening wore on. There was not a lot of drama – he just slowly ceased to breathe.  After a good group cry I called the hospice team and in about an hour a nurse came out to validate.  It took about 2 more hours for the cemetery team to arrive with their van.  I learned the hard way with John’s mom and my mom that you do NOT want to watch them do what they do, and I made the kids hide in their rooms.  Finally got to bed around midnight.  (Thank you Mr. Ambien)

We are going to have a small cremation internment service hopefully during this week (Skylawn Memorial Park in San Mateo).  With the stupid virus thing there can only be 10 people in attendance (including the priest), but they will provide free “Zoom” capability so others can watch on-line.  Hope to get that set up this afternoon. Down the road we will hopefully have a celebration of life party where the many friends and family who have supported us along the way can join in.

When we started down the hospice road John was very concerned and told me he wanted to “die with dignity.” In my experience dying is simply not a dignified event, except I guess perhaps if it is the result of you going down while performing some heroic task. My response to him was that what is important is that you lived your life with dignity - and he was one of the most dignified people I have ever known.

A friend had someone take family photos of us several months ago, which we will treasure. (Attached)

And no, it did NOT escape our attention that this is 4/20 (Google that if you need to).  Not his thing, but certainly a trigger to tweak all our memories in the future.

R.I.P Mr. Lyons – knowing you were loved.

PLEASE, in lieu of flowers/plants that I will certainly just kill, a donation to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation in John’s name would be greatly appreciated.   https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/