I’ve been getting notifications that my brother is not doing very good. Him and his wife split up a few months back, after over 50 years of marriage. And, he got her an apartment, I believe he got her an apartment, and then he ended up going into an assisted living facility.

He’s been there for six months, I think, right around there. Yeah, six months, because I was in the hospital six months ago, and he called me in the hospital, and sounded fantastic. He’s been there for six months, he’s been there for six months, and he sounded fantastic. Um, but he rapidly went downhill after this separation. So I’m, I’m not going to blame anybody or anything, but, um, I think that has a lot to do with what’s going on right now. Um, he is, he aspirated, I believe, uh, which ended up causing full-blown pneumonia.

And I just heard yesterday that they are not going to put a feeding tube into him. They are removing the IVs and going to keep him as comfortable as possible until he passes, which they said could be one to two weeks, probably closer to one week. I love my brother very much. Him and I have been very good friends for, uh, All of our lives since we’ve been back together, he went into the Navy, when I was very young, I remember, coming home and knowing when Rick was going to be there, Waiting for Rick to call at Christmas time and Thanksgiving time when he was in the Vietnam. Waiting for him to call when he was living back in Virginia after he got married at Christmas time Easter Thanksgiving. all the holidays’ days, everybody’s waiting for Rick to call then. When he moved back to Washington, Him and I worked together, remodeling houses, fixing up basements for people and then we spent one summer after I, graduated high school, or it was before I graduated high school, it was one summer right. around the end of high school that we spent the summer, and we rebuilt our cabin. We enclosed the covered deck we had to the right of the living room, removed the sliding glass door that was there and put in folding doors and made that into the master bedroom of the cabin. Put out a huge deck out in the front of the cabin, I call the front of the cabin, everybody. else calls the back, but the part of the cabin that faces the lake, put a big deck out there. and redid the living room, removed all the paneling, put up plasterboard, removed the, floor that was down there and I really actually don’t remember what kind of floor we had down there originally, but we removed the floor and put in a wood parquet flooring and that took all summer. and every night during that that summer we’d go fishing we’d go out to go out we took the Remley’s boat which ended up being our boat Remley’s never used it we had the boat we see they had the boat we had the oars but we used to put all the time we took it out to jigs Lake, and went bass fishing every night bring home the bass clean them put it in the freezer. or cook them up for dinner that did for the next day or lunch and while up, there we did designing work on kind of future homes or whatever I was okay I was in no I had just I was in high school because I was taking drafting in high school I took drafting when I was in that was my sophomore year so it must have been between sophomore and junior years junior year and we made a I had. some big graph paper and we drew the house I also took all dad’s dimensions and I drew up the cabin the way dad had all the measurements I mean my drafting turned out exactly the way the cabin is to this day exactly even to the point where the railing on the deck covered went over about a foot of the window in the master bedroom , I said, Dad, do you realize this? I don’t remember what he said. I think he said no or something like that. But everything turned out exactly the same. I remember also when Rick and I were building the deck, Mom had nightmares about us putting up the farthest beam from the cabin. And she had called the next day and said, I’m so scared. How are you going to put that up? And Rick told her, well, it’s already up. We already did it. And we did. It was already up. But to this day, I don’t remember how we did it. But we did do it.

And every night, we’d go fishing. We’d come home. We’d play a little bit of rummy probably just about every night. And every night, we also sat down in the living room and watched Outer Limits and Twilight Zone, went to bed, get up, and start working. And now. Now it’s come to the end, and I’m really, really sad, but I got to be strong, I got to keep my body strong, because I have to get my leg to heal, and get this move taken care of, and so I can see Carrie, be with her, make our plans, and have the rest of our lives together. I’m going to miss you, I’m going to miss you, brother. Brother, I don’t, I love you, Rick, take care of yourself, and father, watch out for Rick, take care of him, make sure he’s comfortable, okay, that’s it.

This has all been dictation using PLAUD. A fantastic produce. That wasn’t it…

I got a message from Diane today with Ruthie’s phone number to call Rick if we wanted to say goodbye. He was currently not conscious. Ruthie would just hold the phone to his ear while we said what we needed to say or had to say to say our goodbyes. It was very nice that she did that. I was not going to call at first because I wanted to remember him the way he was when he called me at the hospital, but Diane sent a message that Tyra and her and Cheryl had already called. So, I decided I needed to call and say my goodbyes. Tell him how much I loved him, and I would miss him. I talked to Ruthie a little bit afterwards, and they’re setting up, you know, funeral preparations and stuff. She doesn’t know when it’s going to happen yet, but it won’t be that long. She’ll keep me in the loop. Brayden and Gina said that they would stop by and pick me up on the way up there if I wanted to go with them, if I was still here in Thomasville. So, I’ll probably do that. I also asked if Carrie could call and say goodbye to him, and Diane said absolutely! But she had to do it quick because my brother has only 48 hours or less to live, and I’m very, very sad. I’m going to miss him very, very much.