A Party For Katie

My first cousin Matt's daughter Katie turned four years old on September 18Th. It seems like only yesterday she was the apple of her grandpa's eye. And as I sat there watching the festivities and watching a little girl having so much fun I thought back to her first birthday party and how much her grandpa wanted to be there, but couldn't be. It was the day they started him on morphine and the decent into losing his battle with COPD. I'm sure he would have her spoiled rotten if he were still here and I couldn't help but wonder if his son was having some of the same thoughts I had. His eldest son who finally on that Day in December told his dad it's OK dad, it's OK if you have to go. I remember how sad he was at his daughters first birthday party and how he talked a lot about how he could never let go. He didn't know how to live with out his dad around. Only a couple of months before he did lose his dad. I also thought about how young he was to be losing his dad and how lucky I am to still have mine. But as well as some fleeting sad thoughts at Katie's party there were happy thoughts of a little girl that looks so much like her grandmother that her grandpa would surely have been calling her little Jib. Jib is a nickname for my aunt Arlene. Don't know how she got it. I'm sure I need to find out at some point. I know my aunt and I spoke of my uncle outside. If he had lived she and he would have been married thirty years on their anniversary in September of this year. If he had lived. That just seems such an odd thing to say. A sad thought to me though is how my aunt could sit there outside at her grand daughters party and smoke a cigarette after watching her husband die such a horrible death of COPD. If you don't know what that is it's a disease that makes it basically like you are drowning. You slowly lose the ability to breath. It gets worse and worse until you can't. Her choice, but she's lost so many to those smokes she cherishes so much. Her dad to bone and lung cancer, and her mother as well. Then her husband of course. But an addiction is an addiction I suppose and I'm told it's awfully hard to give them up once you're addicted. I for one am glad I was never addicted to them. I just can't imagine. I have friends that smoke and I respect their rights to do it. I just hope none of them have to pay the price for it. Either way the party went well for Katie. She loved her gifts, especially the car she got from her mom and dad. Princess car that is. She won't be driving to Walmarts or anywhere - at least not yet. And if you look closely at her dads arm you will notice he had her face tattooed on his arm. On the other arm he has a tattoo of praying hands and his dads name. I guess he's chosen to place what he holds closest to his heart on his arms. He really loves his little girl. You can tell that whenever you see him with her and I can attest that there was no one who loved that little girl more dearly than the grandpa she will never know.