And July is at an end

Today Barb's family and my family had a picnic at Dad's. It is his birthday today, and we've been meaning to put to good use a fifty dollar gift certificate to Hugo's that my department gave us after the funeral. This was the perfect opportunity.

Alas, Kevin didn't make it. He is working seven days a week at American Crystal. Must have been busy.

But the rest of us made it and were able to get all caught up.

Dad would have loved it.

*******

Late yesterday afternoon I finally put the finishing touches - well finishing touches for a rough draft anyway - on my final professional piece for the RRVWP. Kristie is going to read it and tell me what she thinks. I trust her and know her comments are always dead on.

I ended up writing a braided essay. I wove several pieces together for the final essay. I have a research based piece on the braided essay itself and how I plan to use it in my College Comp class next year. Then added to that are all of my blogs pertaining to Dad's death. The first entry is right after his funeral. Then I include entries in reverse order - showing Dad's demise and how we rally around him. I thought it would add a powerful element to the piece in terms of starting with Dad's death while several other pieces revolve around him as a vibrant, strong person. A third essay I braided in is about a time I came home several years ago and found him working on my car. In that essay I go on to analyze how different we are, yet how we developed a respect for each other through our differences. With those pieces I also have several images spliced in. Kristie came up with the idea to develop dual images - one of, say, Dad in full health and one of Dad in the hospital. Then, and this was her idea, focus on using the senses to show the change in him. For instance, one image is the tractor piece I blogged about a few weeks ago. I added the sense of touch to it. Then I wrote a piece - again using a strong sense of touch - in which I help Dad into a wheel chair and push him into the hospital. And the final element I added to the essay was a series of comments people randomly made to me at the wake or funeral. Just odd trivial things about Dad. I put those in there because they may seem trivial, but now that he is gone, I treasure them as much as any thing else.

Now I just have to see if I pulled it off or if I just confuse the reader. My only hope is that I had a strategy behind weaving the pieces together and not just randomly mish mashing parts together.