Jon, thanks for posting this up, and thanks, all - the support my sisters, mom and I have received has been breathtaking.
We're going to miss him, but there's no sadness here - he went out on his own terms. At 85, he outlived his dad by better than 22 years, and has set a new longevity benchmark for Conrad males - once again setting an aspirational goal for me without actually throwing down a gauntlet.
That was his gift to all of us - quietly setting goals and expectations through inspirations and examples.
His last month wasn't easy. His Parkinson's had worn him out considerably, he had developed a small tumor on his temple, and the only viable treatment was an immunotherapy drug. The drug caused a frightful reaction which put him in the hospital overnight, but he was able to go home after the reaction subsided.
Attempting to move from his wheelchair to the kitchen table chair, he slipped and broke his femur. As was the case with his grandmother, who also suffered a similar fall, gravity is no friend to the infirmed.
I was grateful it was a femur and not the acetabulum or the pelvic bone itself. They were able to put a pin in the femur - anything else would have been much more difficult and painful to repair - certainly less likely to succeed.
After about 5 days at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids (best care, anywhere), he was moved to a nursing home where he showed remarkable and, honestly, unexpected progress.
He was on schedule to return home on September 28. My sister Cheryl, a nurse, stopped by to visit him on her way home from work on the 25th. We had all been down to see him that weekend, and he was happy to report that his therapy session had yielded a trip from one end of the building to the other. The staff was delighted, and while he was tired, so was he.
Cheryl left about 7:00 and when she got home at 7:20, she received a call that he had passed.
I'm late to a doctor's appointment, but I've got some photos I intend to share at the funeral, and I'll post some up here as well. Somewhere I have photos of the two of us at El Mirage in '93 - that's where this whole LSR thing began with me. And today, I'm so grateful he was there.
