EPTedit: Yeah I guess I forgot to actually say he died huh? It's pretty clear but he died monday morning after his family left so he fought for a little over a week of intense pain and little to no nutrition before he went. He was a fighter and thats why he almost lasted 6 years with a disease that was supposed to kill him in 2.
The viewing hours and Funeral are tomorrow and Friday I still don't know what my timeline for returning to casting is too many variables in play about my own emotional state and how everything around the house will change without him around. But I wanted to actually post about something a bit more positive.
One of the things that we decided to do for the viewing hours and funeral was that my sister and I both made a photo collage to display since my mother really didn't want to have to deal with an open casket. So that people could still get the feeling that they can see him we have a big blown up picture of him that looks really great and will put up both the collages. The thing about the collages is that in order to make them we had to go through thousands of old family photographs and especially after a long debilitating disease like that going back and seeing pictures and memories of the better times had a very unexpected cheering affect.
I mean I expected it to be hard to root through all those photographs but the fact that I laughed so many times while flipping through them at the pleasant memories it really drove away the negative emotions. I managed to find a really good variety of photos of my dad from literally different stages of his life. On his computer I found some baby photos his high school graduation picture and a huge variety of pictures from when he married my mother and onwards what I expected to be a difficult task really turned into one of main reasons why I keep telling people that I'm doing okay through this entire time.
It really made me realize how good it is just to go back through the good times everyone tells you this when you deal with a loss in the family "oh keep your head up remember the good times..." etc etc but rarely people ever do it. Forcing yourself to remember by going back through all the photos has really helped a lot and along with the advice to anyone who might be dealing with anything similar soon or has recently maybe consider doing something like this because it makes a really good keepsake afterwards as well. I really just wanted to write some of this out because it helps but I'll attach a picture of the collage here so you guys can get an idea on what kind of person my dad was and why he meant so much to me and hopefully you guys can appreciate it as well.
It's very high res so if you go to the actual image you can see the photos.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5BnwI.jpg)
Also the popehat picture I'm aware is very politically uncorrect but it was a "Polish Pope" costume and given as he's polish please don't go overboard with the zomgwtfbbq it's just part of his whacky sense of humor.
