Taking a leave of absence

I will not be posting on my blog until next week. My dear father-in-law passed away yesterday and we're heading out of town for the rest of the week. I knew John for almost 20 years and he treated me as his own daughter, so it's like losing my own father, not just a father-in-law. It's been a rough year - he was diagnosed in February with lung cancer, fought it with chemo and test medication, went into remission, only to be plagued all summer by the devastation caused from his treatment. We watched him go from ICU to a specialty hospital to a nursing home back to the hospital into an extremely risky surgery back to ICU stepped down to a progressive care unit where he seemed to be holding his own. He finally took a turn Sunday night and was gone by the evening on Monday. He was a strong (and sometimes stubborn) man which is why he put up such a big fight battling everything thrown at him. It's a comfort to know that he's no longer in pain and in a better place. But for those of us left here without him, it's devastating. And my mother-in-law just lost her mother only a month ago. I can't imagine the sadness that she feels. If you're the praying type, please keep my family in your thoughts.

Last August, when John retired, he used part of his retirement package to take us all on a 12-day vacation through California, from San Francisco where we visited the military base he was stationed at as a young man and Muir Woods to visit his sister in Nipomo and then to Los Angeles where we treated my son to a day at Legoland and a day at Disneyland. Little did we know that would be the last trip we would take together. Here's a picture of him and my mother-in-law among the beautiful redwoods:

May you rest in peace John Granville Goodrich.