A Very Sad Day

It's been a sad day for our family. My uncle Wayne, who I wrote about in the previous post entitled "Semper Fidelis", has passed away. He'd had two open heart surgeries in the past and needed another one to replace a valve in his heart. Unfortunately, his heart was too weak to do the surgery so they had taken him to a hospital in Georgia to explore another option-if that one wasn't going to work, they were giving him 3-6 months to live. Last night, his blood pressure spiked and he went into cardiac arrest. They tried to revive him, even opening him up to do something with the valve that needed replacing but he died on the table. If you read the post where I talked about him, then you know he was my mother's baby brother and that he was closest to my immediate family and he adored my little son.  He had been living near Montgomery and though he will be brought back here to his hometown for a memorial service, he will be buried at Fort Mitchell National Cemetery.
I have to smile when I think about my uncle. He was a proud man, very stubborn, VERY opinionated...(now you know where I get that from)...and he loved his family. He never had children of his own and after his divorce well over 30 years ago, never remarried. He did become engaged to a very nice lady a couple of years ago but they never made it to the altar although they remained a couple. He loved to hunt...I mean LOVED to hunt! My parents always had a freezer full of deer roasts, sausage & hamburger. He loved his big Ford F150 pickup. He loved his little Jack Russell Terriers. He loved America and his home. He had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh. Mostly he liked to come to visit and watch all of us kids play and talk, especially at Christmas. This year will be a difficult one for all of us. Our family has grown even smaller still and it's sad to see happen. The one thing we can look forward to that will (hopefully) help us put aside the sorrow for short time is the exact thing my uncle looked forward to: the joy of the children during the holidays. Life has an alternately funny, sad  and aggravating way of going on even when we don't or feel like we can't. Somehow we do find a way to pick up and go on, and that's what he would want. He will always be loved and missed greatly.
RIP Marshall Wayne Cowart, USMC