If You Only Knew. By the Rochester Family

Joe Rivera and family, our condolences for the loss of wife and mother.

 Joe, we are thinking of you my friend, and if you feel you need to talk,  phone is on 24-7.

  Prayers for Joe and his family, we a here for you Joe.

You are loved and even though we have never met, I feel like you are a brother.

PS....in case you do see this, I left you a PM.

Thad, thank you for posting this. I haven't been on the Forum for a while and just saw it a few minutes ago.

 Well, Friends,,I'm sitting here at 3:40 in the morning, wondering what's next for me. All the great and caring folks here that called or expressed their concerns on the loss of my wife of 53 years., I want to express MY heartfelt THANKS for your concerns. Like I told JC, I had misplaced my little white book with all my passwords, so I could not sign on to thank every one of you all, altho, I'm grateful that Darren has the site fixed to allow me to "look in" and kinda keep up with the goings on altho I could not post after being gone so long. and I Thank him,,,,,

 My world is different now that she is gone and I expect I'm gonna have to adapt to life on my own. My heart hurts so much because we shared so much all those years. I don't like that I would get mad at her for not going to Dialysis, but now I realize how much losing her right foot affected her and recent health issues almost assured she was soon going to lose her other foot as well.

 I have a lot of financial stuff that I am going to have to take care of with all the hospitals and Doctors, Specialists that cared for her all those years.  She was the family secretary for many years and she saved EveryThing! In my initial cleaning of our dressers, I'm finding lots of OLD receipts and a lot of them have mine or her SS number and some also have our bank account number even with routing number,,,,what a haven for the scammers of today,,!! Guess I'm gonna have to get a burn barrel as our bank does not have the big shredders for everything I got to get rid of.

 I hope to get back on here and BS with all of ya'll again when I get all done with what needs to be done. Thank you for listening.

We are here if and when you need to share and let off steam.

Continued prayers for you and your family.

Steve@B&B

I'm SO so sorry for your loss Joe. Your entire family are in my thoughts and prayers....

 GOSH,,,,what a great and caring bunch of fellars for all your kind words that mean so much to this old boy,,,,I just been kinda moping around and not getting much done and I know I gotta get on with life,,,cause I know that is what she would of wanted me to do.

 I started out cleaning her dressers and kept finding stuff that brought back too many memories so,,I'll get back to that some later,,chit,,I been sleeping in the den for the last 2 1/2 years so what can be the hurry now?? They came and picked up the hospital bed that Medicare supplied and the room looks so dang empty!!! I had taken out the King size bed when she had to have a hospital bed,,,but I ain't putting that big old thing back in there,,,,Guess I'll settle for a queen size cause a full is too small,,,,

  This coming Tuesday, Jon and I are flying to North Dakota to take her back to her homeland to be buried next to her Mother. That was what she wanted so that's what I'm gonna do for her.

 I hope to get my chit together and start checkin in with all you GREAT  guys,,,I need somebody to shoot the chit with besides them two yorkies,,,,we gots a regular menagerie here anymore,,,we gots 4 dogs,  8 cats in the garage, 3 chickies and two ducks,,,,,

 I love ALL OF YA'LL,,,,,,

Respectfully - Orangeman

 Thinking of you and your family today. Our condolences.

Regards,

 Chris

   Joe sure is great to hear from you. Prayers for a safe trip and for the family for your loss. Hope you get your spirits up and can start working on your stuff again.  Tom

Well Joe, you and John have a great flight up tomorrow, and back too.

   May Peace and Comfort be with you all when Joyce is laid to rest.

  and lets see some progress on ol' RED when you get back home! 

 Well,Fellars,,,I am astounded at the love and concerns from a great many of youse guys, in trying to get me out of my doldrums,,,,I just cannot help myself as I get to doing something and some little thing or object reminds me of something we did or something I think I should of done for her,,,I'm getting better at accepting the ways that life works out and I also know the pain and heartbreak will be with me until I learn to accept Life's trials. I went to the Football game tonight with our youngest son, Jamie and I let myself get all chocked up when I realized that she is not going to be able to watch any more games as that was one of her favorite past times.

 Jon and I got back from Nort Dakota this morning at 2:30 AM, after a long day running from concourse to concourse especially in the brand new airport in Denver. We left the house Monday morning at 2:30 AM , and drove to El Paso, Texas to catch a 8 AM flight to Denver. When we got to Denver, we were told that the arrival desk had been changed and was now on the OTHER side of the frigging airport!! WE were told that time was of the essence and if you had any concerns as to your ability of walking that far, United had arranged for personal carts to make sure you did not miss your connecting flight,m,,, Well, Jon is 6' 2" tall and gots them LONG legs and I was having to take two steps to his one and after just 20 minutes of that chit, I had to put my carry on bag on his suitcase with wheels so he could pull it. I had the Urn so that made it very heavy. It took us 33 minutes of fast walking and did not even have a chance to get a soft drink before they started boarding our flight to Minot, Nd,,,then it gets worse from here,,,,

 When we get to Minot at 11:30 PM,,,we find out the reservation for  our rental car had been given to somebody on the previous flight,,!!!! You talk bout a couple of very mad and upset fellars from New Mexico,,,!!! Next thing we hear is that the airport is fixing to close at 12:30 AM,,and Belcourt is a 2 hour drive from Minot. The Rosary is scheduled for the following day at 9 Am with the Mass to start at 10:00, so the Urn has to be at the Church by 8AM,!! We called every taxi in Minot but they either would not answer their phone or refused to take us to Belcourt (2 hour drive and now it's after Midnight)

 Jon finally gets a Uber that agrees to take us halfway to Rugby,,,he wants "Only $100) to take us halfway, So, I decide to call my wife's Godmother, who had been taking care of all the arrangements in Belcourt and they were already asleep. I told her I had no way to get her Godchild to the services by 8 AM cause it was a LONG walk......

 The Uber guy heard the conversation and finally offered to take us all the way to Belcourt for the $100,,,Him and Jon reached an agreement on payment and we took off,,by now it is 12:45 AM, So I call her Godmother and tell her to go back to sleep cause we got a ride,,,,,,She had made reservations for us at the Casino in Belcourt, so at least that reservation was honored. We pulled into the Casino at 3AM, checked in and HAD to get up at 6AM to get the Urn to the church at 8:Am. After the 10:00 Mass, we then went with her Godmother to the cemetary, then they took us to eat and kinda chauferred us around town meeting up with her relatives. We were scheduled to fly out of Minot the following day, so things went along pretty fast from there.

 Some of her Aunts and Uncles asked me if I was ever going to go visit them again,,and THAT made me think bout what I had just done, So I assured them that I wanted to come visit my life long partner and Jon agreed to go as well. We were rushed to make reservations on short notice and those are very expensive but good planning and good reservations far enough in advance are quite affordable.

   more at another time,,,,

My cousins are Later Day Saints, (Mormon), they fully understand the body is not where their departed are, that the spirit has moved on to a higher place and are actually always around us every where everyday.

Prayers you can manage well in these days Joe.

  Keep in touch Joe we miss your visits.

  I got a phone call yesterday morning from I thought was a friend, I was shaving and didn't catch the call. When I call him back his wife answered the phone and told me it was her that had called and that he had passed away over night. The last time I talked to him he was making plans for his wife's 80th birthday for today, Saturday, her birthday is acually Sunday. Today on Facebook his stepdaughter posted that they were still having the birthday party in his honor.

Any hour of any day of any week, month, year will be our last, enjoy the time we are allowed in this plain with those we can touch, laugh and be with, time is so fleeting.

  Any hour of any day of any week, month, year will be our last, enjoy the time we are allowed in this plain with those we can touch, laugh and be with, time is so fleeting.

 So very true words of wisdom by DMiller!! Everyone on here that truly LOVES your partner, your family members and even your friends should let bygones be bygones with those you care about because when they gone,,it's too late to convey your feelings as several have so eloquently stated. I DO lament that I was too steadfast with trying to protect her by insisting that she go to Dialysis as required and also sometimes depriving her of her favorite foods,,,foods that were the cause of her Diabetes. Two ways to approach that were to acknowledge and ACCEPT the fact that she was ESRD and the end was inevitable and allow her to have what she wanted so she could pass without her dang old Husband being so danged strict! I wanted to keep her as long as possible,,yet,, I now tell myself,,maybe I should of made things easier for her,,,,? Her best lifelong friend told me that they shared many things, like women do,,and they would have a laugh about her Oxygen tube that I would find it off her nose more so than it on. She told her friend,,"That Joe, he worries so much about the oxygen tube coming off,,but he doesn't know,,I pull it off as soon as he leaves the room" ,,,,WOMEN,,,!! LOL,,,

 I like TBone's quote that you can have fun and still love your departed and I do know that is what she would have wanted as she was that type of person. She would always fuss with me looking my very best when I had an important meeting with upper management at work and the annual company parties. She was that type of person.

 I feel like I have dragged my inner thoughts out too long and I apologize. Many, many THANK YOU'S for listening to this old man and since I have always been the type of person that would rather help people laugh and enjoy life,,,I hope to restart that phase of my life. Thank you for listening,,,,,

Mother in law had cancer 3 times and what they went through. You have to wonder about the quality of life and what is endured. Worth it or not? Big question.

I myself am stage 3 melanoma and have had bone cancer over the last 20 years. So.. if something decided to rear it's ugly head again what's the call going to be? I know what it would be at this moment but what would it be at crunch time? What are you going to do then kick yourself in the ass because you think you could have done it differently. 

Just do the best you can and call it good, can't ask any more.

  

Here is a quote a friend sent me a few days back:

Hubert, as I sit here reading this, with tears in the corners of my eyes, I fell SO close to ALL of youse guys.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is ONE BIG GREAT FAMILY!!  The outpouring of friendship and love is what makes this the greatest forum on the net!  Thank you!

 Well,,Friends,,,I took a first step forward today,,,a kind of a small one but a step forward none the less. I had been dtreading on gathering up all her clothes and bagging some of them to give to the Hospital Auxilary up in Roswell. Reason being is,,I did not want to meet a local woman wearing some of her clothing so to the Alien Town I took them. Took two big bags of shoes, a big box of Jammies and 4 bags of socks,,,,and that was just out of her dressers,,,Chit,,I ain't even got to her closet yet. I called the Chamber Of Commerce in Roswell and they suggested instead of the local Salvation Army, that I take the clothes to a new charity that is 100% volunteer and all the profits go to underage needy children. I just barely got there as they were closing and two of the nicest ladies were SO PLEASED with everything I gave em even offered to give me a notarized paper for tax purposes,,,,sure makes one feel good,,,!! They were even more skittished when I told em I would be back in a couple of days with another load,,they both High Fived me,,,,imagine,,,,!! Kinda bothered me at first to give her clothes away but for a good cause,,she would of liked that,,!!

  Glad it felt good to you to do that.

 My grand-nephew got married last Saturday and I gave him a Silver dollar from his great grandparents wedding and I gave him the wedding band from his great-great-grandfather that he wore.  I told him his great grandmother would have wanted him to have those things , because she loved him so much.  Shucks, I didn't know giving those items to him would create a dang river.  Think he was wiping his face till his and his beloved's own wedding started, and then down to business at hand, getting down to business of getting his life started with a wife.  

   Makes you feel goodwhen you know what you gave them will go tosomeone in need instead of Goodwill onwer getting richer.

 I AGAIN want to personally THANK each and everyone of you GREAT FOLKS that have become some of my best FRIENDS during this most trying time.. Your calls and posts have been a blessing and have not allowed me to sink into that place nobody wants to go or live in. Trying to get back to my old self,,,special THANKS to Shameless, JC, Wayne180 and Thad,,cause they just would not let me go to that place.

Missed you not being on here.