Barry Has Gone To Heaven...

Sometimes we forget what blogging is all about. I read about ten or so blogs this morning and noticed most of them are about the writer. I remembered my own blog, when I first started it, was about me a lot but lately my personal happenings have been over-shadowed by other things like Katrina.

I guess I thought my personal events weren't as important as those of millions of other people. I guess I forgot.

Our son, Barry, died on August 21st. That would have been my mothers' 99th birthday if she were still alive. Barry was 49 years old. He died of cancer.

Our oldest daughter, Rebecca, died of cancer on January 1, 2001. I sure hope the rest of the kids outlive both Donna and me. It's really hard to lose a child.

Donna tried to learn a song for Barry about three months ago. It's called, "You'll always be a child in my eyes." It's a beautiful song, filled with sentiment and emotion, but she couldn't sing it. It was too sad.

This is much harder on Donna than me. Barry is my step son and I loved him but I couldn't love him as deeply as his mother does.

We were both with Barry when he died.

A strange and wonderful thing happened the day Barry died. He died at 12:08 pm and at about 8:00 O'clock that morning, Barry started patting on the side of his bed and saying, "Come on, come on." Donna asked him what he was doing and he said he was calling the puppy. He did this again about a half hour later. Of course, there was no puppy there.

When Barry died, we called the paramedics. They got there and determined he was gone and they didn't have to call the coroner because he had been sick with cancer for so long.

Donna was standing at the head of his bed and I was standing at the end of his bed and the door opened. We looked up and saw a small brown puppy run through the living room into Barrys' bedroom and stop at the side of Barry's bed. His tail was wagging and he sniffed around the bed then he ran past me to the other side of the bed and sniffed around there.

Then the puppy left the room but in about five seconds, he ran back into the room and did exactly as he had before. Then he ran out of the room and left the house.
Then a man came up to the door and asked if we knew who owned the puppy and we said no we didn't. Then they left.

That was too much of a coincidence to be only a coincidence. I think the puppy was an Angel who came for Barry's spirit. There is no other explanation for what happened.

I'll take a day or two off from blogging now to re-think my priorities. I know those people who are suffering from Katrina will go ahead and do whatever they do whether or not I write about it in this blog.

God Bless them and God Bless our son, Barry.

Later...