He had been in somewhat declining health for the last six years since he was assaulted by a drunk guy -hit repeatedly in the head- and had to have emergency brain surgery for the swelling.

After the assault he had to retire and give up his two congregations...he was a minister, like my father.

He never really got back to health after that.

I talked to him yesterday (by phone, he's in North Carolina and no visitors are allowed where he is (was)) but I just didn't have the heart to tell him of RBG's passing. It would've broken his heart even more than it was already.

He mentioned that as bad as he was feeling, he was happy that he had early voted.

I take that as at least a small consolation.

2020 just got even worse.

-FTC

Edit to add: that talk was virtual ...like almost every human contact these days it seems.

I'll never leave you..." spoken by his girlfriend in the film- Wilma - after Homer is assuming she'll just leave him now that he's returned from war missing his hands.

It gets me because I think my mother probably said something similar to my father, a WW ll chaplain, missing both arms.

Her father said to her, when he learned of her new love for my father: "You walk along a path in the woods... and why do you have to pick up the broken branch?"

Luckily for me -and my four brothers- she ignored her father's disapproval and married my father anyway. And never left him.