A Tribute to Uncle Dan

This past week has been one of the hardest weeks of my life. Last Saturday, my Uncle Dan passed away. He went into the hospital Wed. night with severe stomach pains and they sent him home saying it was the stomach flu. He returned again the next morning and found out that he had two huge blood clots on both sides of his abdomen area. We all nervously waited through 3 different surgeries from Thurs.-Sat. going back and forth from home to the hospital. His organs all started to shut down due to lack of blood and they eventually took him off of life support Saturday night. Uncle Dan was only 55. It all seems so unreal still as I type this.

Uncle Dan was one of the funnest people I know. He always had a joke to lighten the mood of a tense situation, and had such a positive attitude. He loved his family more than anything, and especially his great wife my aunt Mary. They were the cutest couple and you could just tell how in love they were. My dad and other uncles would get annoyed because he made them look bad with all the amazing things he would do for her! He would clean the house (he said to me once he enjoyed it), frost her hair, he loved to shop, watch chick flicks, and after a hard days work he would come home and take the kids and let her relax.He was also an awesome Grandpa. He would call and ask to babysit his grandsons just because he missed them. He really was the greatest!

One of my favorite memories of Uncle Dan was when they came to visit me when I lived in England. He went on his mission to Birmingham in the 70s and hadn't been back since, so it was fun to see him so excited to be back and see everything. We went to the North Sea one day and the water was freezing but both of us wanted to dip our feet in just to say we had. I have the cutest picture of us together with our jeans rolled up just laughing with our feet in the air. I would have posted it, but I don't have a scanner (I know I really need to get one!) He loved James and his family so much too and always had them over for dinner when they came to visit us out here.

Every Black Friday all the girls would go shopping at 5am to get the deals and he LOVED to come with us even though he was the only guy. He would be our guy to wait in line while we would grab our last minute purchases. He was one in a milllion.

We would always grab breakfast at Ihop in the middle of our shopping day and figure out where we wanted to go next.

Every Christmas Eve their family comes over to have dinner with us and then we go caroling at the hospital together. He would always be the one to go and ask the nurses which rooms were okay to sing to and seemed to make friends wherever he went. These are just a few of the many memories of Uncle Dan, I could go on and on. I guess one of the things that this whole experience has taught me is to not take family or friends for granted. Tell them you love them OFTEN. I feel so blessed that Uncle Dan was a part of my life. I will miss him so much but know I will see him again. Families are forever.