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Originally posted by thunderson:
My mother passed today. She suffered for many years with diabetes, heart problems, and degenerative arthritis which caused severe curvature of the spine. Her pain is gone now.

I wanted to share a little about her with my imaginary friends here as a way to honor her.

Mom worked for years for a contractor that provided many services for the U.S. Navy. When I was young, we didn't watch the news for updates about the Vietnam War. One of mom's duties was to track metrics on Navy planes, logging details of missions, combat damage, and pilots downed, missing, or killed in action. She knew what was what and didn't need a network to tell her and certainly didn't want to watch it on tv, after working with it all day. Mom was one of the first to know about Dieter Dengler being captured, and once told me that as soon as she saw his name, she knew Dieter would be back. His exploits in SERE school had provided him with a sort of reputation in Navy circles which preceded his subsequent actions during the war.

After the war, Mom worked on computer generated carrier group simulations, programming in Basic, Cobalt, and Fortran languages. She was a work associate of Tom Clancy's before he started writing books.

We moved out to the country and the commute became too long. Mom secured a position with the U.S. Postal service, and served for many years until her retirement.

I never met anyone who didn't like her. She was a voracious reader and loved children, nature, and all manner of furry critters.

For those willing, please join me in a toast and/or blessing for my mother Kay. May she arrive in Heaven a full hour before the devil knows she's gone.