And so I move to the head of the class . . . Good-bye to Officer Wilson.

Pictured at right : Sean, Nina, Mike

• And so the summer from hell ends. Bill and I flew out to Palm Springs on July 11 and back home on August 10. Michael died of AML leukemia (and/or pneumonia) on July 27. I was both privileged and devastated to be there and to have spent 2 weeks living in the City of Hope Hospital and taking care of Mike for those 2 weeks. Nurses may have changed the drip bags full of chemicals to stream uselessly through his body and to painfully turn his body so that he wouldn't get bed sores, but we fed him, sang to him, and held his hand.
• And, oh, we thought he would live. We thought he was getting the "super chemo" that would get his blasts back to the point where he could get a stem cell replacement. I don't think I even knew that this might not work, just that the super chemo might kill him, not that it might not kill the blasts. But, it evidently did nothing, and in a very short time we were telling his brothers and parents that if they were coming, they better hurry, which they did, arriving first-class from Cleveland in 2 days.
• I just wish we could have had a few years post retirement to have had a little fun together - the 4 of us. It is what we had planned. And, oh, I could write so much more, but I am still a little angry and depressed over the whole thing - I even called it the City of Hopeless yesterday because there's a part of me that thinks they could have tried harder or did something differently. I haven't looked up the stages of grieving yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm not through them yet. There is just an innate sense that we all ought to get to play by the same rules in life. It is so hard to accept the whims of the world. But I will make my peace with it (if it kills me)!
• I'll just say as a tribute to Michael that, while he had his faults, he was always my big brother, born just 2 yrs. and 3 mo. before me. I followed him around as a small child and I followed him off to Ohio State when my close friends were going to Ohio U. He was in retailing for years but then found his true calling in becoming first in graduating from his police academy class when he was 44. Thank you "no age discrimination" in California. He had 2 squad car partners that were straight guys who still loved Mike and he them and who called him at the hospital and wanted to come down and see him. But he wouldn't let anyone see him while sick. And he had already had to retire early from having kidney cancer in 2001, so he knew what it was to be sick and then in chronic pain from that operation. So, his skills as an authority figure and his intelligence made him an outstanding officer and a great big brother. He was my earpiece always.
• No, I don't think I want to step to the head of the class. The shoes are too big to fill.