Life and times of a father in America

My father died when I was 10 years old. A few years later my mother remarried Terry Morton. Through many highs and lows in our life we were bitter rivals and eventually friends. We have visited Disneyland and Las Vegas. Together we sang in the church choir, and as a family we traveled and shared our testimony in song at many churches. You can read in my last post a little more, but recently Dad had both his hips replaced. The first one took 2 years to heal due to complications. The second was doing great when he was rushed to the hospital after a fall. Unrelated to the fall he stopped breathing, and shortly after that his heart stopped. Sunday he was declared dead, and this Sunday we are having the memorial service. He had an infection that was unknown that basically poisoned him. He would have died even if he hadn't had fallen. Now my mother is facing the reality that she will probably lose the house. Without Dad's disability she doesn't have enought to pay the m...

Personal update: For those that don't know it, my step-father has been going through an ordeal recently. Over the years he has been a national champion diver, played professional football, been in the Navy, and worked as a fireman. Among the physical problems that have manifested themselves, an x-ray found a broken neck that had healed incorrectly (a broken neck that was never diagnosed or treated), knee surgery, back surgery, and both hips have been replaced. While trim and fit in his youth, he has been well into the obese category for years. Standard lifetime of a hip replacement is 10-15 years, with increased wear and tear with increased weight. One hip has already been replaced twice, the other only once, and now they are both going bad again. The first hip replacement began a little over a year ago, and resulted in problem after problem. I don't remember everything in the correct order but: Staff infection, stabbed in the hip with a dirty needle, kidneys shut down ca...