Thanks to all for the emails and cards regarding my father. While it’s a sad time, it’s also a moment to remember all the great friends, interesting adventures, and curiosity about history and everyday things that my father experienced during his nearly 93 years. One constant throughout his life was his love of horses. As several of you recalled, I  posted in September 2012 about how a friend of my father had arranged for him to have a visit with another friend’s horse. The joy of his visit that was captured in the photos I took that day provided a great memory for him to see everyday for the last year of his life, as well as providing family and friends with a great memory of his typical smile and joie de vivre.

So, in honor of my father’s love of horses, I offer the following two photos of horses Chris and I saw in Verona this past September:

The men on the horses, posed as they are in uniform, represent the pageantry of military horses on parade that my father always enjoyed seeing.

However, I prefer the second photo, since it’s the close-up of the horse, with his “are you looking at me?” expression, that  I think best represents the humor and imagination with which my father traveled through life. My father had a great sense of humor, and I’m sure he would have appreciated the inanity inherent in the following conversation I had the week after his death:

Me: “I’d like to cancel my father’s prescription drug plan, since he passed away last week.”

Clerk: “OK.  However, if we cancel his plan, all his prescriptions will be cancelled. Are you sure you want to do that, or do you just want to cancel some of his prescriptions?

Me, after waiting a beat or two to take that in: “Right. I think cancelling all his prescriptions will be OK. Really.”

As my father always said, sometimes you can’t script these things, as real life is just funnier than anything you can imagine. How true.