in lieu of flowers.

My father, as many of you already know, passed away exactly three weeks and 24 hours ago of a disease he lived with for 8½ years. (In fact, here's the earliest post I have on this blog about it.) I won't go into all of the details because many of you have already seen everything on Facebook or heard through other mediums, and this is not the point of this post tonight.

The point of this post is to show you something really amazing that we received in the mail today.

My father wrote his own eulogy and obit. If you knew him at all, I'm sure you don't find this surprising. He spelled out the most important things to him in exactly as many words as he found he needed. Both contained the following request:

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to JDRF, the National Eating Disorder Association, or the Well Spouse Association.

These (along with the Baypath Humane Society) tie our family together. They were important to my dad because they're extremely important to each of us based on our individual experiences. To be perfectly honest with you, I didn't believe people really made memorial donations unless they are immediate family of someone who the cause would have directly affected. But we received this letter in the mail today:

Obviously, I respect the privacy of those who donated, but you know who you are. Your donations mean more to my family than you can imagine. I truly wish my dad could see the effect he has had, if he didn't before. I cannot thank you enough, along with everyone else who has supported us, sent us kind gestures over the past couple weeks, and passed on their kind words and memories about my father.

We have received letters from JDRF and the Well Spouse Association as well. Your gifts are helping people get uncovered treatment they need, supporting life-saving research, and offering a great deal of much-needed support. There's nothing more he would have wanted.

Thank you.