As like most humans, he was a complex person. Some things drove me nuts, some things he, virus like, imprinted in me. Some things became larger and larger in his three year process of moving on.
It was almost twenty years ago when I was on a Pan Am flight from L.A. to Sarasota on Christmas day when I wrote in the spiral bound a series of "Thank You"'s to my parents. One of them was about the gift they gave me appreciating art, form, beauty. They, individually, had studied and/or stumbled by accident into a life of appreciating light, form, nature. And they gifted that to me.
As my father stepped inexorably to his life's end, his appreciation for beauty escalated. In the car he would proclaim how beautiful the clouds are, and that, golly, they are just like they were yesterday! Isn't Alzheimer's amazing?
For several years, laying on the couch, he could monitor his beloved bamboos, proclaiming their rare beauty. His 92 year old wife was as beautiful as the day they married (January 12, 1944.)
