The Funeral

It is all over, the visitation and the funeral. It was so very sad. The display of pictures was just fantastic. Since he was a jockey, he had lots of professional pictures taken through the years, many of them were with him on horses, in races, just riding a horse with a cowboy hat with the sun setting, sitting in a hay loft, where you could just see the back of his belt that had his name on there..TONY. They were so cool, prom pix, ball games, laughing with his nieces and nephews, it was a beautiful display representing his life. The preacher was very good, kept it short, but very meaningful. The music, had everyone in tears, Sarah McLaughlin, WILL YOU REMEMBER ME, Bob Dillon, KNOCKIN' ON HEAVEN'S DOOR, Eric Clapton, NO TEARS IN HEAVEN, and it ended with a beautiful country song, I have no idea the name, but it had fiddles playing slowly in the background and the song was beautiful. The preacher said a prayer and then ended with a poem THE COWBOY'S PRAYER, so beautiful. There were hundreds of people at the visitation last night, so many people at the funeral today, that they had to stand outside, so many people went to the cemetery that traffic had to pull over for miles. A beautiful sunny day, such a sad event. His mom just cried constantly, as did his sister. Of course, they were all just heart-broken. We all cried a lot, Bill had a hard time. All of his work buddies (and Tony's) were there from the concrete place.

The autopsy showed that he had a massive heart attack, one of his arteries was 100% blocked, the others were blocked also, I don't know how much though. Also, it showed he had signs of having heart disease for a long time now. I was talking to one of his aunts and she said many of the men in the family had died of heart attacks at an early age, she named about 7 different men that died before they were 50....so it was kind of an inherited thing then....

An odd thing happened today. I was at our little grocery store here in town and a guy I went to school with came in there at the same time. He lives in Salem, and was on his way to Effingham, which is about 30 more miles from here. He had stopped in the store to get a soda and a snack. Anyway, I was talking to him about Tony, asking him if he knew him,etc. He said no, but his wife is a trauma nurse, and she was on duty when they brought Tony in after the accident. He said she did CPR on him and brought him back, and then released him to the doctor. However, they lost him after that.....I guess, there was just so much blockage (they didn't know at that time) that his heart couldn't keep beating...my friend told me his wife has been an xray technician for years, and th was the first time she came home from work and just sat down and cried............but how, strange, that this guy just happened to stop in the store the same time I was in there, and his wife was connected to Tony in that way...