Sandie

I'm sorry that I have to use a stinking blog to say this.

Sandie Fae Smith died this morning about 6am. She was at home, her sister was there helping to take care of her.

Her passing was not unexpected, but I honestly thought ... well, not this soon.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer on July 7, 2008. Her doctor only gave her six months to live. She visited her doctor last July, just to throw it in his face that she stretched that six months into two years, and she wasn't quitting yet.

I do not want anyone to think that she went gently into that good night. She went kicking and screaming all the way, though perhaps in the last couple of weeks not quite so loudly. The spirit and the flesh, you know how it goes.

She made so many friends while we were going to pistol matches, and this is the only way I know that I can reach most of them. It's undignified, I know, but this is part of where the legend of SWMBO was born, so perhaps it's fitting, after all, that this is where it ends.

For those of our friends who live nearby, I'll publish here the details of funeral arrangements whenever they are made.

But to tell you the truth, I don't know how I'm going to get through it. Or through this day, for that matter. I'm a mess now, I'll be a mess then. Somehow, though, I'll be there to say my final goodbye to the finest person I have ever been privileged to love, and whose love I never deserved.