Help Give a Loving Father a Dignified Farewell

**I am raising funds to cover final expenses for my father Edward, including funeral home services, transportation, a private autopsy to confirm and document the medical cause of death, and a full military burial with honors. 

Although the VA provides limited support for national cemetery burial, the family must still pay the funeral home and associated costs up front. Any contribution helps honor my father’s life and his contributions to society.**

There is only one person on this entire planet I would trust with my whole heart and with my life, and that’s the person who God chose to take from me. My beloved dad.

A Marine, then a Sergeant in the Army, then California Corrections Officer - my dad always just wanted to be helpful in some way to others. He was respectful to everyone who was respectful to him. What kind of CO even has respect from the inmates? You have to be a special, honest, genuine, and fair person for that kind of respect. But that's the kind of respect my dad had. But probably more than anything, he was known for his lifelong love of music.

He could play almost any instrument, but his favorites were Bass and Drums. I bought him some V-drums to play, but by that time, I think a lot of the fire was gone from after his first stroke, which he had while on stage playing his instrument. But I refused to let him die, and after nutritional and herbal intervention, I got him to live almost 15 years after doctors gave up on him after the second one and stopped any future strokes.

My dad loved God and played in the church band. He was baptized with my mother at Calvary Temple in Modesto and again at Ceres Christian Church. God gave him a smile he never had before.

I will never have the words to express how close we were. We were definitely the closest people in each other's lives. We both didn’t really have anyone else who would be there for us the way we each were. If my dad needed me, I was there in a heartbeat to be or do whatever I could, and so was he for me. But he’d never tell you he needed anything. He didn’t know how.

Having Asperger’s Syndrome (ASD / Autism Spectrum), having someone who understands you in that deep way is everything. The world feels like a place I don't know how to navigate unless I’m in my head or on a computer. But with my dad, I felt understood. Now I am 100% alone.

My mother didn’t just leave the state and leave my dad a second time, she left her only son with Autism to take care of his dying father alone. So I have no one I can trust in that way like my dad. No one who has been there for me. It was literally only him.

He didn’t express or open up much, but he didn’t have to. We could literally just look at each other and it was like looking into a mirror; we already felt the same thing at the same moment. Neither one of us are really social. Me because of my ASD and him because of his depression. We’ve been through too much pain from fake family members and friends and stuff. So I’ll just keep this between you and me, dad:

I don’t have to tell you how much I love you. I have regularly, and you already know. And you don’t have to tell me any more using words. Isn’t that cool? We can still communicate in the “knowing.” The knowing that you no longer have to suffer physically or emotionally.

I picked up your old phone yesterday (not the iPhone I got you, the Android) to see if you had any good photos of you and Carly. And your phone said it was 4:44. It had only been one day and you’re letting me know you’re still watching over me with #AngelNumbers - I know you’re with God. I’m sure you’re playing music in the University of Heaven.

I did everything I could to make sure you felt as loved as you could after feeling like you had been failed your whole life. Your dad didn’t want you and sent you to an orphanage. Frank told me you were homeless for a year after the orphanage. You never told me that. But your mom didn’t want you either, and you never got to meet your Dominican family members, so you lost out on culture too… Your only girlfriend you ever had and love of your life, your wife, left you for another man. I understand why you were so depressed, dad. But I tried everything to make you know you were loved.

My dad told me I was like the dad he never had. That he looked up to me for guidance. That was the best compliment I have ever received in my entire life and probably true in this lifetime, but now I look to you for yours, as you abandon your broken body and embrace your new one of light. No one could have a better guardian angel.

I made sure my dad had as much as I could provide for him. When their house was stolen, I made sure to get a place he could enjoy with easy access to a downstairs kitchen and bathroom, an extra space for hobbies, a tile floor for Carly, etc. I made sure he had home-cooked meals every single day.

I’m going to be posting way more of him soon. If you have any memories of my father, it would mean the world to me if you share any moments or memories you had with him. Any photos too. VA does not cover burial expenses, only reimburse some portions such as national cemetery plot of land, etc. I am alone in doing this and have no one to help. So if you could help me make sure my dad has a good funeral, it would mean the world to me.

i would like to pay for them to check what happened to him by doing a biopsy of certain tissues. Something made him really sick, about 6 years ago, and I don’t know what the cause was. I still don’t. Finding out would provide closure.