It is a bit awkward for me. i’m not sure what the protocol is.

Kathie Marie Lynch Jewell passed away yesterday evening (August 29, 2020).

She is my former wife, or to paraphrase what her mother took to calling me when Kathie and i were divorced (“the father of my granddaughter”) the mother of my daughter.

The night after we met, she told Nannie Bettie, her mother, she had met the man she was going to marry. Just a bit over a year later, we became husband and wife.

We stuck together for six years. We had our good moments. We had our bad moments. She decided she didn’t love me. i eventually decided trying to continue to make the marriage work would be deleterious for her, especially for our daughter, and eventually i acknowledged to myself, for me as well.

As divorces go, it was a pretty good one, if there is such a thing. The top priority for both of us was to do what was best for our daughter. i think my being a Naval officer made it more difficult for all three of us. i was usually far away. But we tried. She tried especially hard.

The parting was the right thing to do, but hard, and with a terrible sense of loss. But i was never bitter. i loved her enough to be wed with her. We both had traits and habits we didn’t like in each other, but we had enough we did like, and we vowed to be together for the rest of our lives. It didn’t quite work out that way. i cared for her during our marriage. i care for her now.

She was a wonderful human being in many ways.

Her most wonderful trait was she loved our daughter and our grandson more than anything else on earth. i will never, ever be able to thank her enough for that love she had for them.

i shall not expand here on my thoughts of her. That is treading on dangerous ground, and i have already gone beyond the limits she would have wanted.

Kathie was a wonderful, loving and caring mother and grandmother. i loved her then. i love her now.

And tonight once again, i will shed a tear for her.

Rest in peace, my love.