Father's Memorial Video

My Dad passed away one year ago this August 19th. I made this video for my Mom. It's kind of cool because my Dad loved to karaoke at home mostly. My Mom found these recordings as he loved to record himself on cassettes. Couple of his favorite songs. Then she found this one that mentioned her before singing Blueberry Hill. I recorded it onto my computer via USB mic. Sounds ok but I used this one and one other song Wonderful World, another of his favorites to make a pic video using his voice in the songs.

Came out pretty good, Mom hugged me and said thanks, the video is beautiful. Today we went to the cemetery in Riverside (Veteran's) to take some flowers with a few family members. Strangely enough, Mom had always wanted to get his grave blessed by a priest. We get there and there is a priest doing a service for a neighbor, maybe 3 or 4 plots away. My brother calls him over and asks if he would bless my Dad's grave. He does, we chat for a bit, turns out the priest was visiting from Ireland. Mom was very pleased having his grave blessed then about 15 of us went out to lunch.

After lunch, all went to Mom's  house where I plugged a flash drive into the USB port so we could all watch the video I made. Really liked it, came out pretty nice.

Trying to fix up some pics, took me about 8 hours to create the video. I was pleased with it, turned out pretty nice!

Couple of notes: At the start of the second song, Wonderful World, there is a grey poster that says "...and I say to myself, what a wonderful world."  My Dad used to sing that song all the time so my daughter had the poster/painting made for him. It hangs on the wall of the room where he spend the last couple of months as he was too sick to get out of bed. After dialysis for the last 11 years or so, it finally got the best of him and he ended up passing away in this room. The family didn't want to place him in a home as suggested by the docs. He lived here and died here.

Also, at the end, there is a pic of his headstone at the cemetery. I took my Mom to Stater Bro's on the way to the cemetery to pick up some flowers for him. There she saw a nectarine and it reminder her that when they would go to Stater's, he would see the nectarines and insist on having one as they were always so nice. So on this trip, she saw the nectarine at Stater's so she bought one and left it on his stone knowing he would want one.

Then the bed in one of the final pics was a pic of the bed after his body was removed after passing in his room. There are 5 bedrooms here and his bedroom was actually upstairs. But the last year or so he could not make it up the stairs any longer so they made this lower level room into his medical room where he slept and did his dialysis for the last couple of years.

But the pic of the bed was taken my daughter after he was removed so that one really gets to them.

So anyway, I made the video and I think everyone that saw it liked it. :-)

Also, he recorded the intro as they had been married 53 years ago. It ended up they were married for 59 years before he passed, 3 weeks shy of his 80th birthday. Last 11 years or so of suffering but fortunately, Mom is now 80 and doing really well. Heck, she looks better now, even better than she has over the last 10 years. She's doing well but misses him greatly! So I make sure she gets to visit him every 3 weeks or so since he passed. That's a lot of flowers ha ha!