Tuesday August 4

We have received numerous, much appreciated, ideas about ways to inspire and interact with John and even used his cues to come up with some of our own. Recently, we have begun to try to help John along with his shorter term memory so Holly came up with the idea that since one of John's passions is being a coach and referee it would be great to bring his referee uniform shirt, whistle and lanyard, and shoes. You must understand that John took as much pride in his uniform as an Army Green Beret might and his shirt maintains a stiff crease along the arms and his shoes are so polished that they gleam and probably blind any sports attendees who might think briefly about arguing with his calls! I did not know that tennis shoes could be shined to that point but I shouldn't be too surprised because I bought a truck from John several years back and that paint job didn't have even one flaw. Interestingly enough, my father bought the truck from me and it sits in his driveway with the most perfectly shiny paint job as any new car on their street straight out of the showroom would have.

So, the above pictures were taken tonight. Holly began to ask him to give calls like she would say, "Foul number 17", and he would make the appropriate signal. John became EXTREMELY animated and was perfect in every call (or at least so I'm told!). The above are when I asked him to show me field goal and touchdown. I hope it's obvious in the photos that John is standing fully upright to give the calls. He still sometimes gets a bit tired but he can stand with almost no assistance and walks with just some balance assistance. It is fantastic to see and he was so incredibly excited to be making calls! His favorite call of the night was when he gave me a technical (and yes he got the sign right!) for mouthing the ref! That one cracked us all up.
He and Holly also had a moment of hugging and then dancing. I got the hugging and will post the dancing ones tomorrow. I love this photo as it seems to show what is going on with John and Holly directly. There is a level of support and appreciation and a sense of reciprocity in this photo that blew my mind when I looked at it larger.

John also read the first few days of the blog (Holly printed it off and brought it to him) to us out loud. He seems to be in the first stages of understanding what happened to him and him reading the blog as if he were a third party is powerful beyond description.