ForeverMissed
Large image
His Life
August 10, 2014







Walter.
The most loving and honorable man I've known.



Stubborn, Flexible 
Frail, Strong 
Sad, Happy 
Longing, Satisfied.
Anguished, Hopeful 
And smart as hell! 

He was named Ronald James Dockins by his birth mother, Mary,
Birth father? Her cousin. A "minister".

Mary was sent to Texas and told to never return; forced to give Ron to her aunt (his Great Aunt) and her husband.

They renamed him Walter E. Yarbrough. He learned of this when he was 11.
Luckily he got to know Mary and her other children just a bit during some vacations.

He attended Lander College in SC with a Psych major which he almost completed but life hurtful events brought that to an end. Never one to give up he continued on and after graduating, now with a degree in IT/programming, he took a job in NJ. Eventually he formed his own software engineering corporation and worked for several Fortune 100 companies. Over the years he worked in SC, NJ, NY, ME, PA, OH, and LA.  Those are the ones I remember, anyway.

While in NJ he met the woman who would become the mother of his children. Wanting his children to grow up in a house with plenty of land, they moved to the Poconos and PA.  From there he communted into NJ and even to the World Trade Center, NYC - about two hours each way.  He happened to have the day off on Sep. 11, 2001.

In 1986 he lost his birth mother, Mary, to suicide. Without going into details, this became a long and painful event not just because of her loss, but because of the lies he he had been told about her during his life.

He was also beginning to do geneology, uncovering and learning many things. (In the last two years he was able to trace family to Europe in the 14th century!)

This prompted recall of childhood memories, over many years, which had been pushed down deep. Despite the success of his company it became too difficult to focus; He was diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome). Reluctantly he quit his business and went on Disability. Still, especially for his family's sake, he tried working again but it just didn't work. Sadly this set in motion added stress and the beginning of the end of his marriage with the mother of his three children, a bitter divorce and much of what often comes from that.

After being homeless for a time, he met Gerry and her young son, Chris in PA. Chris just called him "W". He liked that. They were engaged and very happy. 2009, in another tragic turn, he woke one morning to find she had died next to him in the night.

This brought him back to SC and he entered nursing school He wanted to change nursing for the better He had just been accepted into Clinicals when he received the diagnosis of ALS - and then also had a Pulmonary Embolism. Before the disease stopped him, he used to run up to 9 miles a day.

Found unable to care for himself, social workers searched for a nursing home, but the newly elected govenor had been quick to slash Medicaid so no beds were available anywhere in the state. Given choices in nearby states he chose one, sight-unseen, in Atlanta. 

Always looking to make friends, he searched the internet and viola!  He found - and very much rescued me.  We like to say that I "broke him out" of the nursing home in March 2012.  By May we had an old yet very comfortable apartment with a large, shaded patio where he loved to sit. 

I do so hope Ron and his mother, Mary, have reunited in spirit and are making up for so much time lost.

I also hope that he was met by his wonderful friend, Ed Abramski, who left us much too soon.  Ron actually hired Ed to work with him and they became fast friends.  Oooooo the stories of those two after hours in northern NJ.  Nope. I won't be sharing those here!  :o)   Ed was great and they talked by phone nearly every day. He so looked forward to those calls; they joked and laughed about past and present.  I was eager to meet Ed; we had plans for him to visit us. But in yet another tragic turn, we lost Ed also. Ron took this loss very hard and missed his friend so much.   

There's so much more I could say, but  . . .  well . . .

We've lost a truly loving and gifted man.