walkingman

Too much shit going on recently. I got a health scare when during a routine ct scan my doctor discovered a 16 mm nodule in my right lung. Once the possibility of lung cancer popped up my whole family freaked out. Thankfully the PET scan came back normal and so the pulmonologist decided against doing anything further. It was a rough four weeks of worry about what turned out to be nothing. Then my aunt passed away after a long illness. While it was expected it was still a tough thing since she was relatively young and had been hanging around for so long. We all just got used to her being sick and fighting through different things. Then several weeks ago my world crashed big time. My Mom called from the emergency room to say that she was there with my Dad. He was having some breathing problems and the doctors were running some tests. Now I know my parents and if they went to the emergency room things had to be real bad. I called my wife and then left my office and headed to the hospital. By the time I made it there it was already too late. My Dad was alive in the sense that a respirator was doing his breathing but he was in a vegetative state. The doctors were keeping him alive so that his kids and siblings could come and say our goodbyes. It seems like once his sister passed and the burden of taking care of her was lifted from his shoulder that Dad just breathed a sigh of relief and went. I cannot explain it any other way. Since I am the lawyer in the family everyone looked to me once more to be the rock and to take care of all the details and Mom. Sometime all I wanted was just five or ten minutes to grieve myself but I always seemed to have someone or something else to deal with. Thankfully my wife helped me a great deal and allowed me time at home to just fall apart. Our boys were also a great comfort. One of the things that really has sustained me throughout this ordeal was that my Dad did tell me last year on Fathers Day that he loved me. Those simple little words that I never heard from him growing up now mean so much to me and have comforted so much over the last several weeks. I know life goes on but I will miss him and my aunt. However I am so glad that I heard him tell me that he loved me and he repeated so many times after Fathers Day 2010.