Today is Tuesday the 9th of October, Yesterday, the 8th of October Daddy was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. The initial memory of Yesterday is a painful, and one full of nothing more than heartbreak and sadness. Conversations and emotions experienced yesterday by so many I am sure will forever haunt all of us and continue to echo within the unforgettable realms of todays reality, but my hope is that as we are forced to accept this we will remember that Life is Not a Timeline, It Is Indeed a Divine Plan with Purpose and it will be necessary for us in the coming days, months, and hopefully Years to recognize and remember the peace and comfort offered to us through the compassionate and healing arms our Savior. It is afterall not just Daddy's diagnosis ,it is a shared diagnosis and a burden that we can all carry together so that our Dear, Sweet ,Father is never left to feel that he is alone in this Fight, and so I have decided to do something that I consider to be theraputic and positive and may also be used as a gateway for our Family to share and communicate as we experience this journey together so that we may never forget what will take place and the stories, counsel, and memories Daddy wants to share with us as well as the ones we are about to create.
This Morning:
When he woke up this morning I could tell his attitude was in a mode of urgency. He was feeling that he didn't have time and had things he needed to get done. His main concern of focus for this morning was my roof. He was so concerned about my roof leaking he wanted to go right over and replace the board where he thought it was leaking into the house. I wanted to do what I could to calm him or offer him some sort of peace, hope or really any other emotion or feeling other than what he was currently experiencing. Which I cant describe or imagine so While waiting for MOM to get up we read some inspirational stories together about
Pancreatic Cancer Survivors from a website that many of us has been lead to during the sleepless night of frantic research that had taken place in many of our homes the night before. Pan Can.org. Pancan.org is an advocate website in support of research, information and most important to my objective at the moment, Hope for those witinessing or living with Pancreatic Cancer, it was a Godsend and after reading many stories of very strong and courageous individuals, vary in all ages the hope they offered was a gift and was in fact contagious; Dad's attitude and personality changed dramatically from the prior day. He opened up a little and shared many thoughts and concerns about the future and what his journey might be. However as he continued to talk I discovered what was really weighing so heavily on his mind was us, his family. He was concerned and worried about how this would effect and impact our family. What would we have to witness and experience? He shared many stories about Grandpa Wintle. He talked a lot about Grandpa's initial reaction and how he said he would fight!!! But as the days and illness continued he did things like refuse to eat. Daddy talked specifically about how he would try to force food in his mouth but Grandpa would just clinch his teeth, He wouldn't eat. Daddy was angered by this and I can tell he is still bothered by this today. He said that he knew if Grandpa wouldn’t eat his body would shut
down; in essence he felt as though he was giving up, a difficult thing I am sure for a Son to have to witness. I asked Daddy if his choices would be different because of the experience and memory he is left with. He said, "Oh Yeah," he knows because of watching Grandpa that he needs to eat
whether he is hungry or not, which most of the time it is the later; but he is sure to
make himself eat anyway because he knows it is a crucial part of staying well. He also talked about Grandpa losing it, mentally, and not really
knowing what was going. He told me of story of one day when he was over there and Grandpa would
just walk in circles or move his feet but not actually go anywhere. On this particular day Daddy was losing patience and he and Grandpa found themselves stopped in the hall facing each other for an
hour, daddy laughed about this, and said "he was crazy" or at the time he thought "He is crazy!" His point seemed to be concern about having that
same thing happen to him. He shared this again in a conversation to take place later that night and Jared summed it up perfectly when Daddy asked, "What if I get to that point and I cant care for myself and I don't know what I am doing." Jared's response was, "Well that's OK we are all here to take care of you, and we will just lock you in a room and make sure to feed you" This was funny to all of us and it made Daddy Laugh, one of the moments since the Diagnosis that Dad was Daddy and not someone lost with in the emptiness of a Cancer Diagnosis.
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