I've seen a meme that mentions grief being like the ocean, waves of grief come over you and feel overwhelming where you can hardly breathe, you survive the surge and finally catch your breath and feel okay only to have another huge wave of grief wash over you - that's where I'm at.
It feels super surreal sometimes. Like he's still at home and will be sitting at the kitchen table. He'll say "Hey Babe" as I walk in the room and go over to give him a hug. He'll ask me what I know and I'll jokingly say 'not much' and we both chuckle.
We knew that Dad's time with us was limited. He was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer in December of 2016 - the same month I found out that we were pregnant with Savannah. He went through treatments and actually had great response, with tumors shrinking, he had very little sickness. The doctors gave him 6 months to live - He sure showed them! With his great response to treatment I think we all thought that he was going to live much much longer than everyone expected. Then he had a heart attack - a total shocker to all of us. This was the begin of his decline.
I worked in a cancer center for many many years as a financial advisor, going over insurance benefits with patients as they faced this scary disease. Everyone always spoke about quality of life versus quantity of life and I thought I understood what that looked like. When patients would stop treatment and start living the life they had left. It was bittersweet, they knew their end was near and they wanted to enjoy it. After the heart attack dad's quality of life declined A TON. It was so hard seeing a man so capable, so independent become a man who had to rely on others to help him do every day normal things.
His birthday was the 20th, 4 days before he passed. I yelled at him and told him that he had to make a choice to either want to live or giving up. He told me he wanted to live and that he would try - God had other plans.
He passed with a room full of family, my sister and I were holding his hands and mom was hugging him. A beautiful passing for a beautiful man.
Fly high Daddy!
I expect you to be building a tear drop camper, building an epic go kart and teaching Logan all the things in that great big bard in Heaven.
It certainly isn't good bye, it's only a see you later.
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