Waiting...

Parts of this post will be humorous I assure you. It's my nature. However, I'm writing this at a time of grief. There...that's your warning.

On December 29th, 2008 my grandma passed away. She had been sick for a long time and it all happened so beautifully that we were all sad, but at peace. At the services my uncle had a scary cough. I was nagging him to go to the doctor because my senses said he had pneumonia. He had been on disability since the spring before when he had to have his SECOND heart valve transplant and his medicaid wasn't going to kick in for a few more months. Bueracracy! In March of 2009 he woke up one morning and didn't know who he was or where he was. He was dizzy and had a major headache as well as the cough. My aunt drove him to the ER. He was admitted to the hospital and in four days later found out he had stage four lung cancer which had spread to his brain. He was given 10 months at the most. He underwent some chemo and radiation to buy some time.

During this extended time Homer and my aunt cleaned out their house and bought a trailer. On a cold October weekend our family helped run a garage sale to try and earn them some money by selling many of their possessions. The next weekend my uncle ended up back in the hospital with a stomach infection which required surgery. He was in the hospital for over a week. By the time he came home we had spent another weekend moving what remained of their possessions to the trailer. Since November of 2009 it has been a slow and steady decline of Homer's health.

In April I had the honor of going and picking him up to take him to a family reunion. We joked all the way there and all the way back. You see...my sense of humor and nack for practical joking was inherited from my uncle and my dad. It was weird for me to see him with a walker, but he joked about it and all was good. That really is the final memory I will cherish of my uncle as I knew him. I thank God that my aunt was unable to attend and I had that time.

Last week my sister and I went to see our uncle. The hospital bed had been moved in. He said to us, "I'm having a hard time getting going this morning." That was all. He was dozing in and out. We stayed about thirty minutes and left. As we walked to the car Sandy said, "That was bad."

Yesterday morning my mom called and told me not to be without my phone things were going downhill quickly. In the afternoon I went and met my mom, Sandy, my dad, my grandpa and my other aunt at the house. I could not believe the change that had occurred since Saturday. I hope eventually the visual will leave my head, but right now it is all I can think about. My dad sat with tears in his eyes. Let me say that for the last year...my dad has been at my uncle's house almost every day. I have prayed for words to come to me to say to my dad, but I'm at a loss. Oh because here is another key factor. Last month we found out that Grandpa's prostate cancer had spread to his bones so he has underwent radiation in the last few weeks. How unfair is this? Really? I continually pray that my dad will have strength and not have a heart attack or something from stress. Yesterday, I'm looking at my uncle and praying that he does not feel the suffering that we can see, I'm watching my dad with tears in his eyes, and my grandpa says, "When my mom was sick, I prayed that God would end her suffering and he took her home the next day. When my wife was sick, I prayed that God would end her suffering and the next morning she went home to be with the Lord. I can't bring myself to pray that for my son."

So last night when it was time to go workout I decided I wanted to skip the gym and go walking through the woods. I needed time alone. I didn't judge the amount of daylight I had left. I also paid no attention to the trail maps or where I was going. I just started walking very briskly. I was crying from sadness and from anger. I just kept walking. I came face to face with a deer. I was standing in a field. I had no idea how I got there. Now it wasn't completely dark in the field, but as I was turning in circles trying to figure out where the car might be I realized I was going to have to back track and that meant going back through the woods which WERE dark. I have to say for 20 minutes I didn't think of my uncle or my family. My heart was racing more from being lost than walking briskly. And let me just tell you...I've watched a lot of suspenseful horror movies in my 38 years. I've also read a lot of true crime novels. Women get attacked in the woods all the time! After twenty minutes of walking through the dark woods I cam eback to the path which led me to my car.

I came home and forced myself to work on homework. I fell asleep sometime between 12:30 and 1:00 only to have a nightmare that I was still lost in the woods. I fell back asleep and woke up with another nightmare of being held hostage. In between I woke up every hour to check the time and the phone because I was worried I had missed a call. I hit the gym rather aggressively this morning and am now trying to get my to do list completed. It's challenging to go about your daily activities at a time like this.

In the amount of time it has taken me to write this post, the ambulance has come and moved my uncle to Hospice House. It's ironic to me that we've been waiting for a bed to open since yesterday afternoon. That means that another family has suffered a loss. Cancer sucks. It sucks really bad.

My hope is that even though the words have never been spoken...my uncle knows what a pinnacle of my life he has been and how much I love him. I have always known how much he has loved me. I just hope he has known. I also pray that his suffering ends very soon.

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next."
-- Gilda Radner