I'm Working On It

I wish a was a writer. A person blessed with the ability to make you see the sunset on a slightly foggy afternoon, or hear the lullaby of love a mom sings to her child. I wish I was a writer so that I may be able to explain who my cancergramps was, really let people know.



there are no words, well none that i can currently string together to fully encapsulate him.



And now he's gone. Thankfully.



In the past month, when cancergramps was quite literally wasting away, I prayed to God for him to die. For God to take him quickly so he didn't have to suffer the indignities that death brings. He died the way he didn't want to die, wasting away. He had lost so much weight, so much. He was thin in a way I have only ever seen in pictures of the holocaust. He wasn't in physical pain, but he was in anguish over wasting away. He couldn't really speak, except to say wa for water and pee, for well, peeing. Otherwise it was just a string of small sounds that I could never really make out. I was struck that even at the end, when there is very little left your body has instincts to keep you alive.

And I prayed for death to come. I felt like I was somehow betraying God and cancergramps in praying for death. Seems like such an unGodLike thing to pray for - Death, merciful death. Yet this is what I prayed for, for day, weeks and what turned out to be months. I know it's all God's time. I know, I just hoped I had some ...... something.

CancerGramps died on February 16th, 2009 at 2:15pm, 2 days after my father's birthday.

I miss him more than I could ever explain. There just aren't words, at least none that I am qualified to use to explain the depth at which I miss him.

I picked up the phone he used in our office the day after he died. I did it absentmindedly, it was the phone I was closest to, and I receiver smelt just like CancerGramps. He had a very distinctive cologne he wore and I sat down in the chair, didn't pick up the line, even when it madly beeped at me, I just sat. It's odd how a smell can cause you to relive so much, so quickly. I never did pick up the line and we found an entire drawer of that cologne, I think 8 bottles, in his bathroom. Good lord he must have been collecting them every time it was on sale. I don't even know where bought it at, I didn't recognize it.

I miss him.