I try to live an open book life here on my blog, after all it was first created in 2007 as a way for family and friends to keep up with us as we move around the country on the military life adventure. Sometimes it is hard though keeping it real because it means facing things. In the past my issues with loosing people has caused me to be in denial right up until the end, this time though is different, and I think it might be worse.

  A few short weeks ago my Dad went to the ER, the pain his own doctor was ignoring was too much for him and he couldn’t take it. There out of the blue, the symptoms his own doctor ignored for months, they found terminal pancreatic cancer. He turns 60 today. There is only a 5% chance he will live to see 61. I am starting to worry he will not live to see Christmas.

 This is crushing in so many ways. He is a rock of a man and this shakes everyone who knows him well to the core. He is a mans man if you get my meaning, in the best way. He is polite, kind, and funny but the thing I think most people know about him is that he is smart and so handy. If it has an engine chances are he can work on it, if it needs to be built then chances are he knows something about it. He has had motorcycles, boats, snowmobiles, you name it. If it can be hunted for food responsibly chances are he has hunted it. If you can fish for it then chances are he has done that too. He lives, he is so often out in the world living. He spends most of his vacations out getting food or camping where he can get food. I dare say he has eaten more free range chemical free meat than anyone else I know. Yet, he has cancer. He has stage 4 pancreatic cancer….. how did his doctor miss this? He was telling me how he was feeling months ago and what his doctor was saying didn’t add up. I told him I was worried, I wouldn’t say the word I was worried about but he and I both knew what I was saying. It couldn’t be though, not him. But it was something, it was a lot of something in so much of his body.

My Dad who doesn’t like to fight, who will stay silent or avoid a conflict now has to to fight for every day of his life, as long as that will be. It breaks my heart. I need him to fight though because I love him, because he deserves to live, because my Mom needs him. I need him. My kids need him. I want my new little baby to know him. I can’t type this without choking on tears.

This lose is real, I am not in denial, I wish I was.

So as a dear family member told me, we keep swimming. It comes in waves, the sorrow, the grief, the despair, but we keep swimming. At some point I know I will get better at swimming, but with lose it us still always swimming. When one of us is struggling to stay above the water, the others help hold us up.

One of my surrogate daughters said she can teach me about losing a parent, she lost her Dad just 2 years ago. Oh the sobbing I did that day knowing how horrible this has been for her, her sister, and their Daddy, how much I so wish she didn’t know what this is like so young. How unfair she only got so few years with her Dad. I am thankful to have 35 years with mine. She is loosing a Pepere she doesn’t really know, but she has his eyes. I can only hope now when he needs it that he has her fire.

So while it feels like my family is drowning I will still be here, blogging, working, and trying to swim because there is nothing I can do to stop cancer but I can’t let it eat my heart too. I will not live in denial but I will distract myself however I can in between the waves.

 It is said all the time but I will say it again, hold your loved ones close, life is too short.