Another Family Gathering

October 1st, 2007

The last few months have been hard on my dad. He has lived with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) for more than ten years. The disease causes a very slow deterioration of the person's ability to fight infection. Dad has been in and out of the hospital with various infections for a while now. A week ago he went in the hospital again, but this time none of the drugs the doctors prescribed had much effect. By mid-week they said it would be his last struggle, and most of the family made it back to visit with him this last weekend. They've stopped several of his drugs and now it's just a matter of keeping him comfortable.

Coming as this has on the heels of my sister-in-law's funeral three weeks ago, I feel like our family has had quite a dose of cold reality lately. The first couple of days in the hospital with dad were hard for me, but I seem to have run the course and now feel a little more comfortable saying goodbye. I'm really glad we had the chance to move closer to him during the last three years; there are so many memories made during that time that we would have missed out on had we stayed in the Midwest. My two oldest children will have memories of grandpa reading them stories and taking them out on the boat, and that is something that they will treasure forever.