Ashes�

2003-10-26

California is on fire again. The taste of ashes in my mouth seems appropriate right now.

Dad was planning to go to China again, despite what happened the last time. Or maybe because of it. And, despite what happened the last time, or maybe because of it, the wonderful spouse and I were planning to go as well. I wanted to go, to keep an eye on my Dad, but not only for that. It would be a photographer's dream. And I dream of being a photographer.

One of the things that my Dad asked my Mom after he was diagnosed was "Can I still go to China?" He actually said that in front of my sisters. They both shouted "No!"

I can't feel the same way. He's asking, even in the face of the inevitable, to do something. Something, I grant you, will take him far from home and family. Even to ask must have cost him. When he came home the last time, after we all thought he was going to die of a stroke in China, he said "I know that everyone would say that I died doing what I wanted to do. But I didn't want to die in China alone, without my family."

He may not really want to go; 'tis easier said than done. I'm sure I don't want to go without him. But if he asks me, I'll go.

Oh, this just sucks. I'm sure it must for everyone who loses someone they love. I thought my grandmother was my first lost loved one, but she wasn't really lost. She faded away long before her physical self left us.

He's not gone. And the future is uncertain. We, as a family have beat the odds at least once before. We'll do our best to try to beat them again. The future is uncertain. I know what the odds are. But if you go by the odds, he should have had this disease twenty or thirty years ago. There's a co-relation with this disease and people exposed to petroleum products in the workplace. My dad worked in the California oilfields in his teens and twenties. Most people with this disease are diagnosed in their fifties. My dad is nearer his eighties than his sixties. I'm going to hold that resistance in my head and heart.

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