at about 9 pm, I got a call from my mother saying my stepfather was going into surgery and might not come out. He'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer 4 1/2 years prior, with neuroendocrine carcinoma 14 months prior, and that moment was the first time I ever considered that the cancer might one day win and we might bury him. Eleven days later he died. And seven days after that, we did bury him.
I know that sounds insane, but those who know him understand how insane the thought that he might succumb to cancer felt.
These past two years have been tough in my immediate family - and made tougher still that I'm flailing around without one of my confidants. I miss him terribly. In some ways, I have grown accustomed to his absence, talking about him in past tense and living our lives without him in it. In some ways it hurts less today than it did 713 days ago. In other ways, his absence has deepened and extended itself into all of the things he's missed, all of the things we haven't had him here for. Burying my grandfather. Losing two pregnancies. The impending birth of my nephews.
Today my heart hurts for all that has happened that I have not been able to share with him as well - his grandchildren, babies when he died, are stretching out into the most beautiful children I have ever met. Carter and Logan have started preschools and Sunday school, Lilly has the goofy pumpkin grin of a 7 year old.
Last week I sang a new hymn in church and was struck dumb with the knowledge that I could not hear you sing it in my head. I miss you DB.
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