Weepy eyes, want a birthday hug from mom and dad

wrote this in january...

Sitting next to Dad's bed - Kimmarie Gaye

This last year and a half have been the same for our family, my mother with multiple strokes, a brain injury from a fall and dementia, my husband's mom passing away and now, this last week I have spent at my dad's side holding his hand, and sleeping in his hospital room as he struggles with his own passing. It has not been easy, and i can not express how hard it is to tell someone they are dieing and that chemotherapy will not help them.

I watch as this strong man who only last fall traveled from Coast to coast to dine with the president, and now the inaugural invitation lies in the drawer of his hospital room. Visitors stream in and out, he has touched so many lives. He rallies a bit with each new person, smiles and visits and tells them he will get better, but at nights when it is just he and i, he hallucinates as his past intrudes into this moment. He wakes, struggling to arise with a body that no longer responds to try and find his wallet so that he can pay for his anniversary dinner, he claps his hands to scare off the animal that peeks through the cabin window, he cries out for love from his mother that died when he was only 13.

And through it all, I smile at him even as the tears drip from my nose and cheeks.