Tuesday's with Dad

I read a book called Tuesday's with Morrie a few years ago. Some of you may have read it. It is a story about an older man dying from cancer. He was a college professor at one time. He invited a previous student to share time with him every Tuesdays. This is a wonderful book about life, death. I highly recommend it. You will laugh and cry but most importantly you will understand the process of dying. I know that dying scares some people. However, the fundamental fear of every human being is dying. Death is truly and unknow for us humans. It is sort of a last frontier so to speak. No matter how ready you are there most be a small part of us that fears the unknown.



As I talk with my dad tonight I hear such thankfulness for a full life. I hear of life with a great wife (fantastic mother too!) and kids he is proud of. He is not bitter about the fast approaching end. He is greatful that for 80 years he was in excellent health. The peace he seems to embrace like he embraces my mother is comforting to us all. The process of dying can be an undignified event in our lifes.

My dad is patiently enduring the loss of freedom we all take for granted. He like me is a very private and modest person. He has always been a strong and independent person. So, it with humbleness and grace that he accepts along with his sentence of death the loss of freedom to go to the bathroom or change his clothes. This is hard for me to watch and to think about but he continues to teach me dignity and grace in the face life's most difficult challengs.



My relationship with my dad was based more on fear then of respect as a child growing up. I witnessed and experience some difficult things as a child. I don't remember having a really close relationship with dad growing up. What I remember most was that my dad traveled for work so he was gone a lot. I bonded with my mother who by the way is the best mother a child could have on anyone's scale. I didn't feel this way about my dad for a large part of my life. However, the last 20 years he has been the dad I never knew I always wanted.



All day today our conversation drifted from iminence of death to the Cowboys and Sooners and back to dying. I know my dad trusts me with his feelings because he speaks with me as an equal telling me the hard things along with sharing his lifes blessing.



I knew from the moment I heard that he would not be with us for much longer that my life would be changed. I will no longer be the same...