Never Forget, You Can Do HaRD Things

It's funny how there have been times, of late, where I really do feel like one of those made-up characters come to life from a book. Abby Regatti and her pink combat boots come to mind as the wake of Monday, which came and went in a blur, drifts choppily by. Doctors discussed ways in which to buy more time, while they impressed the gravity of PSA levels that are now ell over a thousand, translation...the cancer is growing faster.  The ol' mountain man sat, stoically taking it all in. He seems so much older than his actual years, frail in the wheelchair that practically swallows up his now overly thin body and I struggle from my watchful position in the waiting room chair, trying to remember a time when he was young, vibrant, full of life.  Those images, however, remain aloof, like something I'm not sure if I dreamed long ago or a memory that is real, yet grown yellowed and cloudy with age. Fear is a palpable thing, hanging heavy over everything and I just don't know if I'm equipped to provide the comfort he seeks. How does one squeeze every precious drop out of life, while simultaneously making preparations for the end?

In the car on the drive home, we talk of the things he wishes he had done and I prompt him to tell me what it is he wants most. He is doggedly determined to see the ocean one final time. I remind him that there's no way he can make that drive, threaten to take every one of his vehicle keys if I even think he's going to try, when he quietly asks, "Come with me, then? You drive." A dozen protests pop into my mind, but one look at his vulnerable, pleading face and I bite every one of them back. "Okay," I agree. I have never been on a vacation alone with this man even once my entire life. It has taken him forty-seven years to even ask me, a sad fact not lost on me now, when the invitation comes during the final phase of the end of his life. This is what it takes for him to want my company? My heart lurches as the pain of that hard slap of reality stings through a timeline string to a little girl's ache to be wanted, loved.

If I am to get through this, and I AM going to get through it, I have to put an ice pack on that little girl's pain and keep moving forward. Nothing can be done about what was lost or what will never be...and none of this is about me anyway. That little girl grew up, made a good life for herself, and used those nightmare creatures from her childhood to forge her adult self in fire and steel. It is the woman of fire and steel he needs now, and that's who he's going to get. I stand for you, ya stubborn, onery, ol' mountain man, even when you couldn't be bothered to stand for me. I stand for you because I love you, even when it hurts like hell. I stand for you because, for the most part, I have become the person I needed when I was young. And on the day you slip from this world to the next, I'll be right there beside you, watching over you until you no longer need it. I stand for you until it's your time to fly. I could really use those pink combat boots about now!