My dad is dying.
It's a long slow process where he keeps getting medical interventions (valve replacement surgery, diabetes pills, water pills) that improve his quality of life for a little longer. He's at the age where many of this friends have already passed away, some a lot younger than him, so he has fewer resources. He calls when there are any setbacks just to vent or to hear me say positive things.
As icing on the cake, his wife was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Luckily she's not where I live or they would have delayed her mastectomy as non-essential as hospitals clog with COVID patients pursuing immunity through infection.
I'll admit I've been lucky to have a couple decades of a relatively stress-free life. My mom's death fell along, to me, a predictable path. Since she told me she had cancer by showing me a diagnosis that said it had metastasized to her lungs, I felt anything over 18 months was a bonus. I was working on very interesting projects with a great boss so I could leave quickly as needed to fly home. She was good until she wasn't. She went from getting into a car on her own to go to an appointment to not being able to get out of the car then slipped into a final coma a couple weeks later. And my dad took care of the post mortem details.
This time around, I am still away but without the distraction of work along with pandemic living in an area with a ridiculous 4th wave where there is only ICU space because people keep dying and the knowledge of being the executor with some hard decisions to make. There is no distraction from death and a government intent on overwhelming the medical system to implement private hospitals. Bennie has something going on with his foot and has to wear a cone so he stops licking. It's harder to focus on the good things from being financially secure to having great weather.
I think the problem is there's nothing I can control...I just have to get over it.
