I didn’t go to karate tonight(Monday). I had a really bad headache. It only the second headache, and a bad one at that, I’ve had since I went on my new medicine. I attribute it 100% to stress. When I left Illinois yesterday, my dad seemed to be doing ok. He was awake and relatively lucid. I told him that I loved him, and that I would see him this weekend. Unfortunately, that won’t be the case.

My aunt called me at work around 8am this morning. I didn’t get the voicemail right away, because I was away from my desk. I called her back as soon as I could, and she informed me that my dad had taken a bad turn. His bp was really low, he was having difficulty breathing, and he was non-responsive. As you can imagine, I didn’t get much done at work today. I spent most of the day thinking about him. I called my step-mom about 6:30 tonight, and she told me that he was hanging in there. He had started responding a bit, but still wasn’t good. She put the phone up to his ear, and I said, “Hi Pa,” to him. She told him it was me, and he responded to her with, “Hi Pa.” That tells me that he heard me.

My uncle called me a little after 2 this morning (Tuesday) and told me that my dad was gone. He passed about 1:55am. It’s only been a little over 3 months since he was daignosed with cancer. The initial prognosis was 4-8 months. I guess they were wrong on that one. The strange thing is that it’s actually kind of relieving. I loved my dad, and I didn’ t want him to die; but it was so hard to watch him suffer like that. He was in so much pain, and he was nothing more than a shell of the man he used to be. I am only glad that his suffering has ended.