Today is the 6th anniversary of the death of my son's dad (lung cancer, age 46). I originally posted this in April 2005. Thought it was a good time to run it again.
Yesterday, in an attempt to clean out the 49.5G that I've used on my laptop, I began opening a lot of files that I haven't looked at in awhile. In some cases, files that I didn't even remember that I had.
One of these turned out to be a written account of the last week of Tony's life. I guess in trying to process everything, I wrote every single detail of that last, grueling week.
After having been sick for 8 months or so, he took a rapid slide during those seven days that surprised even his nurses. Although his life was quickly slipping away, he maintained his sense of humor almost to the very end.
Two days before he passed away, his sisters and Lucas and I were sitting with him at the hospital, having seen him get progressively weaker. At one point, the phone rang. He looked at us and said, "Unless it's the Dalai Lama, I don't want to talk to anyone."
Those were the last words he spoke. Some day, I think my son will get a chuckle out of that.
