How to Prepare?

There's a question that's been floating around in my head for the last three years. How do you prepare yourself to live without your parents?

Three years ago, my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He had no symptoms prior to his diagnosis. Our family was blindsided. He started chemotherapy almost immediately, and faced every day with faith and humor. He's always been like that. There's no problem dad can't solve with a sarcastic joke or a prayer.

We are lucky that he's still with us today. The odds of surviving pancreatic cancer longer than a few months are slim, so it's a damn miracle he's still here after three years. I think mom and I had almost forgotten he was even sick. Sure he had tired, sick and grumpy days, but for the most part he was active and his battle was barely noticeable. Until this year.

I'd been living about four hours away when something in my head and heart told me I needed to be home. I found a job, packed up my home and fur baby and moved home in December. Dad helped me secure a lot to build my own house in town. He came with me to appointments to pick out flooring, cabinets, appliances, and everything else that comes with building a custom home. We auditioned for a musical in town and started rehearsals together. Then one Monday morning in January mom called me at work. Dad was being airlifted to Omaha with a brain bleed.

He spent the next month in the ICU and finally a physical rehab center. I drove four hours every weekend to see him and support mom. The doctors were confident he would recover, and he did, to a point. We got him home, continued with out patient rehab for a few weeks and they released him to go back to his routine of activity and chemotherapy. He was different, but no one truly gets back to 100% normal after a stroke. Especially at 72 years old. His concept of time was gone, and my usual "funny guy" dad was suddenly monotone, almost robotic. Mom and I did what we could to support him and keep him active and engaged with family and friends. Things were really looking up. We even got him out golfing again. But then everything changed again.

On May 20th, the day before my birthday, mom was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Again, we saw no symptoms before her diagnosis. She told dad and I'm still not certain if he fully understands, but less than a week later he was back in the hospital. No one really explained to us what was wrong with him. One day it was an infection, the next sepsis, the next walking pneumonia...it was a full week of unanswered questions on top of all of mom's new appointments and preparations for her chemotherapy.

We got him home a week later, but the dad I knew is gone. The man who taught me how to drive a stick shift, who gave me my dry and sarcastic sense of humor, who drove four hours in the middle of the night when I finally kicked out my abusive ex husband to help me file for divorce, and who I'd hoped would be the most amazing grandpa to my future kids is dying and it's the hardest truth I've ever had to face.

I'm honestly not trying to win this contest. I just wanted to write out a short, but honest account of what has turned into the hardest three years of my family's lives. If I've learned anything from all of this, it's that you have to appreciate every single day you have on this Earth and the people you get to share them with, because everything can change at the drop of a hat. So back to that question that I started this essay with: How do you prepare to live without your parents? The truth is, you don't. You can't prepare for a loss that great. You have to live through it, and even that is devastating.