my mom and dad had their very first family reunion this summer with us, their kids (i am the oldest and only married one). we did so many things and had so much fun. on the last day or so, we stopped by buffalo wild wings because my dad had called in an order of boneless wings. a lot of things make him sick these days, but buffalo wild wings is one of the things he can usually eat. we'd been out all day and were in fact coming home from one of our activities, so we all stopped while he ran inside. i don't remember if for some reason i was already irritated--i think someone had been squabbling--but we sat there and the minutes began to drag on. ten minutes. twenty minutes. it  was getting to be half an hour and i just wanted to go the f back to the house because it was hot and for whatever reason we were all kind of pissy, mostly from the sun.

we commandeered my brothers, moving them from my mom's car to our car, and right as we were pulling out my dad came out with his little bag of wings, and away we went.

later my mom tells us that my dad was waiting in line for his order when he suddenly had to get to the bathroom. he rushed in there in a panic but the stalls were full, and he lost control of his bowels. it had happened to him before at work in the middle of the morning, and my mom had to pick him up.

she will tell us how he'll go to work and realize his shirt's on backwards or inside out or both and how humiliating it is for him. how once they got an insurance check for my brother's braces and he went out and bought shoes, pants, some books--things he had been needing and wanting--$500 of it. when she asked him why in the world he did it, he said he just thought they had an extra big pay check, that they didn't have any bills that week or something.

my dad is sick and when it hits me, like tonight, from something so silly as a movie, it's obliterating. it's like if he is fading away, i shouldn't exist. not like i can't go on without him or anything like that, but just that this shouldn't happen to anyone's dad, so it's impossible for this to be real. and the burden of that is crushing.

the only thing i could think tonight before the sorrow took over is that i have to make this all worth it. i have to make something of myself.

recently in a get to know you meeting at work one of the questions was, "what was your biggest childhood struggle?" i told the group honestly that i think my parents struggled quite a bit but that i never felt like i was missing a thing, and couldn't think of an answer. i always knew my mom was a fighter from the way she lived her life, but you grow up and learn things you maybe don't want to learn but need to. like that she won against clinical depression. and the battle against suicide. and she's winning in this battle with my dad's cancer--i mean, she's fucking killing it. no human should be able to handle it half as well. and i always under-appreciated my dad. the day they found out about the tumor he was furled up in a wheelchair--why was he in a wheelchair?--and, my mom told us, a tear rolled down his cheek. he asked my mom quietly, "was i enough?" he is a quiet person--i get it all from him--and he is going just like he came--so quietly and imperceptibly that if you didn't know what was actually going on you wouldn't even know it. and then one day he will just be gone.

i am scared that one day i will wake up or be woken up to a call that he just passed away in his sleep. that it could be literally any day. that maybe the tumor won't even come back first. and that i won't have done shit for him, in return for all he did for me.

i have to keep going, on to law school or--the only suitable replacement being--something of equal weight and work and challenge. for all that has happened they gave us so quietly the best life they could, and even if i am not as selfless or opposed or strong as them, i have to give at least one thing in life all that i've fucking got.