It's natural to leave a few activities undone when you travel home. After all, there's a priority list - taxes, for example, in this last visit - in which certain things will always take precedence.
We operated under the assumption that Dad would be getting his second treatment Monday and so I left, the outlook good. Then came the news: his white blood cell count was too low to receive his second treatment. It would have to wait until next week.
Now I doubt my decision. Should I have stayed? Would it have mattered if I had? Would my being there offer another solution? The rhetorical questions and non-answers are absolute hell. There's nothing I can do to fix anything. I have no control over this situation. It all rests on Dad's shoulders.
Am I selfish to want my father around for a few more years? What if he's ready to go? How do I make peace with his decision, horrible as it may be?
There are so many things I have yet to do with him. My sisters and I were going to interview him. That didn't happen, even though we wanted it to be a priority. Another thing undone. There are the unplanned trips to Germany, to the birthplace of most of my ancestors. Undone. And there are the boxes upon boxes of books and stamps filling every available square foot of my dad's house, waiting to be processed, or posted, or sold. All undone.
We only have so much time to finish everything we want to, a limited amount of time to express our joys and live our passions. There's so much my dad hasn't seen yet and to see him back away without a fight is upsetting. Maybe there's a wisdom here I don't see yet. After all, I'm still (reasonably) young and want so much out of the next forty years. Dad's nearing the end. Would another ten years really make a difference?
I suppose it would for the rest of us. We don't want things with him to end. We don't want his life to end undone and unfinished. We want a chance for him to complete what he starts in a way where nothing is left behind.
In the end, though, does it matter? Does any of it really matter?
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