On this day…

On my father’s last living birthday, he was making plans about what we would all do on my mother’s upcoming next birthday (in May) and on mine (July). It was on my mother’s birthday that he was given his death sentence (terminal cancer, “go home and stay as comfortable as you can”) – they gave him three months, at most. On my own birthday, that July, he was too sick to do anything other than push a piece of cake around on the plate and try to smile underneath the awkward nose-pieces of the cables that fed oxygen to him, air that he needed to keep breathing. Just over those three months that they gave him, he was gone.

I try not remember those last three months. I try not to remember the pain of watching him fade away.

On this day, had he lived to see it, he would have turned 92 years old. But it’s been a dozen years since he’s been gone.

Still.

Happy birthday, Daddy. Some part of you will always be within me. I carry you in my memories.