Life's Whirlwind Adventures

Almost 5 years ago I lost my father. He had been battling heart and lung failure for ten years, had outlived the original prognosis from the doctors and had fought to get better. He had gotten better, in that he was able to leave the hospital, he was able to undergo some pretty significant surgeries and he was able to live a life similar to the one he had lost, but in many ways that first illness had taken from me the father I knew all my life growing up.  In the last year of his life I did see that man come back, he had let go of some of his bitterness, he had accepted things as they were, not for what he felt they should have been.  Every day I miss him, and wish he hadn't left this world, I know that he is no longer in pain and that he is in a better place with my nana and his dad. I was pregnant with Chandler when I received the first call that my dad had gone into the hospital. I thought my world was ending,  how could my dad, the man who always went to the gym was...

So yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my father's passing. It was a horrible day. The only good thing about it is last year the temperature was warmer where I was. I was in California trying to get my dad's estate organized because he was on life support in the hospital and the doctors refused to cooperate with the family so as it looked like he would be there indefinitely we were planning on heading home. We had already been down for five weeks by this time. The doctors said he was not going to come off life support but because of outside influences the hospital would not move him to comfort care where he could pass away with dignity and with his family surrounding him. While my mother and I were taking care of his business so we could keep his house up and running from Canada my dad laid in his hospital bed alone. Only the sounds of the ventilator and cooling blanket for company. Traffic sucked on the 580. There was a big accident and it literally took us an...