re-run

i know that i have posted this essay from megan before but reading it today seemed to mean more to me than i could ever express...it is so wonderful to know that my kids "get it" and really understood what their dad was all about. we always have talked about his values but mostly from a "religious" stand-point. we always wanted them to know and experience a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior like we have and at a very early age they did...but this letter shows me that they also understood the whole person behind DAD...and that is a job well done Tim. i am so proud of that man i married for being such a wonderful husband and a great dad. and i can't tell you how proud i am of my girls...they have had to step up to the plate and face things that some people NEVER have to face and they did it with love and compassion and they have played such a huge part of getting me through each day...

When I was younger, I always had the best relationship with my dad; he was my best friend. We’d go to baseball and football games together and I’d go “help” him with work, which was more of me socializing with his co-workers and being a distraction than anything. When we moved to Harrisburg, our relationship started to change. We didn’t get along as much, and little things slowly turned into big things. I wanted to spend time with my friends and wasn’t home as much. He worked a lot too, and we just grew apart. We both still loved each other of course, there was just a lot of tension at times and our relationship struggled from it, until recently.
On New Years Eve, 2005, my dad was admitted, for the first of many times, to Hershey Medical Center. Soon after, he was diagnosed with a severe form of lymphoma. Needless to say, over the past two to three years, the treatment went from good, to bad, to worse, back to good, to great, to not-so-good, to terrible, to a little better… you get the point. Eventually the doctors tried a stem-cell transplant, which ended up with great results. His body responded well to the procedure and for awhile the cancer was in remission. A few months later however, it was back, and tumors were growing in multiple spots on his left side of the body. After trying almost every type of chemotherapy his body could handle, a decision was made to stop treatment.
Some people would say that stopping the treatment was the equivalent to giving up and being weak. The truth is I’d say it was the complete opposite. The past eighteen years of my life I’ve looked up to my dad, regardless of how well we got along, and I still do, now more than ever. The reason he made that decision was so he could spend as much time that was humanly possible being happy and living life to the fullest. He wanted to see his daughters grow up, and be able to remember it, not lay in a hospital under heavy medication every three weeks. He knows he’ll probably die, but doesn’t everyone? Whether that time is in a few months or a few years, no one knows. When he does though, I’ll know he spent the end of his life doing what he loved, and living each day like he could never do it again. That takes strength.
When I looked up the definition of the word “fight,” this is what I found: to engage in battle; attempt to defend against, defeat, or destroy an adversary. My father may have stopped the treatments, but he defeated the cancer. He knows that there’s more to life than how long it is. The kind of strength it took my father to not only survive the first two to three years of the cancer, but to take control of the situation and finish his life off strong, is the kind of strength I hope I too can develop. I want to push myself for the rest of my life to make a difference and enjoy it while I can.

enough said

thanks for checking in

tammy