Jim Croce was Right

My Father, the selfish, cancer riddled bastard, is in the hospital.  On Sunday afternoon he slipped and fell on the garage steps.  It didn't seem like much but when we had trouble getting him back up we called the EMTs.  Once he was on the gurney the decision was made to take him to the hospital and get him checked out for saftey's sake.  He seemed fine.  He said he had no additional pain and based on how he was bossing everyone around he appeared to be his usual pugnacious self. 

I only stayed at the hospital for a little while because my Dad was doing well and as my Sister pointed out chemo takes a toll on an immune system so a germ factory like a hospital is no place to be.  Personally, I think this was her attempt to get me out of there and convince the Old Man in his weakened state to write me out of the will.  I wasn't worried, my Mother was there and I'm clearly her favorite (she doesn't even try to hide it), I knew she had my back.  Also, you'd need to have some kind of money or property to have a will, my Father has gone to great lengths to have neither.

Last night I spent the night at the hopital with him until I was nodding off in a wooden chair so uncomfortable it could have been used in the Spanish Inquisition.  The hospital was still a germ factory but my Father's condition had not improved.  It had worsened and I did not want to be waiting at home for an emergency call to rush in.  His oxygen levels were low and he was getting a blood transfusion.  On the plus side my Sister had gone home around nine so I got my chance to work my way back into the non-existent inheritance.  You here that Sis!  That 1990 red, white and blue Honda Prelude (that has trouble going into park) is all mine!

But here is why I call my Father selfish.  I don't know how much longer the Old Man has and I haven't had time enough to do all the stuff I planned on doing with him.  I've never been able to surprise him with a classic car.  A trip to Canton or Cooperstown.  A chance to share in my eventual success.  A chance to hold his eventual grandchildren.  If I'd have known that the time I had left with him was so precious I wouldn't have wasted so damn much of it.  If he'd had bothered to just tell me, maybe I could have made things happen a lot sooner.  If at anytime over the last nine years of him fighting off his cancer - with what seemed like the strength of thousands - he'd said "I don't know how much longer I can do this."  Well, I don't know what I would have done but I feel like I would have done something.  

So for now, we wait for some kind of real life Dr. House (I've never seen the show but from the looks of the previews he's a pretty fair doctor and if I'd referenced Quincy or Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman he'd either be undergoing an autopsy or having leeches stuck to his chest) to stride through the door and tell us he's got it all figured out.  Until that happens, we pray.

Just like this one, only older, slower and without the professional paint job.