Dad's Birthday

Dad would have been 89 today. I sure didn't think we'd lose him at 77, especially as his dad, me Grandpa Joe, did every health thing completely wrong, indeed almost obstinately, spectacularly wrong, yet missed 86 by just two days. I almost believe Joe would still be alive today somehow if he'd have taken even modest care of himself. If anyone could have willed himself to 120, it was Joe.

The thing is, I have to feel as though me Pops was given twenty more years. He had stage 4 cancer at 57, and the treatment the doctors employed on him was so new he was told that an identical diagnosis five years earlier would have led to, 'Here's some morphine, Mr. Cosgriff, we'll make you as comfortable as we can these next few months'.  Dad fought the cancer too, fought it hard, had vowed on Day One that he'd beat it. By the grace of God, he did. If I ever face such odds, I hope I can find his courage.

We don't appreciate the world we live in as much as we should. Something like with Dad, Mom had a pacemaker installed in 2014 because her heart started stopping. Started stopping? What an odd turn of phrase. But to the point: she lived until 2022, just about 8 more years on the dot in fact, because of technology, of improvements in medicine. In 1914, one day later that year her heart would have simply stopped and never restarted. 

It's easy to be melancholy; I'm fighting it right now. But isn't sadness looking too hard at the wrong side of the ledger? Life itself is a gift, indeed the greatest gift. Twenty Eight more years with my parents? This isn't such a bad old world we live in.