Owen wrote: Mon Mar 24, 2025 1:44 pm Short Version (its been a rough few months and no signs of slowing):

December: I nearly died by food poisoning.

Jan: We find my Mom has lung cancer. It was scary, but they caught it early. She had surgery, they removed the mass. She has basically made a full recovery (she still needs to get checked every 3 months for now, but everyone is very optimistic). Yet the whole couple months were a lot of fears and getting things in order if the worst should happen. Lots of thinking about family and death. So when she got through it felt like we dodged a bullet and a huge weight came off.

March: My Dad was complaining of rib pain; he has worked construction and a general laborer his whole life, so for him to complain it must be something. So my Mom had him go in for a scan. We were expecting to find that he tore a muscle, but instead they found a large cancerous mass in his esophagus that has spread to his liver. He was sent the next day to an Oncologist where an endoscopy was performed and the mass looks to be already between stage 3 and 4 (they were very surprised he could breathe and eat normally). He is getting an MRI on his brain this week, and a biopsy on the liver. My Mother and I are taking him on the 31st back to the Oncologist for him to tell us the "battle plan" once he has the info from this weeks MRI and biopsy. This is incurable. He is dying, on the 31st the will most likely tell us roughly how long he has and if he wants to do cemo to prolong his life, or go until the wheels fall off with pain management. In a good scenario we have 4-6 months with him. If it made it to his brain or if his liver is worse, who knows.

SO

Friends, I am just rocked by grief. No one is ready to lose a parent, and I know there are probably thousands of stories like mine, but this just came so out of left field for me, especially after my Mom's thing. I am an only child, so there is a lot to get in order. Right now, I just swing really hard and fast between being ok and normal to just crying at the drop of a hat. Just excusing myself to go to the bathroom at work to keep up professionalism. I have always been kind of a melancholy person, but I have never been a depressed person, but I feel that pull.

I have been trying to really not let things bottle up, talk it out with my wife, take the dog on more walks, be active, do "tasks", but this horrible "hum" of sadness is just stuck on me.

To top it off right now, my Dad seems fine and normal, he is still going to work. So it feels like some weird sick joke and it isn't real. I know that time is very limited and I plan to try to take advantage of it, but fuck this shit sucks.

Owen wrote: Mon Mar 24, 2025 1:44 pm Friends, I am just rocked by grief.