A Good Day

Dad has a brain tumor. It's probably cancer. How, you might think, could we have a good day?

Well, it's all about that elusive goal many people are trying to reach: Living for the moment.

Yesterday morning we came to find Dad back to 75 percent normal after a day of being unresponsive. Heather and Dad and I spent the day sharing stories and laughing. We talked about Bunnifer, the 20-pound rabbit Dad had as a little boy. A man from an amusement park wanted to buy Bunnifer from Dad for $50 b/c it was an unusually large bunny. Dad would not sell Bunnifer. He showed us the scar on his thumb from Bunnifer biting him -- maybe he should have taken the 50 bucks!

We talked about "projects" that dad has done for us, most recently, as I mentioned, Heather's kitchen and the French doors in my office. Dad explained in exacting detail what Heather needed to do to install her new dinette table, at which point we knew that he had not lost a lot of brain function. He talked about bandsaws, planers, radius and diameter, moldings, and many terms I wasn't familiar with. Sure, some of his words didn't come out right. That was minor and even cause for laughter.

We laughed so hard. We pointed out to Dad the EEG monitoring his brain waves and all gazed at the computer's squiggly lines. "Dad, think of something really mean and see what those waves do," we said. He looked at the screen, scrunched up his brow and said, "Kill! Kill!" I think you had to be there, but damn we laughed so hard. And the lines got really dark and sharp!

Dad was just in such high spirits. He just loved having us all together right then and there.