Ten Years Ago Today. . .

. . .it was Thanksgiving Day. My father had gotten out of the hospital a few days before, and I hadn't known or wasn't willing to believe that he was at the end of his battle against lung cancer. My parents had just elected to enroll in a hospice program after his discharge from the hospital.

At the time I worked for a UPenn practice in Northeast Philadelphia, and for whatever reason, the office manager (who was also a nurse, and the wife of the senior physician in the practice) told me to go home on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The practice was aware of my father's diagnosis, and the office was great about letting me take day off during the summer to go down to visit my parents and hang out with my father during his chemotherapy.

The holiday was low-key, my mother made dinner, one of my best friends came over to eat with us. My father was in bed most of the day, but he did manage to eat and drink a little bit. After cleaning up, my mother and I both went to bed, and in that house, it meant I was in my brother's old room on the lower level of the house.

I still remember my mother coming into the room at around 8:45 pm and waking me up by saying, "He's gone." And since I was still half asleep the words didn't process because I remember asking her how could he go anywhere because he needed the both of us to help him get out of bed.

It was completely surreal taking my stethoscope upstairs to listen on his chest and neck and then giving him one of those obnoxious sternal rubs while telling him that it wasn't funny and he'd better wake up.

Then it sunk in and I called the hospice nurse on call for the weekend. She was phenomenal, showing up within 20 minutes or so, helping to call the funeral home, getting my father washed and dressed in pajamas. The funeral home guys were also very kind, but both of them were so grossly overweight and out-of-shape, I had visions of one or both having an MI while carrying the stretcher down the stairs and wondering if I could really do CPR (and glad that the other nurse was there.)

I remember calling my Tante Lydia in Germany, and what a horrible, horrible feeling it was to tell her, hoping this would be the last time I'd have to pass of someone's death on. (In 1982 while I was in Germany, my maternal grandfather died, and relatives took me to see his brother, who was now the sole remaining sibling, and feeling miserable that I had made my great uncle breakdown and cry.)

Thanksgiving just hasn't been quite the same for me since then. There are many, many things that I am thankful for, but I truly miss those Thanksgiving dinners with my family, and I'm sad that my father wasn't around for all the good things that have happened over the past ten years: two weddings, three grandchildren, other family weddings and celebrations.

I miss him as much in 2008 as I did in 1998.