Friday O'POMP

This is a suddenly morbid Friday O'POMP. I didn't think this idea would take me from posting photos of Chinese food to this, but...

The below photo is a picture of my Dad getting radiation treatment for brain cancer. I took this photo a year ago today, give or take a day or two... me and Dad had both seen better days, eh?




I debated taking this photo (just as I debated posting it). At first I was going to be clandestine about taking the photo, not wanting Dad to think I was trying to make his sickness and treatment some tourist's sight-seeing adventure for myself. But I decided that I wanted to be able to show Adrianne just exactly what it was my Dad was doing -- specifically the enormity of this machine -- and I didn't know if I could properly describe it with words. Hence, this photo. (I don't recall if I ever showed this photo to her or not. But I also may have posted this photo here before and just don't remember doing it.)

I told Dad I was taking the photo. "Hey Dad, smile," I said. You can see in the photo, he's waving at me for this picture. Dad had a sense of humor throughout the whole thing.

I saw an old episode of Seinfeld, when he was still doing the stand-up comedy before commercial breaks... he did a joke, he said that you could tell how screwed you are when you get sick by the size of the room they take you to for treatment. The bigger the room, the worse off you are. He joked that if they take you to a room with a theater for viewing -- if the doctors say to each other, "They're going to do WHAT to this guy? I gotta see that!" Then you know you're in big trouble.

I laughed and thought to myself, "Yeah, you're kinda right."

I mean, look at the size of this frickin' machine. It's enormous. And it had all these moving parts on it. This thing would rotate around Dad's head and zap him. Everyone would have to leave the room, close the lead door with the "radiation" sign on it, walk down a hall. The nurses would watch to see how Dad was doing from a TV monitor. I'd go down the hall and wait in the lobby. Dad would get out, his face would be pink and he'd be even weaker.

So, yeah, I've been thinking about my Dad a lot lately. Because this time last year, I was on FMLA leave, taking care of him. And these current days on the calendar -- I can relate them all to what I was doing with my Dad, and how he was doing at the time. And that is freaking me out. It sucks! I can only imagine what it's doing to my Mom.

My Dad died Sept. 14th... in about three weeks it'll be a year. I look at this photo, and think, "This is what you were doing last year this time." It sucks that Dad is gone -- I still think about him everyday -- but these days when he was ill, going through this stuff? I'm glad that nightmare is over.

Hopefully this post/photo isn't in poor taste... hopefully I'm not a jerk for taking/posting this photo. I go back and forth on if I should post it or not. The thing that makes me say yes is 1) it feels good to get these thoughts out, yet not having to speak them to a person, because I might lose my shit and 2) if it reminds anyone who is reading that life is short, and to call their mom or dad or brother or sister, just to say hey, well that is payoff right there.