In September, I met up with her at an uncle’s funeral. The last time I’d seen her was at my father’s funeral. “We have to stop meeting like this,” she said as she threw her arms around me. I wholeheartedly agreed. Our family has been through a lot of pain in the last few years with more unexpected losses and disappointments than any family should have to bear in such a short span of time. If that wasn’t enough, I found out last week that she has been diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer.

I’ve already been dealing in an inordinate amount of anger since my uncle’s death two months ago. Some of that anger is leftover from my father’s illness. Compounded with this recent news, I’ve probably had enough anger over the last week to power a locomotive from coast to coast. Slowly, I’m letting go of it but it’s not easy. I just want her to get well, and I want my family to stop suffering.

So here’s to hope in successful treatments, a full recovery and the idea that some good news is coming our way soon. We could use some good news. Man, could we really use some of that.

This is one of those topics I find it difficult to delve into. I’ve attempted to come up with another theme to write about over the last few weeks to no avail. Some subjects just refuse to go away until you pay heed to them. So here I sit with my headphones on, addressing those feelings that demand my attention.

I still remember the feelings of anxiety, helplessness and the urgent need to reach my father’s side as soon as possible when he was admitted to the hospital. He called me from outside the emergency room to let me know he was finally going to see a doctor. It’d been almost a month and a half since he’d first complained about a sore throat and it had now reached the point where he could no longer swallow liquids.

There is no verbal expression that encompasses the magnitude of devastation and disbelief when the doctor explained esophageal adenocarcinoma to us. The mere memory of that moment still makes my chest tighten up in pain to this day. I don’t suspect many people are prepared for one man with a manila folder to walk into the room and change the lives of everyone connected to you in the most unwanted way possible.

My father lived for almost exactly six months after his diagnosis. He went through the usual chemotherapy torture on top of radiation treatments during that period, all the while not even being able to enjoy the simple pleasure of eating food because he could no longer swallow. Jevity poured through a g-tube was his only nourishment.

During the two and a half months I had to return back to Florida to sell my house, he aged thirty years. I spoke to him every week, just as I had done most of my life, but it became increasingly noticeable how tired he had become. By the time I reached Chicago again, he looked like a ninety year-old man. I didn’t recognize him, but I assured my girls that he was indeed their grandpa in every way. Two months later, a visiting hospice nurse warned us that the end was imminent.

I fell asleep on the couch beside his bed with the music of Blue October drowning out the sounds of the oxygen machine, but sat straight up every time he stirred. I wet his lips and the inside of his mouth with little sponges and helped him get the saliva out of his mouth that he could no longer extract on his own. I helped my stepmother change his clothes and bedding, and other things that break my heart to talk about.

The last day was full of dread and morbid anticipation. His movements had become so spasmodic, completely out of his control, and his speech was becoming almost unintelligible. I can’t explain it, but I seemed to be the only person in the room that could completely understand what he was saying or asking for.

Somewhere around 3AM on February 28, 2007, I jumped up at the sound of my father trying to sit up in bed. My stepmother, who had fallen asleep at the other side of his bed, looked at me in panic because we both knew he was no longer able to sit up or walk. I tried to find the button to elevate the head of his bed but there was nothing else we could do.

“Help me, help me, help me!” My father’s last words were begging for us to save him and we could do nothing but hold his hand and weep and tell him that we loved him.

Nothing in my life will ever be as horrifying as watching him take his last breaths and knowing that the man I adored, the man who sat me on his shoulders when I was a little girl, the one who rode every terrifying roller coaster with me, the one whose hug melted me, the grandfather that my daughters adored, the one who always made me feel safe, the man I looked up to my entire life and was there whenever I needed him no matter what hour… was fading completely out of my life. There was no relief that he was no longer in pain when his body finally stopped. There was no answer waiting, no consolation that he had ascended to some other plane of consciousness. His body was there, his hand in mine, and no amount of crying, begging, or waiting was ever going to bring him back. He was 56.

This month will be the third anniversary of his death. For some people, grief lasts a few weeks. For some, it takes a few years. I am perfectly accepting of the reality that this is something I will never get over. In fact, I’d be extremely disappointed in myself if I could.