Nov 13th, 2011 - Tshirt #5 - Free to Breathe

I found out my father had lung cancer when his doctors went to perform hernia surgery.  At this point it had metastasized and was headed toward his brain.  He wasn't supposed to make it to Thanksgiving. I had moved away in June but traveled to see him in ICU with it's sterile and eerily quiet environment.  Our usual stilted conversation was even more so.  Neither of us knew what to say and we definitely didn't want to address the killer elephant in the room.
He survived Thanksgiving, went home, but then was moved to hospice.  I went to see him any weekend I could get the money together for a greyhound ticket.  I would watch tv with him, get him something to drink, rub his feet and head.  We really didn't talk.  It wasn't our way.
I met my half-brother's son for the first time there.  I was there when the preacher came to minister to him.  I was there when his co-workers and longtime friends came and sung him a deeply moving gospel hymn.  I wasn't there when he died.
I had arrived in town that day but for some reason didn't want to go to the hospital.  I thought I would go the next morning.  My grandmother called me a couple hours later, there would be no next morning.
On my bookshelf are two pine cones that my housemate retrieved from the gravesite, after the funeral.  I still have the bunny rag doll he gave me for my 30th birthday; the only time I ever remember him giving me a birthday gift.
Today, on a cold and windy November day, I walked in his memory.