It still gets tuff.

This is Aaron, our youngest grandchild. You can see he thinks my jokes are funny. this weekend we had a grand time at the house. It started pretty bad on Friday night with the accident but the rest was wonderful. Steve and Amy, Anna, Andrew and Aaron, Laura and Rachel, Carrie and Bill, then came Katie Wright and friends, then Matt and 3 friends, whoa, it was almost a crazy place. I think we slept 15 Saturday night. Mom of course fed us all too, what a task. What a wonderful weekend.
Chemo tomorrow. And of course I hope it goes as smooth as the last 3. I am still doing exceptionally well with the side effects and at times it allows me to forget. But my path closed in on my today, and got pretty tight. I had to grip hard on my HOPE stick to keep looking forward. I was sitting holding Aaron in my lap. He was in a semi sleepy state and just relaxing with old Grandpa. Now you have to understand how rare that occurrence is with the three of them since the other two took more than a year to sit with me without screaming from the beard. Aaron for some reason didn't go through that phase and I love it of course. Well anyway, as I sat rocking him we couldn't help but talk. I started just with easy conversation first but it quickly got pretty serious for me, when the realization of all this hit. I simply looked at him and said, " I wonder how much you will get to know me?" Of course tears snuck in there too. Then he said, "Da, ga, da, a ga" which made me laugh immediately. At first I wanted to be angry, then maybe a bit of self pity, but so quickly came the laughter and the realization that life right now is the most important. The rest, the future, the how long, and why of it, is up to me. And that's when I immediately felt the strength of HOPE. I don't think people really understand HOPE. It is a very powerful tool, something you can really grab onto. I think I will carve a stick and call it my HOPE stick. The more physical things I can relate to, the better. Like my crucifix and St. Peregrine medal around my neck, my bottle of holy water from Lourdes, this blog and my vision of the path, the little gifts and books I keep close to me, they all represent real things I can hold on to, HOPE that I can believe in, strength that i can rely on. The path goes on, and because of that HOPE, so do I. You are all loved.