Please Pray for My PaPa

It's just been a few hours since I posted last. But tonight as I was making dinner my mom called to tell me that my PaPa has leukemia and may only have several weeks to live. I hung up the phone and started to cry, then called Brian to ask if we could go see him tonight. PaPa still doesn't himself know the news--he'll find out tomorrow at his appointment with the doctor. So I wanted to go over and have one last "normal" time with him and Gramma--before everything changes. I wanted to see him one last time unburdened by this knowledge and free to just enjoy his great-grandkids. I hoped to bless him by our time and hugs.

I'm so glad we went. My kids laughed and played with PaPa and Gramma. They sat and played the same organ that I did as a child during so many visits; they rang most of Gramma's bell collection and looked at as many things as possible under PaPa's enlargement machine that he uses to do the NYT crossword every day. Cait crawled around on the floor and rolled a ball back and forth with him. Jay brought an army helicopter toy to show him and PaPa examined all the guns to see what caliber they were. Then the boys asked him if they could go see his trains downstairs. I followed and snapped a few pictures as he showed us his plans for his next train setup and the model buildings he's been constructing for it. Not that he has much time for it, he explained to me, pointing to the lines of hanging laundry he's been doing as he daily cares for my sweet gramma with Alzheimer's.

It was a perfect time. Jay said on the way home how much PaPa and Gramma mean to him. Karin said it was so much fun to go to their house. And I quietly thought of how glad I am that he's gotten to meet all of my babies.

I haven't lost someone this close to me--I've never known a day without my PaPa's existence. As the child of a single-parent working mom, I spent so many hours at their house, stayed overnight with them, went to the cabin in the summers with them. It was PaPa who taught me how to fish and how to play solitaire, who let me run the model trains even as a small child. I think I was the apple of his eye--his only granddaughter for 13 years. It's one of those things where you can't imagine life without someone.

Thanks for listening to me ramble. Somehow it helps me to write this down and let the tears come.

But why I started to write all this was to ask for your prayers. I don't know where my PaPa is at with the Lord, and I am NOT OK WITH THE THOUGHT OF NEVER SEEING HIM AGAIN. He is a faithful Catholic and an amazing man, but I still don't know if his faith is in Christ alone or in something else. I have written to him about this in years past, but he never replied. My mom said he was confused by my letters, that he didn't understand what I was asking.

Will you please pray with me for him...contend for this man whom I love with all my heart? I have prayed for years. Can God use these next few weeks to answer them? I confess, by faith is weak right now. Will you please pray that this goodbye which looms so near before me will not be the end? That I might have another chance to speak with him about this and that he will understand? Oh, God--help me trust you. Help PaPa trust you. Please pray for him as he hears the news tomorrow...what will that be like? Please pray for my Gramma who will now almost certainly have to go into a nursing home--alone for the first time in almost 65 years. Please pray for my mom who bears the burden of all these decisions as well as her own grief over a father whom she loves immensely.

I hate this. Porter was right--there is nothing natural about death. It sucks. I want to scream. I want my PaPa.