My younger sister called me tonight to tell me that she and mom were taking dad to the walk-in clinic.

Dad has been ill since just before my husband went into hospice in the fall of 2005. He’d suffered a series of TIA’s which are small strokes caused by an ulcerated artery in his neck. He had recovered but for a limp by the time Will died in January of 2006, but in March of that year complications from a routine surgery set him back. Soon after he developed plumonary disease.

Though the doctors told him he wouldn’t last out the summer by fall he was recovering nicely again. When I saw him at Christmas he looked good but for a more noticeable limp.

This past week though he has developed a hacking cough and now has a fever. Hacking cough could be a bad cold or bronchitis even but fever means flu or pnemonia.

Will died of pnemonia. Not really all that unusual for the chronically ill. It is not a pleasant thing to watch. It is not something I think I can watch again.

Last spring when dad was in ICU and my uncle’s wife was dying of heart failure in the room next door, I told my sister that I didn’t think I could be in the room if dad’s conditioned worsened and he seemed likely to die. She said,

“You will be in the room because you have to.”

and I didn’t answer her because she didn’t give me the chance. She walked away to get back to work (she was a technician in the hospital’s lab) and left me standing in the hallway.

If she had waited for an answer, she wouldn’t have cared much for it.

I can’t watch someone die again. Not then. Not now. Maybe not ever. And I think that is what holds me back from the idea of having a relationship again that has the potential to be serious. Seeing Will suffer like that. Watching him frantically gasping for those last breaths of air to fill already stilled lungs.

It seared my soul and the new skin that has only very slowly grown back is still too delicate.

My dad is a cat. Nine plus lives but even my grandma’s tenacious DNA has its limits. Hopefully they won’t be crossed once again.