The best plant in my backyard

Whenever I see it I think of my father. It's one of the plants I took from his garden after he died. It's called a "Bleeding Heart", and I think he brought it back from Cameroon (he was stationed there for three years with the State Department).

I miss my father a great deal.

In watching "A" and OurDog in the last few days, I am reminded again of how fast my father died.

On Thanksgiving day 2000, my dad told me that he had esophageal cancer. He had a tumor in his esophagus about the size of his fist. Makes it hard to eat turkey.

In January 2001, he began chemotherapy. I remember visiting him at the house during that time. He would spend the entire time on his chair in the living room, in and out of sleep. He was cold all the time. It was a chore for him to get up to pee.

In the first part of March, he went into the hospital for surgery. He did not leave the hospital alive. He would sing to my step-mother in Japanese (they met in Japan more than twenty years before).

He died on my eldest brother's birthday. My dad was 62.