I'd title this post "Like Hell," but that might be a tad melodramatic

There's one thing I fear I hadn't made totally clear over this whole ordeal with my father. Or maybe I had, but reading over several of the comments to me from the last few days, I feel that-- for all our sakes-- I should isolate this particular issue.

Y'see, I just visited him in the hospital for the second time, whereupon I realized what's going to be the hardest thing of all; the factor that's going to make this whole ordeal be just that, an ordeal. And it's not the cancer itself. See, in the past few days, with all the crying and the fear and the "I love you, Dad, god, I love you,"s out there, there was one factor I had overlooked. It's a factor I brought up when I wrote that whole entry about him recently.

( And that factor is the man himself. )