Happy Birthday to a wonderful Dad!!

Today is a very special day.... it would have been my father's 63rd birthday. Unfortunately he passed away on July 22nd 2004. He was a wonderful father and I miss him every day.

As most of you may know, David and I live in Phoenix. My dad's family lives in Reno, Nevada and that is where I grew up. I left after I graduated from high school to go to college in San Diego and that is where I met David.

Anyways.... my father had been ill for a very long time. I don't remember how old I was at the time but I had to have been at least 10 or 11 when my father needed a liver transplant. He was put on the donor list and when things didn't look good and he probably would have only lasted a week longer.... they found a match. He was flown to San Francisco to have the surgery. He made it through okay and was on medication for the rest of his life so his body wouldn't 'reject' the liver. He went through some ups and downs throughout the years, but I always remember thinking that nothing could kill my dad. Before I was born he had fought and beat cancer more than once, then I remember hearing he fell about 4 stories while working on the job, and then the liver transplant, after that I remember him having a heart attack, and a stroke. He survived it all! From the liver that he received, he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, the one you will never get rid off.

Well after dealing with that for a while he ended up on dialysis. He did okay with his dialysis, but after taking a fall in early July 2004 he couldn't continue his dialysis and then passed away about two weeks later.

I was able to make it up to Reno to say good-bye to him. I am thankful for that, but I there are still so many things I wish I could talk to him about and now I will never get the chance. It has been almost 3 years since his passing and I still try to just block it out of my mind. I try not to think about it and it's easy for me to do since I live so far away. I can always just tell myself that he's there I just haven't called him.

I will continue with this more tonight.... gotta run =)