Thanksgiving

I am thankful for my beautiful sons Seth and Miles. I am thankful for Grace and her love and support. I am thankful for my family, and especially my mom for all her help. I am thankful for my friends. I am thankful that I was able to go to San Francisco and North Carolina while I was feeling relatively good and spend time with my friends there. I am thankful that my dad and my sister and her family are coming here for Christmas. I hope I will be feeling OK then.

I am not thankful for some things. I am not thankful to be terminally ill at age 41. I'm not going to lie; it stinks. There are a lot of things I would still like to do, and I'm probably not going to be able to do most of them. That makes me really sad. I am most sad about not being there for my sons. They deserve to have their dad.

However, I still have my sons for now and they still have me. This afternoon I was cuddling with Miles and he was stroking my face (he likes to feel my whiskers) and he said "I love you so much." I know he is repeating what Grace and I say to him, but it was still very sweet.

The past couple of days Seth has come over to visit in the afternoon. I have been a little reluctant to have him visit when I am not feeling well, because I don't like him to see me sick, but I have found that seeing him actually makes me feel better, and it hasn't seemed to bother him. Yesterday he made me a beautiful drawing of a sailing ship. The picture says "To Daddy" and the flag flying from the ship's mast says "I hope you are Happy" and the name on the ship's bow is "Happy" and the fish in the water have smiley faces and the sun and clouds have smiley faces and there is a rainbow in the sky. It brought tears of happiness to my eyes.

When Seth came over this afternoon, Miles was crying and upset about having to go to bed for his nap. Without any suggestion from me or anyone else, Seth comforted Miles until he stopped crying, read him a book, took him by the hand upstairs, and put him to bed. I was very impressed.

Ethan