The Longest Year | About the Book

In The Longest Year, a valiant father, courageous mother, and loyal children confront adversity through the beloved father’s battle with pancreatic cancer. This book presents a family’s journey through the triumphs and travails of life, death, and love. It’s a compilation of lessons learned and moments remembered that both touch and teach. Deeply felt and lyrically written, it uncovers the priorities that should truly matter for families and individuals dealing with a loved one’s terminal illness and explains the importance of finding a way to live on after the death of a loved one.

Following is an excerpt from The Longest Year:

From Chapter 56: Any Room in This Bed?

After the dismal Thanksgiving Day, Dad’s decline only picked up speed. Soon, he needed help taking a shower and getting dressed. Then, one morning, I got a frantic call. Mom was on the phone. Dad had fallen at 5:00 a.m. while walking to the bathroom. He fell so hard that he dislodged the sliding mirror to the closet. Alisa and Mom did their best to hoist him back up, but needed to call their friend Eddie downstairs to help. Miraculously, Dad was unscathed, and had no bruises or cuts. Things were getting incrementally worse almost by the hour.

While his body was failing him, Pap was still coherent and was able to carry on conversations. During some of our talks, he repeated his fervent desire to die in his own bed. He wanted no part of going to a hospice, where the only question each day is, “Who died today?” I promised that I would do everything in my power to keep him at home.

The fact that he could fall in the middle of the night with nobody there to help him was frightening to all of us. If he was going to stay home, he needed more help. We needed more help. That’s where I came in.

I moved home for the next week, sleeping with Pap every night. This was hard for Mom, as she was forced to sleep in the guest room. During this horrible experience of Dad’s illness, Mom really stepped up in a way I hadn’t seen before, but now, at least during the evenings, she was relegated to the role of spectator. Of course, my mother has never been a deep sleeper, so every time Dad woke up, she would hear him. Mom still had to work during the day, as this was no time to lose their insurance.

Even when Dad was home by himself, Mom made sure he knew exactly which pills to take and when. She probably could have qualified as registered nurse during this period. I
know it had to kill her that she wasn’t able to do everything by herself.

Sleeping with my father was an experience I’ll never forget. Pap was getting up to try and go to the bathroom anywhere from five to ten times every night. Part of this was due to the cramps he was getting in his stomach, but some of it was just from not being able to sleep. Either way, it made for a restless and long process. It was the same routine, over and over—a deep breath, followed by Dad reaching his hand over to his forehead, then starting to sit up. I would have to jump up and help him steady himself on the side of the bed, then help him get up to go to the bathroom. Trying to give him some privacy, I left him alone for a few minutes, and then helped him get back to bed.

The strange thing was that as miserable as this could be, the humbling experience of helping your father go to the bathroom was really something special. I wish that he was able to do it by himself, but the fact that he needed me made me feel good, at least in the sense that for once I didn’t need his help, but vice versa.

Those nights helped us grow even closer, both physically and spiritually. In the morning, Mom would ask how we did, and we’d give her a play-by-play of how many times we got up, knowing that we were sharing something nobody else could possibly know about. It was like being in an exclusive club, an exhausting club, but a very special one nonetheless.