This time of year

Tonight was a very difficult night. My Wed. evening student's dad has stage 4 colon cancer and has 21 lesions on his liver...he has lost a ton of weight..they just found out and the prognosis is terrible. Dan turns 16 on Sunday and he comes from such a solid, neat family. Both parents sang in the choir (until recently, when his dad became too ill - they thought it was a really bad stomach bug and have run lots of tests the last few months until the last thing they did found the cancer). Dan is such a sweet student and is very close to his dad. It tears me apart to see him have to go through something similar to what I went through...especially the timing with the holidays coming up.

It's all so familiar and painful. Victor, my boss, told me the update today. When Dan came in today, he looked so worn out, tired and sad. His dad has had 2 emergency surgeries in the last week. I didn't know what to do. I didn't have the heart to tell him about my mom because I didn't want to tell him how it ended. I didn't think I had the strength to do it either tonight. I just told him that I am so sorry and will be praying for his family. Obviously if things go the way they look right now, I would tell him about my mom afterwards. The thing is, I don't understand completely what he is going through. I don't understand completely how it would be to be best friends with your dad and lose him to cancer at age 16. I understand generally how it is, losing a mother (we were so close) at age 20 on Christmas Eve to colon cancer gives me a whole heck of a lot of compassion for him, but I don't see how this would help the situation to tell him about her. Instead, I'm going to just be there for them and offer to bring something to them, such as a meal.

I just pray a miracle happens and Mr. Wolff beats this cancer. I hate to see anyone go through what my family had to go through, especially around the holidays. I had a good cry on the way home. I couldn't believe I got home safely though, I drove myself home bawling the whole way...it was hard keeping it in the whole lesson, seeing how much pain Dan was in. And it made me miss my mommy so much. I miss her so so much.