A decade appears too big a word, yet, it is true. One quarter of my life has now been lived without my father.Some people in my life here have been faced this year with a diagnosis of cancer for one of their parents. I always feel like I am getting punched in the stomach. I see the whole unfurling of the process in my memory, the stages of ups, downs, remission, hoping, doctors, treatments, bottles of pills and special diets, denial, forgetting, and the crippling moment if you find out it is back, again.
As his obituary says, Dad handled his cancer with formidable grace and spirit.
Today my mother and siblings will gather in Vermont for a memorial mass at our church, brunch at my sister's and after a "work bee" in the cemetery around his own grave and others that need attention. The way he would have wanted - productivity, have something to show for yourself at the end of the day. As a historian and genealogist, he certainly was always looking into the past, but never with tears and sorrow and so we try and follow his example - not easy shoes to fill. 
