While I write about a lot of people and a lot of different stories, sometimes it's hard to remember the exact time that everything was happening. But, even if I don't have some dates straight, the memories are very clear.
Mom, the younger girls, and two boys were post-divorce and living back in our family home. Dad had moved into the apartment that we vacated. Dad got Cancer and he had it bad. They had to remove one of his kidneys and half of his bladder. While he was in the hospital, one of my older sisters was working in the medical transcription field.
While our concerns were with Dad at that time, we got whacked with a second issue. My sister saw two John Mullens come up in her files. After alerting us to the issue, we found out that my brother, who days earlier had been in a brawl and had his head slammed in a car door, had been admitted to the hospital with a ruptured aneurysm.
My Mom's attention was stolen from my Dad by her oldest son. I think that is pretty natural, but I remember clearly that my Dad's mom was extremely disappointed in her, yet once again. I was very much a Momma's girl, and those kinds of moments were always caught and harbored by me.
John ended up surviving. Dad ended up surviving that first brush with Cancer, too. He explained treatments to us at times. He'd take Janie with him to his treatments, which, in his own words, "felt like they were shoving a pipe cleaner inside his genitals." Janie remembered going on those treatment visits with Dad until the day she died. She loved being with him and always mentioned that he would bring her for ice cream after each treatment.
What I remember most about that time was the day that Dad sat Janie and me down at his cluttered kitchen table and promised us that he would stay alive until we both graduated high school. He kept his promise and beat that Cancer then.
It came back in full force later on. Lungs, esophageal, all over. Dad was the first Mullen to be home cared for by the rest when he was dying. The apologies, the tears, the love, and the pain were overwhelming and unbearable. I remember praying that someone would allow one of us to administer an overdose of morphine.
I was 29, and Janie was 23 when we lost Dad on October 1, 1991. Dad was 65 when he passed, and he lived a longer life than three of his sons and his baby daughter. I can't help but be sad about that.