Our 92-year-old Dad, a Korean War Navy veteran and life-long resident of Mason, Michigan, was in a near-fatal car crash on June 7th, 2024. The accident left him hospitalized with a broken collarbone, sternum, and cervical bone, plus a TBI (traumatic brain injury). My dad was a passenger in a car going 40 miles an hour through a red light, hitting another car almost head-on, in one of the busiest intersections in Lansing MI. On hearing the news, my world stopped. Miraculously, he survived, but with a long road of recovery ahead. He sustained a second TBI this January, and was recently hospitalized again for pneumonia.

My Dad is making steady healing progress, but his care needs are still complex. The next six months are critical to help him move from survived to thriving.

My sister Katie and I have spent countless hours, on top of our full-time jobs, devoted to supporting his recovery. He can’t do it without us, and I can't do it without a boost of financial help.

Would you consider contributing and sharing this Go Fund Me with others, on behalf of me and my 92 year old Dad? I need to make two more urgent trips home this year to help coordinate care and help with his complex and special needs. This Go Fund Me has been set up to help cover my flights, car rental, lodging, and non-insured needs for my dad. After nine months of supporting my Dad on my own, I have reached the end of my resources and am humbled to ask for help. Any amount will help me reach the goal.

As you may know, I recovered from a broken hip, unable to work, in 2022-23, while also making trips home to help my dad when he almost died that winter from septic pneumonia. In my own accident recovery, I learned profound life lessons in receiving. It taught me volumes about myself, and about how we need help for many things over the course of our lives - we never know when or how we will need each other.

My sister and I are my Dad’s primary care coordinators and advocates. Over the past year, I have been spending 20-plus hours a week on care coordination and medical navigation for him, with multiple trips to Michigan, in addition to running my business and sole income, the Mighty Truffle. My Dad’s recovery means the world to me because he has spent his life working hard, with rarely a vacation, to take care of others. He deserves the same support and devotion that he has given generously to me and others over his lifetime. Our Dad was always there for us, through all the good times and all the bad times. He taught us how to be fearless, honest, to keep our word, to laugh a lot, breathe deep, and that life might not always be easy, but that’s why you have to know how to make really good lemonade out of those lemons. My Dad has accumulated so much precious grace and wisdom in his ninety-two years in this world, married sixty years to my Mom, who passed away in 2020 from a long, hard illness. Through it all, he has never faltered as a provider, husband, father, community member, and worker. The time I spent with my family, including my grandmother who lived to be 100, is what shaped the person I am today. Nothing is more important to me than giving back to my family, spending this time with my father, and caring for him in his time of need. I just need a little boost of financial support to get there.

Here’s a story that shows who my Dad is. Just before he married our mother, his Dad died suddenly - My Dad was in the process of building a house with his father-in-law.. My Mom and Dad decided to move in so that his widowed mother (our grandmother) wouldn’t be alone. They never left. Our grandmother became our second mother, who lived upstairs. My parents took care of our grandmother until she died at 100, peacefully, in her own bedroom, with her family surrounding her. As did our mother in that same home in 2020. Three generations lived together in the same house. It was a wonderful experience to have growing up.

In the 1990s in Lansing, Michigan, our Dad tragically lost his retirement income from a job he worked at for over forty years. The company moved all operations overseas to find cheaper labor. They simply said “sorry” and left. Without his retirement income, he continued to work until his late seventies, standing for long hours over a drafting table to make sure our family were all taken care of. My Dad is the kind of person who always has a kind word and knows what to say to lift anyone’s spirits, even when he himself could use help.

One of my goals this year is to interview my Dad in person, while he is still alive, so I can share the wisdom, grit, intelligence, determination and priceless humor he embodies. I am going home to take care of my dad, and also, to make sure he is seen and heard as the amazing 92 year old fully human human being who he is. I would be honored to know him, even if I wasn’t his daughter :)

My appreciation for everyone’s help in supporting me to support this amazing human being, my Dad, is vast and deep. Thank you for any help you can spare, and especially for sharing the link via your social media or email. I hope to inspire others to know that the sacrifice to help one’s parents in their time of need, to spend time, to invest time out of pure love and respect, is a form of precious gold of the soul that distills deeper felt meaning into our lives. The juxtaposition of the world right now, and the pure joy of seeing my Dad’s face light up when something makes him laugh, is teaching me to slow down into my heart and experience pain and joy at the same time, and be grateful for it.

I offer the same gratitude to each and every one of you. I know you all have your own challenges. Just simply sharing the link, making a contribution, or sharing my Dad’s story, would be incredibly helpful and meaningful. Thank you.