As most of you know by now, my father suffered a stroke a couple of days ago on his 62nd birthday. What you don’t know is that he is not going to make it. The stroke he had was very large and caused severe damage to the left side of his brain. He has progressively gotten worse, and my brother and I have had to make the tough decision to stop care, which is what my father would have wanted. Even if he were to survive this, which isn’t likely, he would never be able to leave a facility, talk, walk, or even remember his children or grandchildren. My brother and I know my father, and that isn’t the life he would want to live. They will be stopping care later this evening, and I will be by his side until the end.

But with all of this comes a lot of things for me to get in order, which is hard when you're trying to get through this. I have to get a mortuary set up to pick him up after he passes, and because we are in Walnut Creek and want him closer, someone will have to come pick him up from Santa Rosa. My brother and I financially can’t do this alone. My daughter was also in the hospital a couple of months ago, and I’ve missed so much work between both my father and daughter being in the hospital. Our family could really use some help as we grieve the loss of my father and give him the service he deserves and would have wanted. I’m not one to ever ask for help, but in this case, all of this is very overwhelming, and we could just really use some help.