“Well, I eventually graduated high school, as most people do. Of course, Dad was proud. By that time, he was unable to be employed, due to his health. Yet, he still made sure I was taken care of, to the point of insisting upon helping me pay for my groceries at least once a month. But, it was clear that his health was going downhill,” Valo said slowly. She frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Sean asked.

“Things got worse and worse. He went from being able to help me move my stuff in and out of the dorm my first semester… to… to…” She shook her head. “I had to get a friend of mine to help with the heavy stuff. There were times where my dad didn’t even have the energy to stand for a long time, much less help me haul a television and mini-fridge into the car. It hurt to see him like that.” She heaved a deep sigh. When I was a senior in college, that’s when things really got bad.”

“How so?”

Valo smiled a little. “I was about to graduate by this time. I was working under one of the professors at my college, doing behavior coding for a big study she was heading. It was pretty much the first of its kind, and you’d better believe I was awed by the idea that I was actually helping out with something so important. To think that I could actually be a part of something like that… well! And Dad was really proud of me. He drove me to the first meetings, where I learned the basics, and he listened to me chatter on and on about what I’d done in my behavior coding that week. The semester before, I had taken a class called Experimental Design and Methodology. It was essentially two semesters of work crammed into one, in which students not only studied the scientific method as it relates to psychology, but also had to design and actually do an experiment, complete with research paper, and then present on it. All psychology undergraduate students were required to take it.” She chuckled a little. “Believe it or not, back then, I hated public speaking. I mean, I was good at it, but I didn’t like to do it.”


“Really?!” Sean gasped.

“Uh-huh. So, the idea that I had to actually get up in front of people and talk about something, and that it was mandatory… well, it scared me. But the next semester, the semester I was doing the behavior coding, I received an award for Experimental Design and Methodology. Apparently, I had earned one of the highest scores in the class that had been earned in several years.” Valo smiled proudly. “Dad was so proud. By the time I got the award, he had been in the hospital for a few weeks. I visited him and even brought the plaque I’d gotten to show him.”

“I bet he was really proud that you’d gotten such an important award,” Sean remarked.

“Oh, he was,” Valo replied. She smiled sadly. “In the months before my dad was admitted to the hospital, his health had been going steadily downhill. He was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome.”

“What’s that?”

“It used to be called ‘preleukemia,’” Valo replied. She paused, trying to think of an explanation for it. “It’s a blood condition. It… um… it involves bone marrow stem cell disorders. A lot of times, the person ends up anemic, and blood production gets more disorderly and ineffective. It’s… it’s really complicated.”

“That’s okay; your explanation is good enough. When I have time, I can look up the details online,” Sean replied.

Valo sighed. “In the months leading up to him being admitted into the hospital, he’d been getting blood transfusions at least once a week, and he had hardly any energy. He was put on all kinds of medicines that were supposed to help him, and they would, at least, for a little while. In the weeks before he was admitted, he couldn’t even walk too far; he had to use one of those drivable carts at the grocery store to go shopping. When he was admitted to the hospital, I visited him every weekend that I went home. He looked so bad, honey. He was so pale… and he had all kinds of machines hooked up to him. The first time I saw him, I almost cried, I was so upset to see my daddy looking like that.” She swallowed hard.


Sean patted her hand. “It’s okay, Aunt Jess. You don’t need to keep going if you don’t want to.”

“No, I want to. It’s just… even after all these years, it still gets me all choked up,” Valo responded. “Well, I remember it so clearly. It was April 29th, and I had just gotten out of my evening class and was about to go meet up with the guy I was dating-- Grant. You know, the guy I married. My phone rang, and it was my grandma, all upset. My dad had to be hooked up to the respirator, and his blood pressure had dropped significantly. I was upset, and when I went back to the dorm to change, I bawled my eyes out for a good ten minutes or so before meeting Grant outside.” She bit her lip, frowning.

“T-then what?”


“We went to his family’s house. I was going to meet a bunch of his relatives for the first time before we all went out to dinner. We were all sitting in the living room, chatting, when the phone rang. I answered it, and it was my grandma. She was crying. She told me…” Valo swallowed hard. “She told me that my dad had died. Grant looked at me, and I guess I made some kind of gesture that let him know what the call was about, because next thing I know, he was hustling everyone out of the room. As soon as everyone was gone except him, I remember I just started sobbing my eyes out. I remember pretty much freaking out. ‘What am I going to do now?’ I asked him. ‘What am I going to do now? It’s not fair! Dad was supposed to live and see me graduate and see me go on to grad school and get a good job! He’s supposed to live long enough to see me get a home and a bunch of pets! This wasn’t supposed to happen!’ I don’t know how long I went on like that before I finally calmed down enough to get control of myself. I remember that even Grant was crying; he knew how much my dad meant to me. When I got control of myself, I went into the bathroom and washed my face off as well as I could, and I asked for some eye drops to help get rid of the worst of the redness in my eyes and face.” Valo chuckled a little, then.

“What’s wrong?”

“I… I actually apologized to his relatives for how I looked. I knew I looked like a wreck. My hair was all messed up, and my face and eyes were puffy and red. They offered their condolences and offered to reschedule our dinner for another time. I told them that I was fine with going ahead with dinner that night. But, believe me, as soon as I got back to the dorm, Grant held me, and I cried like a baby.”