A Family Loss

Hi everyone, sorry for yet another long break from posting. It's been a month of anxiety and last week had been very emotional. There's been some real-life emergency happening with my family of late, keeping well-occupied from doing any artwork or even from my part-time job.

Just before midnight on Wednesday night, my Dad, Kenneth A.J. McMillen, had passed on while in Palliative Care at Scarborough General Hospital. For the last 10 years, he had chronic kidney disease along with his earlier type 2 diabetes to be treated with hemodialysis, insulin, etc. He'd been in the hospital for a month with showing no sign of improving and finally after suffering a stroke a week prior that basically "killed" his brain, my Mom had to make the hard decision of stopping his treatments and allow him to naturally pass on comfortably. He was 63 years and a half old. My older brother along with other relatives were able to come in to see him one last time (or several) before then.

Dad was a stubborn but loving man for most of his lifetime.  He worked for the Toronto Transit Commission for many years as a vehicle driver, a fare collector and distributor. He grew up to take care of his mother, younger brothers and sisters when his own father passed on from a heart condition and for better or for worse, worked hard and long overtime shifts to support me and my older brother Jason.  He even helped paid my educations at The Art School (Central Tech High School) and at Ontario College of Art and Design (now OCADU) and helped for my late rabbit's medical fees.

In a lot of ways, I do resemble my Dad. His eyes, his temper (when actually provoked), his sense of preparation, planning and work ethics. There were some things with him that he could've tried to help himself with while there was still time but it just wasn't in him strongly enough to make those changes to hopefully improve his life.  With whatever he had left behind now, I have to learn from both his good and bad examples what to be doing more or less of, to help myself to hopefully avoid going out the same way as he did.

For now, it's a big transitional time: Dad's funeral service this Thursday, clearing out some things from the house, fixing things up with the warm weather coming back, figuring out what Mom and I are going to do without him. Don't worry; Dad left behind some coverage for us and we both got our jobs and each other. As I said before, I do want to get back into my artwork soon. Well, I'll have more time for it now.  So, thanks for reading all of this if you got this far. Maybe in another month, I'll have some content to showcase but family matters takes first-priority right now.  See you again fairly soon.