Dear friends, this essay is amazing, it’s so touching and beautiful that we wanted everyone to read it.When you think your kids don't appreciate you, or you think you don't really make a difference, think again and please say your prayers for this lovely family.

The Death of Superman

Halloween of 2006 was the worst night of my life. It was the date of my father’s third brain surgery, the culmination of a three month long roller coaster ride of misdiagnoses, hospital visits, unanswered questions and neardeath experiences.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as I came to call my dad’s surgeon and three different pathologists, had finally agreed on what was shifting my hero’s brain off-center and nearly killing him: a Grade 4 GBM, one of the most lethal and aggressive malignant brain tumors out there.

This was how they explained it to me: the tumor was like a vine, sitting still and gorging itself in one relatively nonessential spot right now, but possessing the capability to spread out tendrils without warning into the rest of the brain, reducing the denizen of Mt. Olympus that I had idolized my entire life to a mentally handicapped, paralyzed, incoherent vegetable. Iwaited in the hallway outside his OR, pacing as I sank into a terror induced stupor, remembering.

I remembered every moment of my life with him while I waited in that God-forsaken place. I remembered his playing in our backyard pool with my brother and me, transforming into a living Everest as wedesperately climbed, splashed, and Will and his beloved father in a schemed our recent photo at the beach. way to stealing the basketball he so easily palmed miles in the air above us. I remembered hearing his dress shoes clack on the tile as he came home from a business trip and running alongside my brother shouting, “Daddy!” and never being greeted by anything but a gargantuan hug. I remembered catching passes in the front yard of the house we’d lived in since I was just over two years old, marveling at how the ball always appeared

continued on page 20