Kissack Family Tragedy

The sudden death of my brother has of course hurt more than I could ever have imagined. This was the brother who raised me as a child. He was the only one of my siblings who had children and who was walking with the Lord. He was the bed-rock of our family. He was special in so many ways and our bond was deep. He did the 'father of the bride speech at my wedding', if that tells you anything. Our kids love each other as cousins should. I hurt for myself, our family and for my brothers family. It will be a long road ahead.

Apart from this loss, our family is in the middle of another desperate situation. My father was diagnosed with late stage Parkinson's at the end of last year and had to be moved into a nursing home. He has been rapidly deteriorating over the past several weeks. My brother traveled over to the Isle of Man to see him last weekend. He has not been eating or drinking much of anything for the past couple of weeks.

My dad's words on learning that his son had died were “now I have got no-one”. Whilst this is not really true as my sister has been there for him everyday and my other brother has visited him, I think it is telling on how he is feeling. His mind and his body are slowly loosing their ability and I am sure he is feeling lonely and afraid.

So I find myself in a dilemma . I want to be there for my family at this time and also for my dad as he faces the next few weeks. He is not able to travel to England for the funeral of his son; he is not able to eat; he is not able to do very much of anything for himself anymore.

On the other hand, I have a family here who needs me to. As nice as you all are, I don't feel like I could leave the children to be looked after for more than a couple of weeks.

We could all go to the Isle of Man for the duration of the summer, but would even that be enough? I don't know if I could handle my dad, my sister, the children, my grief, their grief, all on my own for a long period of time. And I just don't know that I am now capable of making a decision like that.

So I ask for prayer. Prayer to have hope, and light for the times ahead for my family. Pray too that I will know without a doubt what the right thing to do is, and then have courage to do it.

Needless to say, we do not have the finances to all go home, so that might be our determining factor, but we have also been in this situation before and God has provided what we needed, so I am not ruling it out just yet.

Today is Saturday.. We do not know when the funeral will be as there will have to be an autopsy to determine actual cause of death. I assume it will be the end of next week or the beginning of the following week. I do feel the need to be at home for the funeral, even if it is just by myself.

All of this has made me feel somewhat set adrift now. It is at times like this that you need family, but my reality is that my family now need me. You have all become the support that I need at this time, and I can not tell you have valuable that is to me. Thank you!