It’s a busy time of year for all of us: kids going back to school, soccer seasons starting (or football or cross country or volleyball), freezing and canning fresh produce, mowing lawns, weeding gardens… but all of it can be put on hold for something of ultimate importance.

My father-in-law is in the hospital. There’s a good possibility he won’t be with us for much longer. He knows it. My mother-in-law knows it. My husband and his siblings know it. The grandkids even know it, to some extent. We’ve tried to give them an idea of what’s happening, but it’s always tricky to talk to little children about death. It’s confusing. And scary.

John, my father-in-law, has bone cancer. It began as prostate cancer and traveled to just about every other part of his body, including his ribs and his spinal column. But ultimately, that’s not what’s going to be the final word. He told me last month that he wasn’t going to die of cancer - he was going to die because he couldn’t breathe anymore. Then he told me why.

As a child growing up on an Ohio farm in the forties, his chores dealt with any manner of oats — in the straw, in the feed, in the dust. And they also dealt with chickens, who put out more ammonia than anyone likes to think about. In the midst of this, John was suffering from asthma. But no one knew he had it.

The doctor they had in those days figured he was just getting colds all the time, so he treated him for congestion. Obviously, that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until after the war, when they got a new, medically up-to-date doctor, that he was run through a battery of allergy tests and they finally got at the real culprit. But by then he was fourteen — the damage had been done.

In the past years, John has been living with 27% lung capacity. Not a lot to breathe with. Until this last year, he’d been doing as well as he could with a diagnosis of Farmer’s Lung. But when the cancer came about and he had to go on chemo, the medicine counteracted all the steroids and drugs he needed to keep his lungs working. A lose-lose situation.

But John didn’t let it get him down. He had two big events planned for this summer, and he pushed himself to get to them and through them. One was an extended Smucker family reunion (actually called the Schmucker-Smoker-Smucker reunion) that he has helped to head up for a few decades. He gave a workshop, and was also presented with an award. The second event was a smaller reunion for John, his siblings, and their families. We came back from that a few weekends ago. It was a good family time.

My kids are wondering when they’ll see Grandpa again. We’ll go out to see him within the next few days again. My husband goes tomorrow.

It makes me think of all the good busy-ness we have going on. Amidst all the school, sports, and food, there are a few other things that take precedence, and that we have no control over. Life. And Death.