My dad was and is one of my all time heroes.  I can close my eyes and still imagine him.  I see him in the mirror sometimes, especially as I age.  I remember how he smelled.  I remember how his hand felt and I remember how my hand felt when it was in his.  I remember what he cared about.

Dad fought for the rights of others most of his career.  He fought for civil rights for so many people.  I remember meeting him at the bus so that I could walk home with him and hear about his day.  He would often talk about people with disabilities and would help me think through what the reasonable accommodation would be for someone looking for employment that had a disability.  I was always so amazed by the ideas he would come up with and how simple they were to implement so someone could have a job and support themselves.

This week I am constantly thinking about the disabling disease I have seen the most.  It is a disease that causes many challenges.  It is a disease that constantly causes you to come up with a new reasonable accommodation for dealing with the challenges of life that get tougher and tougher until it seems there aren't any reasonable accommodations to come up with.  It is cancer.

I grew up with a grandmother that was affected by cancer of the larynx.  She had to speak and breathe through an opening in her neck.  She was later struck by cancer again in her life and we lost her about 12 years ago.  My grandfather died from leukemia.  My paternal grandmother died from colon cancer.  My mother battled breast cancer but thankfully has done well for the last 17 years.  My precious father was taken by a form of cancer 8 years ago and now I am watching my brother suffer from renal cancer.

In our trainings we tell people to look past the disability.  Look at the person, rather than the disability.  But when my dad had cancer it became a part of who he was.  He would never be the same again.  Dad only lived with that diagnosis for 9 days but he used even that to make an impact.

In those last nine days of his life, he kept whispering to me, "Trust God."  I can still imagine him saying it to this day.  "Trust God."  I think that was Dad's "reasonable accommodation."  It allowed him and it allowed us to not be disabled by the disease but to learn how to live through it, trusting God.