Mid-July

My mom was spending the summer up at the house. Dad would take the bus home on Sunday and go back up on Wednesday or Thursday.
He'd been very tired most days and would spend some time on the couch in the office. Also, he'd recently been having some balance issues that he couldn't understand. He said he didn't get dizzy, and his legs didn't just give out, but on several occasions he just lost his balance and went down. He made an appointment with a neuroligist for Thursday.
On the Sunday afternoon before, he called to ask would I mind if he didn't come down till Wednesday. I said no problem and I would meet him at the bus.
I got to Port Authority with time to spare and, with a cell phone call from him, determined where he was waiting for me.
I went downstairs and saw him waiting. The only thing that stuck out to me was that his hair was mussed (his hair was usually never mussed). Other than that, and the fact that he was walking a bit slow (so would I if I had fallen a couple of times) he was fine. We grabbed a cab back to his apartment. We went down to the Chinese take-out place, ordered some lo mein and ate it while chatting. Normal.
I spent the night and the next day (Thursday) we took a cab to the neurologist together. The exam went fine but the doc wanted to do a scan and we were able to schedule an MRI for that night at 9pm as he was planning to get back on the bus for Massachusetts the next day.
That evening we went to dinner at a bar/restaurant on his corner and each had a burger and a beer. Normal.
Then we went uptown for the MRI. The neurologist said he might have the results the next day, but if not, definitely by Monday.
After the MRI we went home, bull-shitted for a while, and went to sleep.
Next morning we left the apartment around 11am to put him back on the bus. He called the doc's office before we left and they said they didn't yet have the results.
I waited with him till the bus boarded and chatted with a guy on line. All was well, and I left and went back to work.

That evening my mother called. She wanted to know how he was when he got on the bus because by the time the bus got to Lee, he was the last one off and the driver had to help him. I said he had been fine when I left him.
She sounded frightened, not a usual emotion for her, and I said I was coming up to the house. I called Paul, related the conversation I had with mom and told him she sounded frightened and that I was going up.
He called up to the house, and despite their protestations, he called me back and said he would meet me there.
We got there really late and said hello and went to sleep.
My mother wanted to bring him to an emergency room. She, Paul, and I debated whether to bring him to the local hospital or back to NY. At that point I was thinking maybe he's had a small stroke and the wait at the local emergency room would be shorter than in Mt. Sinai. Meantime, he was able to walk up and down stairs, eat breakfast, and shave and shower.
He was sitting in his blue chair and started having some speech problems. He would start a sentence and end up sounding like Porky Pig. He laughed about it as did we all. He said, I think maybe I've had a small stroke.
He and I went out to the deck to drink our coffee while I had a cigarette and my mother called his doctor, Larry, to ask if we should come back to NY or take him to emergency up there. She talked with him for a few minutes and then hung up and said he told her we should drive down.

Later, Paul told me that during the conversation with the doctor, Mom's face went pale.

When dad went upstairs, mom said, "He's got a brain tumor". I asked her if that was her opinion or is that what the doc said?

She said that that's what Larry told her, he had seen the report from the test the night before.

Apparently, the technician at the lab had called Larry right away with the news. Larry had told him not to say anything as he knew that dad wasn't with mom at that moment and since one day wasn't going to make a difference he didn't want him to know till they were together.