by Cynthia J. Carvajal

Created on: May 15, 2008

He was as tough as could be, my #2 son, and we all looked up to him as he always had a certain 'feel of authority' about him. Let me explain.. I have four sons you see and somewhere along the way whenever I was calling one of them, I seemed to have lost the ability to decipher the name of the child in front of me. I would go through all their names before I got to the right one so in order to keep it all straight in my head.. I decided to give them a number instead! I can remember numbers you see. I guess they got a kick out of it because when they call me on the phone (their voices are all similar), they let me know their number, not their name! "This is number 3 Mom!"

And so my son Al, my #2 precious fighter of the bunch, called me one day with bad news. He had gone to the doctor because his legs had become swollen all the way up to his knees. The news he had was not good. His heart was enlarged, at the ripe old age of 30 years. Idiosympatic Cardiomyopathy they called it. Heart disease with no known cause. A death sentence. His prognosis: Get a heart transplant and if you make it through surgery, you might live an extra 6-10 years. We were all surprised, not to mention terrified, anxious and full of fear. Al was our rock.. he was everyone's best friend. Al loved everyone, and everyone loved Al. He was my mountain man! The son I grew to depend on when I needed an ear to listen to me.. he was always there. And when he worried about his brothers, he would call me to talk.

We spent many long hours on the phone discussing everything from the weather, to his latest news about his illness. I hated the fact that he was so far away! He lived in Oregon while I live in California. It was so hard, but he was strong, and oh so tough. Not once did you hear him complain. Al protected us, his mom and his step-dad. He knew how we loved him and he never wanted us to worry about him, and so he would quietly slip out of the room when he felt ill, which was quite frequently. We would all hear him retching his guts out in the bathroom. He never did get any better. Slowly he lost the ability to do all the things he loved. Mountain biking, kayaking, snowboarding.. but he NEVER gave up hope. He always put 110% into everything he did. And that's what he put into fighting this disease. He never allowed himself the luxury of giving up. Not my Al! He was and continued to be the strong, caring rock of our family.

When it came time for him to get a pacemaker, one of the hardest things to

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