I'm 28 now and have trouble remembering a time when my father didn't seem defined by his arthritis. When I was younger it was his hands... thinking back I suppose there was a time when we played catch without worries, but in mind even that time has the feeling of a decrescendo, slowly becoming less and less until what was there one minute is gone the next. Then, again slowly, the focus of his pain shifted to his knees, until one day it became harder to stand up than to shake hands.

It has been this way for years, the pained struggle on my father's face as he pulls himself out of a chair, the agony of trying to take off or put on his shoes. At some point walking became nothing more than a way for him to get from one place of rest to another.

My dad is self-employed. Working 10 to 12 hours a day, living at a pace slightly less than paycheck to paycheck. He approaches 70, and as time marches on, debt still piles up all around him, the joke that retirement has become haunts him.

What I find to be a crueler aspect to this situation is that there is a medical hope. With a double knee-transplant and 4-6 months of rehabiliation my dad would be able to walk pain-free. However, at 70, while working to be able survive, the luxury of that kind of rehab simply doesnt exist.

So here I am, feeling like I'm still pretty much at the beginning of this journey called life, looking at someone approaching the end, both of us struggling to find some meaning to it all. Am I doomed to the same fate of working until the day I die for nothing more than the privilege of having lived? Was there something my father could have done differently in life to have a happier ever after?

As I look into his eyes over coffee at 7:30 in the morning, I can see he's tired before his day has begun. I wonder to myself what keeps him going, because as analytical as my father can be, this is a question i think he's afraid to ask himself, and so for me to pose it seems a bit cruel.

Or maybe what keeps me from asking isn't a desire to protect my father, but a fear that he has an answer, and that it's not one that I want to hear. What if he is just a stronger man than I am? What if he perseveres because he posseses something I dont? What will happen if, when faced with similar hardships and no end in sight, I just give up?