Calling all favors

Okay, friends: I'm calling in every favor, every debt, every kindness you can spare me for the next few days. Carl's and my mom and dad were traveling in the UK when Dad began to feel under the weather. After a day in an ER in London, they checked him into a hospital there, where he's been since Friday night. The diagnosis--which he had already guessed at (you can take the doctor out of the clinic, but etc etc.)--was acute myeloid leukemia. My dad--my brilliant, kind, patient, funny dad--has cancer. And he is at this very moment lying in a hospital bed thousands of miles and an entire ocean from home with a leucostasis in his lung and a tube down his throat.

So here's what I need from you. Anytime you think of it in the next few days, turn toward London and send him healing. Send him light. Send him peace. Send him the sound of mountain brooks through pine forests and loopy, chubby golden retriever puppies and perfectly constructed Dick Francis novels and warm, rich cello solos and hundreds of voices lifted in exquisite choral harmony and breathtakingly choreographed musical numbers and rich, ruby-red Merlots and long bicycle rides through gorgeous mountain scenery. Send him his son and daughter, his sister and granddaughters. Send him you. Send him love. Please. PLEASE.