It is Friday, which is the start of my 3 day weekend, and so I tend to take it easy. I sleep in, lounge about when I do get up, enjoying a fire, reading a book, and posting some entries on the ol' blog. I also ignore my phone, which today was easy to do since I left it on vibrate mode from yesterday. I have to have the ringer turned off for groups. It wouldn't look good for the counselor's phone to be interrupting an emotionally sensitive disclosure by one of my clients.
Anyway, around 9:00 PM I hear my phone vibrating away in the pocket of my jacket. It's The GirlFriend™, just checking in from work. After hanging up, I notice I missed a call and a voice message. Thinking it is probably just a message from The GirlFriend™, I check my voice mail.
It wasn't from The GirlFriend™, it was from my mother. She states they are air lifting my father to North Memorial Hospital. He has gotten worse since yesterday.
Now, I did not know dad was sick. No one called to tell me he was having problems. So, imagine the shock of discovering my father is so sick they have to air lift him to a hospital in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. Yes, at this point I am starting to freak, a combination of fearing the loss of my father, and the shame of having not heard mom's message until 8 hours after she called.
Anyway, around 9:00 PM I hear my phone vibrating away in the pocket of my jacket. It's The GirlFriend™, just checking in from work. After hanging up, I notice I missed a call and a voice message. Thinking it is probably just a message from The GirlFriend™, I check my voice mail.
It wasn't from The GirlFriend™, it was from my mother. She states they are air lifting my father to North Memorial Hospital. He has gotten worse since yesterday.
Now, I did not know dad was sick. No one called to tell me he was having problems. So, imagine the shock of discovering my father is so sick they have to air lift him to a hospital in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. Yes, at this point I am starting to freak, a combination of fearing the loss of my father, and the shame of having not heard mom's message until 8 hours after she called.
I have been reflecting on the approaching death of my parents for quite
some time now. Both are at retirement age. Both are not in the best of
health. But reflecting on their deaths is not the same as being faced
with the reality of possibly losing one of them.
So, after shedding a few tears, but not completely breaking down, I managed to call The GirlFriend™ and tell her what is going down. She starts asking questions about my father's condition, of which I know little, if anything. At first I am irritated by her questions. Then I realize I am just using the irritation to avoid fear. I break down for a few seconds, sobbing, before finally telling her I only had a voice message left to me by mom, and I do not have any answers to her questions other than mom reported it is not a heart attack, nor any type of blood clot or pneumonia.
After getting off the phone with her, I manage enough coherent thought to look up the hospital on the internet. I find the number to patient information. Doing everything I can to keep my composure, I ask for my father, and they ring me right into the room in intensive care. Some part of my brain asks "they can do that?" A woman with an oriental accent answers. I fumble my words, but finally manage to have mom handed the phone.
Dad is sleeping. They have enough tubes into him he resembles a Borg. Okay, mom did not say that, it is just my imagination. Anyway, mom and I manage a conversation without losing our composure. She tells me they still do not know what is wrong. They have done the usual; blood tests, x-rays, etc., etc., etc. And it turns out he wasn't air lifted to the hospital, too much fog and snow in that part of the Twin Cities, so he was taken by ambulance.
Now, my dad is a stubborn old cuss. He is not going to go anywhere easily. Hell, during his first heart attack he drove the 10 miles from his apartment to his doctor's clinic. When they told him he was having a heart attack and needed to go to the hospital, he got up to drive himself. The doctor intervened, and made him take an ambulance, which was just across the street. To this day, my father thinks it was a waste of man power and money to transport him across the street to the hospital.
Now, 23 years ago, I did not have a wonderful relationship with my father. My drug use, his drinking, and a myriad other issues, all conspired to interfere. It was pretty painful to live in the same house as my father and not have him look at me, or acknowledge my existence. It was not until after a few years of sobriety-for both of us-that we could finally talk again.
However, it was my brother's death in 1991 that really altered my perception of dad. He was so open and straightforward about his feelings, his grief. Despite how my brother died, a car accident caused by his and his friends' drinking, my father was not bitter. And he was supportive of everyone else, despite his pain. When Eric's friends came to apologize my father did not blame them. Instead, he made them talk about all the wonderful times they had, and when they left they were still crying, but with smiles on their faces and good memories in their hearts. I had not seen that side of him, ever. It was also the first time I heard the phrase "A father should not have to bury his son."
Every time I hear that line in "The Two Towers" I tear up.
It may seem cold, that my brother's death would bring me closer to my father, and the rest of my family, but I take life's lessons whenever they are given. Today, I can be grateful of the love I have for, and that I receive from, my father. I cry now, not because he might die, but because after having spent much of my early life resentful and angry, blaming him for the perceived failures of my life, I am selfish and do not want to lose him.
Should he, God forbid, pass away, I am grateful for the time I have had with him, though short and inadequate it may-at times-seem to me. It has been a quality of time, not quantity, and I have been enriched by it's simplicity, it's immediacy, and his selflessness. He has lived a good life, surviving it's challenges, enduring it's hardships. A life of which to be proud.
So, after shedding a few tears, but not completely breaking down, I managed to call The GirlFriend™ and tell her what is going down. She starts asking questions about my father's condition, of which I know little, if anything. At first I am irritated by her questions. Then I realize I am just using the irritation to avoid fear. I break down for a few seconds, sobbing, before finally telling her I only had a voice message left to me by mom, and I do not have any answers to her questions other than mom reported it is not a heart attack, nor any type of blood clot or pneumonia.
After getting off the phone with her, I manage enough coherent thought to look up the hospital on the internet. I find the number to patient information. Doing everything I can to keep my composure, I ask for my father, and they ring me right into the room in intensive care. Some part of my brain asks "they can do that?" A woman with an oriental accent answers. I fumble my words, but finally manage to have mom handed the phone.
Dad is sleeping. They have enough tubes into him he resembles a Borg. Okay, mom did not say that, it is just my imagination. Anyway, mom and I manage a conversation without losing our composure. She tells me they still do not know what is wrong. They have done the usual; blood tests, x-rays, etc., etc., etc. And it turns out he wasn't air lifted to the hospital, too much fog and snow in that part of the Twin Cities, so he was taken by ambulance.
Now, my dad is a stubborn old cuss. He is not going to go anywhere easily. Hell, during his first heart attack he drove the 10 miles from his apartment to his doctor's clinic. When they told him he was having a heart attack and needed to go to the hospital, he got up to drive himself. The doctor intervened, and made him take an ambulance, which was just across the street. To this day, my father thinks it was a waste of man power and money to transport him across the street to the hospital.
Now, 23 years ago, I did not have a wonderful relationship with my father. My drug use, his drinking, and a myriad other issues, all conspired to interfere. It was pretty painful to live in the same house as my father and not have him look at me, or acknowledge my existence. It was not until after a few years of sobriety-for both of us-that we could finally talk again.
However, it was my brother's death in 1991 that really altered my perception of dad. He was so open and straightforward about his feelings, his grief. Despite how my brother died, a car accident caused by his and his friends' drinking, my father was not bitter. And he was supportive of everyone else, despite his pain. When Eric's friends came to apologize my father did not blame them. Instead, he made them talk about all the wonderful times they had, and when they left they were still crying, but with smiles on their faces and good memories in their hearts. I had not seen that side of him, ever. It was also the first time I heard the phrase "A father should not have to bury his son."
Every time I hear that line in "The Two Towers" I tear up.
It may seem cold, that my brother's death would bring me closer to my father, and the rest of my family, but I take life's lessons whenever they are given. Today, I can be grateful of the love I have for, and that I receive from, my father. I cry now, not because he might die, but because after having spent much of my early life resentful and angry, blaming him for the perceived failures of my life, I am selfish and do not want to lose him.
Should he, God forbid, pass away, I am grateful for the time I have had with him, though short and inadequate it may-at times-seem to me. It has been a quality of time, not quantity, and I have been enriched by it's simplicity, it's immediacy, and his selflessness. He has lived a good life, surviving it's challenges, enduring it's hardships. A life of which to be proud.
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