One Week an Orphan

I’ve been trying to write this for a while now.  But now that I’m back at work it seems the right time to just do it.

My Dad died on May 30^th.  I got the call around 7:50 that he had coded.  His blood pressure dropped, he stopped breathing and coded.  They wanted to know if they should continue life saving measures.  How do you answer that on the phone, without your sibling, and while you’re at least 40 minutes away???

I got there in 25 minutes.  It may have been 23, I’m not sure. I met my sister there. 

When we got up to his room, after I yelled at a security guard in the ER, they had done CPR again after he crashed again. He was on a ventilator but they kept losing his pulse.  They lost it again as we stood there, and they started CPR but I asked them to stop.  We agreed that wasn’t what he would have wanted and they were working on him for so long that even if they were able to get him back, his brain wouldn’t be alive anymore.  It wouldn’t be my Dad.

He passed as soon as they took him off the ventilator.  We were not in the room but went in shortly after.

And now, as I joked with my sister as we sat in the room with our dead father, we are now orphans.  He had been in the hospital for a while and although we knew he may not get better, we kept hoping that he would use up another of those 9-lives and make it through it.  But this time, it wasn’t meant to be.  We sat there with him for a while, in disbelief.  All I could keep saying was “fuck” over and over. What else could I say?  I had this whole speech prepared to give him once I knew he could hear me and it was all about how he had to get better so he could see my daughter in gymnastics class, see her go off to private school next year, celebrate her next birthday.  But I never got to say it. He was out of it more than in the last few days and I never got to say it.  There’s a lot I didn’t get to say, including good-bye.

It’s kind of hard to believe that he’s gone.  We had thought for the longest time that he would go first and when he didn’t, there was that additional shock on top of the shock of losing my Mom so quickly and traumatically.  And now that it is him that’s gone, it’s odd.   I can feel that there is something wrong with the world now that he’s no longer in it.  It feels weird not being able to call him, check on him, tell him another funny Emily story.  Everything just doesn’t feel the same anymore and I don’t know that it ever will.

I can’t say how many times I heard the words “wonderful”, “giving”, “dependable”, “always there”, “great” and “we will miss him” followed by “greatly”, “so much” and “more than I can say”.  He was a wonderful man and hearing everyone from the recreation secretary at his retirement community to some of his closest friends say the same things over and over just confirm that I was lucky enough to be Angelo’s daughter.  He will always be the one that supported me the most, the one that just wanted me to be happy no matter what it meant.  He will always be the one that initially scared most of my friends but in the end, made them feel like one of his own.  I posted on Facebook that my world feels a little bit darker now, and I think that it will always be that way. He had a way of lighting up a room with his smile and always managed to break an uncomfortable silence with a great laugh.  And I will miss that.  I will miss being able to call him my Dad, because that was one of the biggest honors I will ever receive in this life.  He was a good man and he is very sorely missed.

Deja F You

Every time I have sat down to write this, to clear my head of all of this, I suddenly lose my words.  I have a lot to say, but I’m not entirely sure how to say it all.

My Dad has been in the hospital for two weeks today; today being what would have been my parents’ 61^st wedding anniversary.  He has had a toe amputated, his foot debrided twice, and one surgery to perform angioplasty on the arteries in his leg.  He was doing well, they were planning on discharging him to an inpatient rehab facility tomorrow – Friday.  I was manically trying to help the social worker find a suitable facility that had inpatient dialysis; without that, we would have to pay out over $300/week in transportation fees to get him to dialysis.  I was also working on trying to get together some transportation options for when he got home. But that all came to a screeching halt yesterday when, after the second debridement surgery, the doctor said that the area didn’t bleed as much as she thought it would and she called his vascular surgeon. I called that surgeon who said my Dad’s arteries are calcified.  He will reassess him today and most likely go back into his leg, this time through his ankle, to try and open up the circulation more.  My Dad also has what’s called skin break-down, which basically is damaged skin which would open up and turn into an ulcer if it is not treated and improves.  So – if the circulation doesn’t improve, if the skin breakdown doesn’t improve or gets worse, he could lose his lower leg.  Hearing those words were worse than what I imagine an actual kick to the stomach would be like; I’ve never been kicked in the stomach, except from the inside out (and man that kid was a strong kicker) but I can imagine that it sucks as much as that did.  I had heard that he might lose his foot, but that was prior to the toe amputation and circulation surgery last week. As far as I was concerned, he was on a smooth ride out the hospital door and into rehab, which meant one step closer to home.

Suddenly, everything just stopped.  And since that call I have spent more time reading up about amputations in dialysis/diabetic patients than I care to mention.  I have seen pictures that no one should see – it is AMAZING what comes up in Google; certain things really should be left for medical professionals to view.  Once I avoided or at least averted my eyes to the graphic images, I read medical studies – I’m not sure how many – that all basically had the same message.  Amputation at his age, and with all of the medical conditions he has, will inevitably shorten his life-span to that of dandelion that’s been picked by my toddler.  If he were to survive surgery, he may not live more than 30 days after the procedure. If he were to make it past the 30 day mark, chances are he wouldn’t live another two years.  And what would those two years be like?  I’ve tried to envision it but it is not a pretty picture, no matter what I try to toss in there to make it a more manageable image. He is wheelchair bound because he can’t lift himself up to use crutches. He is depressed because his independence has been taken away.  He is alone, in a wheelchair. If he makes it out of the hospital, out of rehab, maybe he lives with us – we would have to buy a home in his area that is accessible to him. His sense of humor is gone; not that it’s in the best of shape now but he is able to still laugh and joke, which is a good sign.  I want him to be here long enough to make memories that will last the rest of my life-time and that of my daughter, but it is not often that the universe grants us what we want.  My Dad has been through so much in this life and for this to happen now, which will be the end of his life if this is the path we have to take, it is heart-breaking and makes me feel like I have been robbed of yet another parent. I watched my Mom slowly die and I feel like I will be forced to relive that with my Dad.  He has always been the stable one, the reliable one, the supportive one; he’s the one left that knows what we were all like as children, he’s the one left that remembers what it was like as we grew older and crazier. I realize that I am lucky he is still here; he should have died in 1999.  But regardless of how lucky I should be, today, I don’t feel very lucky at all.  I feel sad, shocked, scared, alone, exhausted, numb……but certainly not lucky.

Mother's Day Once More

So yesterday was Mother's Day. I cried for a pretty good amount of it, and in fact, I'm still crying. It's been a great few days.

Why am I crying? I felt alone. Really, really alone yesterday. Rob worked and I got one phone call all day long. Rob's family had already reached out to me the other day to check on my Dad so I didn't expect to hear from them. My sister texted me in the early afternoon and I guess my Dad couldn't figure out how to call me from the hospital. Rob texted me in the morning. Emily and I had about two or maybe three hours of decent time together when no one said no and no one felt like they were talking to a wall. But that didn't last. Carried over to the birthday party I took her to, where she fought me so hard to leave that she fell down some stairs in the yard, backwards as she backed away from me as I said "honey I have to get your socks and shoes on so we can go". I just felt isolated yesterday. There was no one to celebrate and there was no celebration for me. No "thank you"s were said, no flowers were given. Rob gave me a very practical gift and got Rita's ice - which he wanted and he likes; the night before I said I wanted ice cream or cake. Obviously that request went unnoticed or just forgotten.

I was asked questions all day long. Request after request for things - more water, a different tv show, more chicken, different clothes, calls I didn't want to make but was asked to make them anyway. Over and over and over. Only once was I asked how I was - as I sat on the couch, on the verge of tears and he played with her in the back I heard "you ok", to which I said "yeah I'm fine" which we all know means I am NOT FINE. And then he asked "do you miss us" to which I said "ummm no, I'm good". I don't think he liked my candor but quite frankly, fuck him and his joke because I sat in that house and at that party miserable and alone all damned day. Some mothers were being celebrated with breakfast in bed, flowers, cards extolling their glory and awesomeness. I was being told "no" over and over all day long by a stubborn toddler while only one person called. And even she was too busy celebrating with her own mother to hear just how sad I was.

My Dad

I really shouldn’t be taking time out of my day to write this – I am more swamped than I can explain and under a TON of pressure to get all of my work done as soon as possible…but I need to get this out of my brain.

My dad isn’t doing well.  He’s been having pains in his legs, so bad that it’s affecting his mobility.  I saw him yesterday and he just doesn’t look good.  My sister said that when she went to church with him on my Mom’s birthday, he had to stop walking because he couldn’t get his breath and it took a while for him to catch his breath – they were already sitting down when he finally was breathing normally. Really wish she had told me that a week ago.  But now, on top of the mobility issues and now the breathing issues, he’s having memory issues.  Yesterday at lunch, the waitress came over to take our drink order and left.  A few moments later he said “did she take our order yet”.  Our menus were still sitting on the table.  He can remember things across days or even weeks, but his short term may be affected by this circulation issue in his legs – which could also be affecting his heart. If he’s losing his breath, his heart isn’t operating as well as it should.  My sister said that she’s noticed he’s had some weird memory things happen as of late, but she didn’t think it was a big deal.  He’s not a young man but still – for it to be so sudden like this, scares the hell out of me.  He had quadruple bypass in 1999 after going into heart failure, after a heart attack.  He’s had other surgeries, other heart issues, now has a defibulator instead of the pacemaker he was given a few years ago.  He’s on dialysis because his kidneys failed after a cardiac procedure a few years ago.   But I don’t care about all of that, I care about him being okay which he certainly is not right now.

I really am trying to keep myself together but in my head, I am a total and utter mess. I am totally 100% freaking out and somehow, I have to keep it together so I can get my job done today. I don’t know how to do this. Again.  I am so scared that his days are a lot more numbered than I thought they were; after yesterday, I’m really worried.  Really really worried.

I can’t lose my Dad yet.  I know that I will eventually; the man will be 82 in July so it’s not like he’s young. But still.  I can’t do this again. Not yet.

Today Sucks

Today sucks.  that’s right – it’s not even 9amand it sucks.  I have already laid down the gauntlet, thrown my hands up in the air and said I have HAD IT, I give up, that’s it.

Why?

Yesterday was hard for me, harder than I realized until the day was near its end.  And then we had a HUGE fight last night, the same exact fight we had a year ago – over baseball and the summer.  If he goes to all of the games/tournaments this summer that he intends on going to, on top of the whole working every 3^rd or 4^th weekend thing, he will be out of the house for approximately 9 weekends of the 12 or 13 that make up the summer months.  Again.  Last year it was going to be 9 or 10 and I think it turned out to be 7, still about half the summer was spent apart with him at games or at work and me with our toddler – and last summer was rough, she was a BEAST for a large portion of the time that we spent alone and I was miserable already because my mom had just passed away; according to him I can’t count the work weekends though since those are out of his control.  This year I asked to be a part of the conversation, to have a choice and a voice in the conversation because last year I didn’t have one.  I was told what he was doing last year, not asked or consulted but told.  So this year I wanted to have a choice; I wanted to be able to say no this isn’t acceptable to me.  Well, I still don’t have one because although he said “these are the games I would like to go to”, when I tried to take one – just one – off the schedule I was told that he never gets to see his kids, he’s here all the time, he sees RJ every 6 weeks at best and in a nutshell I inferred from the conversation that his decision was made and I pretty much just have to live with it. Again.  We never even got to the look at the entire schedule because he was adamant about the dates around her birthday. It got to the point that I said, just as I did last year, “send me the dates that you’re going to go and I’ll just figure it out because if I say no, I’m refusing you the chance to see your kid and that’s not fair so I’ll just deal with it”.  Which really, isn’t fair either.  I’m a part of this too, this affects me too but I guess that pales in comparison to him seeing or not seeing his 17 year old play in yet another game, in yet another tournament while I stay home for yet another weekend trying to manage everything that has to get done and my insanely active toddler for almost the entire summer.

I was an afterthought for a very long time in our relationship because of the obligations he had to his children and his then wife, and now I am yet again feeling like an afterthought – just like last year.  Last year, part of my argument was that I was still a mess from losing my mom and I didn’t know how I was going to handle 9 weeks alone with her – but he did it anyway.  This year, when I said that I was hoping to get to his parents’ house in June so they could spend Emily’s birthday with her he told me that if it was that important to me (yes, they’re his parents but if seeing them for Emily’s birthday was that important to ME), then either the weekend before her birthday or the one after is when we would be gone and that would be taking a game off the table; whatever I wanted to do with my family I would be doing without him – I don’t need him there.  The majority of these weekends are back-to-back, so he will have to move around his work schedule in order to go to them which means more back-to-back weekends that I’m left to juggle all of it during the week AND during the weekend. He tried to compare the 12 days last year that he spend alone with her – those 12 days were spread out between March and October, they were not back-to-back and they were in no way consecutive but apparent in his world, it’s the same thing.  Don’t even ask me how often I was alone with her last year; I can’t count that high.  So again – no choice, no compromise, no nothing.  Why did I even bother trying when obviously this conversation, this topic, this entire area of his life is still off limits to me.  Whether it be when he chooses to call me only from the car when he’s in NC with them, or when it’s in making choices about how he will spend his weekends, I am out of the conversation and I am not allowed to have options.  My voice doesn’t matter.

So on top of the crappiness that I feel after yesterday, I now have this to deal with which just makes me want to crawl under my desk and cry into a pint of Ben n Jerry’s.  Oh if only that were an actual option today.

Her Birthday

My attempt to post old entries back-fired on me this weekend.  I tried, but they would only save to draft.  I think that was the universe’s way of saying ‘ummm – now is not a good time, try back later, have some chocolate in the meantime’.  And that’s what I did.  :)

Yesterday was…….I don’t know, it just kind of was.  It felt strange to just go about my day and act like it wasn’t an important or special day.  I was alone with Emily for the majority of the day and we went to the playground, fought once about something that is inconsequential now; we stayed home most of the day since we were out all day on Saturday.  And I tried to not remember what day it was, but it was hard to forget.  It was hard to forget that my Dad was having a mass said for her, it was hard to forget that he would have come home after a regular mass with flowers for her had she still been here.  It’s hard to forget, and I know that I will never forget it.  I wore her necklace yesterday and I told Emily it was Grandma’s birthday, even though I don’t think she understood I want her to know that the day is still important even though Grandma isn’t with us anymore.

If my Mom was still here, we would have gathered around and gone to dinner – a restaurant the rest of us picked because she NEVER picked (but always complained about it somehow – the bread was too hard, the food was too hot/too cold, the plates were too big/small, the tea wasn’t hot enough/too hot, the sauce wasn’t as good as hers, the music was too loud, our waitress too perky, etc. etc. etc.), went back to her house for coffee and cake. I would have gotten her flowers from Emily and had them sent to her – she loved getting flowers delivered to the house.  I would have heard her complain about getting older, and joking about why God has kept her here this long (to keep things interesting and/or to keep an eye on my father).  I wish those jokes were still funny.  Many things that were once funny – like calling her bat shite crazy – aren’t as funny as they used to be; I hope that changes one day.

You can’t really celebrate a birthday for someone who has passed away; a birthday is a celebration of their life, the past year of that life.  And there is no more life to celebrate; her life ended before it should have, in my opinion (I am all too familiar with the idea of things happening for a reason, which I usually agree with, but this one I don’t understand and I don’t know if I ever will).  I wish my Dad was open to doing something for her, like having a big lunch with their friends and talking about her and really celebrating her.  Maybe next year (God willing, as my Mom would have said).

My birthday is a week from today and I’m not dreading it as much as I think I did a year ago, but I also know that it won’t be an easy day. My Mom’s birthday was yesterday, and the 6^thanniversary of my friend’s passing is this weekend as well.  I am hoping that it will be easier than last year but I have come to a realization – your birthday will never be more important to anyone than to your mother.  She will always think of you on that day, no matter what relationship you have, and she may smile or cry or cringe but she will think of you.  My mother took the opportunity to remind me I was getting old, remind me that she was not getting old, and recount how she found out she was pregnant, how my Dad was at my Grandmother’s house for lunch when I was born and she was very mad at him by the time he finally showed up.  That call will never come again, although my Dad will try.  Those stories will never be told again because they were hers.  And mine – and now they are just mine, and right now I have no one to tell them to(at least no one who will really want to hear them again).  No one will ever care more about that day than her, and that diminishes the importance of that day forever.  It will never be that important to someone ever again, and that sucks.  I hope that it won’t hurt as much as it did last year when my phone didn’t ring, when the stories didn’t come and when I didn’t get to hear her say “Hi Sweetheart, it’s Mom” one more time.

WTF

I don’t know why this realization is a realization at all – seems like something that’s obvious but for some reason, it smacked me in the head just now.

It’s been two years since my Mom called me on my birthday.

Last year was the first year she was gone, so there was no call. The last call was the year before – which was two years ago.

That fact just makes it suck more.  I haven’t heard her voice in almost a year and a half; technically it’s been a year and……..3 months, 18 days – give or take.

Two years just sounds so big. When I think about the strides my daughter has made in those two years, or where I am in my life now compared to two years ago, it’s immeasurable.

Yeah, this just sucks.