Lost my dad
09-08-2018, 09:11 PM
My dad had a stroke a few months back. He's alive, but he's not the same, and it's been affecting me. I've never lost someone in my immediate family (mom, dad, siblings). He's 83 and before the stroke was in excellent health. Most of his hair is black, about a third is white, full head of hair. He has all his teeth, or all that I can tell, I actually have several crowns on my back teeth, but he has all of his teeth, all in good health. He can make biceps, they're big, he calls them "conejos," which means rabbits. He's a big man, tall and broad shouldered. He has a deep voice, I wonder if mine will get deeper like that as I get older. My voice is deep, but not like his.
Well after the stroke, his voice is different, it's not booming anymore. Due to the stroke, he fell. At first he thought he had fallen and hit himself, but then it came to him and he said, "I didn't fall. I blanked out and woke up on the floor." So as he came down, he hit his ribs on the side of the bathtub and made a very deep purple bruise about 4 inches wide, and running across his entire side, from the front/side of his chest to his back/side. He also had a purple bruise on his head, on the side, crossing through his ear.
I've never had an impact as hard as what he got during that fall in my life. So after the fall, he was fine, but in the days after, he started losing mobility, until he could barely move his arms and legs and couldn't even grab a sheet of toilet paper to tear it. My brother and I, but mostly my mother, would help him bathe and use the restroom and such, but eventually it was too much and he collapsed. He would have been at the hospital earlier, but he had refused to go the whole time.
I mean, I'm talking he's laying on the ground unable to move after one of the subsequent falls, with the paramedics that my mom called in the room, and he's like, "I'm fine, it's nothing." So the paramedics help him up (he's like 6'1" or 6'2" and fairly large, not obese, but a large guy, so my mom can't lift him, she's petite) and he's just like, "Ok, go now, I'm fine." My mom tells the paramedics to take him and they're like, "he says he's fine, we can't take him if he says he's fine." So my mom forces the paramedics to stay until she can force my dad to say he's not fine, which takes a long time.
So the doctors took him, drilled a hole in his head, and took out a lot of blood. Over the next couple of months, he recovers so much that now he can walk short periods without a cane. He never used a cane before the stroke, but he started using one after. It's been difficult for my mom, my siblings and I to watch this very strong man be affected like this. It's kind of like seeing a lion get old. You can still see the majesty of the creature, and it really hits you.
I keep thinking of all the times as a kid that my dad was awesome, how much he sacrificed for us, how he always put us first. Like he'd wear leather shoes with holes on the bottom to his law office while he would send me to school in the Shaquille O'Neal shoes, the ones that were black and white circles, they cost like $100 or $200 I don't know. I didn't even want them, I wasn't into the NBA or anything, he'd just buy them for me so I could have the best, you know? So then I'd go to school wearing these funny shoes, thinking, "I look so bad," and then all my friends would be like, "Whoa! You have the Shacks!!!" Haha.
So it's weird because it comes and goes, like I'll be just having a normal day, and then boom, it hits me, the feels.
I had a job when I was younger where people would call in and let me know about their loved ones dying, and it usually went like this, "He/she had a fall, and was never the same after that, then died after." So in my mind I'm like, ok, never move my parents to a snowy place, that way they won't have falls, and we can decrease the risk of that happening.
But after what happened to my dad, I now see that he didn't fall. Something snapped in his brain, his body collapsed, and he suffered a strong impact, causing more damage on top of the snapping in the brain.
So then we can see that if we take care of ourselves, and if we're lucky enough not to be taken out by a moped in Vietnam or a taxi driver in the Philippines or a drunk teen in America, or cancer, for example, we're going to live to a certain age. At that point, we might take an actual fall and break ourselves. Then we lose our mobility and life becomes something very trying.
Or we avoid the car accidents and the cancer and the falls. If we make it that far, then at some point, our brain snaps and we fall anyways and take an impact and lose our mobility and life becomes something very trying.
There's no out.
There's no out, that's what's waiting for all of us. For those of us that make it that far. If you all have never been to a nursing home, they can be clean, but they also make me think of one of the layers of Dante's Inferno. People repeating things over and over, people with missing limbs from diabetes asking for more sugar, people sitting there with their necks at a crooked angle, staring at a wall.
That's what's waiting for every one of us, and that's IF you're "lucky" enough to make it that far.
So my family's really close, and this thing has brought us even closer together, but it also had the effect of shifting my priorities in life. I feel like before I didn't value my time as much. And now my focus is on making good memories.
I just want to say that I hope all of us, every one of us, makes some good memories before our bodies betray us, as they inevitable will. Memories with romantic conquests, with loved ones, with friends, etc.
And I don't know about making it past 70 or 80 anymore. I'm 36, and I now see myself as having 34 years left. Anything after that is a bonus, even though in reality, even tomorrow is not guaranteed. So now I see things more along the lines of, "what memories do I want to spend my time on making in the 34 years, max, that I have left."
My dad's awesome. He lived a full life, and right now he's also living a very good life, all things considered. My mom dotes on him and I drive out there frequently. He knows I'm moving abroad soon, in part to search for a wife, and he tells my mom, "Don't worry about yourself, I've spoken to Spaniard and he will be making children soon, so you'll have someone to take care of once I'm gone. Don't worry."
My mom's laughing about that whole conversation, "It's so convenient how your dad always makes sure I have something to do, he's so considerate."
It's hard. And it puts things in perspective.
But mostly it's just hard, haha.
That's the gist of it.