Today may not have been the best day to start being grateful but I think I did okay.
Two years ago today, my Dad died. My mom died about 16 months before he did – yeah, that sucked – and it was the first time in his life he was alone. He had been sick on and off for a lot of years; he almost died in 1999 from a heart attack when he went into congestive heart failure and needed a quadruple bypass. He had almost gotten hit by a car that sped into the front of their house in March of 2011. He came close again in late 2011 after heart surgery had left him with an irregular heart beat that had him on 24 hour bedside observation. And there was dialysis, too, for about four or five years before his death and with it came numerous procedures to keep his fistula open for the dialysis needles. (BTW – diabetes is a horrible disease and if it wasn’t for that, I probably would still have my Dad so SUCK IT diabetes!) And then my mom died – kidney cancer undiagnosed until 19 days before she died. And then his best friend died. The man that was basically his brother, who he had grown up with in Brooklyn and who he had followed to Jersey when I was a baby. Jack and my Dad were inseperable; they talked on the phone every single day, Jack took my Dad to appointments and vice versa when one of them couldn’t drive, when Jack had a stroke at home he scribbled out on a piece of paper “call Angelo” instead of “call 911” like most people would do. His death crushed my Dad, and I think it just finished him. He hated being alone and without my mom and his best friend, I think he really felt alone in the world. My sister and I, my daughter, the rest of our family wasn’t enough for him to fight for. So when things weren’t going well during his last hospitalization, I think he just gave up.
There is this part of me that is so very angry with him for giving up. Why weren’t we enough?? Why didn’t he want to be here to see my daughter go to ‘real’ school? Why didn’t he want to be here to see us buy a house?? But it wasn’t about us, and I have to force myself to remember that. It was about him. He didn’t want to be poked and prodded anymore, he didn’t want more doctors, more medicines, more surgeries. He wanted to rest and he wanted to see his family again that had gone before him. So I think that’s where he is now, in heaven and hopefully he is off playing bocce with his best friend today, the anniversary of his joining the heavenly ranks. Playing bocce, drinking a cold beer (or a nice chianti), and laughing. That is what I wish for him today.
I am trying today to focus on the fact that I was lucky enough to call him my Dad. There were people that, when they learned who my father was, were impressed – wow, they would say, THAT’S your father??? Yes, yes it was. He was a good man who always helped whenever anyone needed it. He went to the church at 9:00 at night to lock doors, he went there at 6am to unlock them. He organized clothing drives for unwed mothers and pancake breakfasts to raise money for the school that he already supported with our tuition. He picked me up from the side of the road when my car died in the middle of the night, he lent me his car so I could get to school. He organized the lunch for my daughter’s baptism, he helped me buy every single car I have ever owned. He loaned my sister money so she could buy her first house and when her marriage fell apart, he offer to help her pay her mortgage until she could get back on her feet. He bailed my brother out of jail more times then I could count and Lord knows how many tickets of his my Dad paid. And I was so very lucky to have him. I am grateful that I had as many years with him as I did; he really should have died back in 1999, and then again in 2011, but he didn’t. He hung on until he just couldn’t anymore. And for that, I am grateful.
I recently read something on Instagram that said “Life can be awful. And then it isn’t. Life can be awful again. And then it isn’t. And in between the awful it can be amazing and beautiful. And then it can be awful again”. Life is cyclical; in order for there to be good times, there must be bad. Today, I must remember that although right now may be ‘awful’, amazing is just around the bend.
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