Monday, May 21, 2007

Sadness, Weakness, and Feelings

I was talking about my dad yesterday with my sister, and I said "Well, you know how dad is." We stopped a second, looked at each other and I quietly added "was." Overall, I'm doing okay. I'm a strong person who can move on with my life even if I am hurting inside. Life will move on without me if I don't. So, I keep on living. I get up in the morning. I keep going. It doesn't make sense to do anything other than that. I don't shut down. Internally, maybe a little. But externally, if I don't tell you that I'm sad or hurting or whatever, you would probably never know. The "Oh, it's fine!" thing, again.

I don't open up to people easily. I don't like showing my weaknesses to people. I have gotten better; I mean, I now write these things down in a blog that other people actually read. But it's still not face to face. It's hard for me to express my feelings to people. Again though, I have come a LONG way in the past couple of years. At one point, it was hard for me to express ANY of my feelings out loud. Now, I just have trouble showing the part of me that isn't happy and optimistic to other people. I think I connect sadness with weakness. But that's not necessarily a weakness, being sad, is it?

Oh, and someone asked if my father's death was expected or unexpected. My dad had heart disease for as long as I can remember. He had several minor heart attacks throughout my childhood, but he was always fine immediately afterwards. But, as it is with heart disease, you are fine until you aren't. I got a phone call on Wednesday that he was in the hospital. I flew home on Friday. It was bad from the beginning, and I really just can't get into the details ... but he was without oxygen for about 20-30 minutes because they couldn't get his heart stabilized and beating regularly. So, there was brain damage but he was still alive. They could not stabilize him medically and Monday we decided to disconnect him from the respirator. 34 hours later he died, seemingly peaceful, from respiratory failure. It was the hardest thing I've had to do in my entire life, being there with him through all of that, through him dying. Okay, that was more details than I really wanted to give, but well .. there you go. In my opinion, he died on Tuesday, the doctors just intervened and kept him breathing and his heart beating for another week.


But really, I'm doing okay. I'm fine. I'm going back to Honduras on Friday. I cannot wait.

1 comment:

Honduras Sprout said...

Oh my! Thank you for explaining about your dad. I know it's not easy to talk or write about.

My daughter's father had heart disease and died of a heart attack at age 35 and his heart showed that he had been having many minor heart attacks previously. It is due to an inherited cholesterol thing where there is too much of a protein that causes cholesterol to stick to the arteries. Her grandfather has the same thing, but fortuately has gotten help and now has 4 stints in his heart and has his levels under control.

My daughter is 9 and has total cholesterol levels in the 260's and has a restricted diet because of it. This was just discovered last year so we hadn't been careful with her diet choices.

I don't know why I'm explaining all this?

Your situation I guess makes me realize why I have to be the food police with my daughter and will do what I can to help her live a long life so that she doesn't leave her children at a young age like your father...at least from heart disease.

God bless