The Sweetness of Life

There are some things that so easily serve to bring us joy in life, to make us remember that we are lucky to be wherever we are, to show us perspective if only we are willing to see it:

A ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds after a storm

The sound of shells tinkling that can only be heard in the stillness underneath the ocean

The sweet surprise on a newborn baby's face when his eyes focus on something for the first time

The taste of too-strong kool aid

The sound of a grandparent singing a made-up song to a grandchild

The sound of siblings laughing at something only they recognize as funny

The drop of one's stomach on that first downhill of a roller coaster

The sight of a loved one's face in a photograph

The sound of crickets on a summer night with no curfew

The tears of pride that come from witnessing your child show kindness to another person

The pride felt as the National Anthem is played during an Olympic medal ceremony

Hearing a song on the radio that holds special meaning

Seeing the color of a flower as it's just begun to bloom

Seeing a baby smile in his sleep

Smelling honeysuckle, wisteria, or hyacinths at the start of a new season

Opening a new book, full of anticipation for the words ahead, and

Closing it later with the swell of satisfaction from the read.

Mustering up the courage to set a goal, to try something different and new, 

With a parachute of surrounding support from friends and family.

Thoughts on The Boston Marathon

I grew up watching, reading, and listening to news about the Boston Marathon; as a runner and a fan of the competitive part of the sport for nearly 35 years, I've always loved following the stories from races for both the top contenders and the back-of-the-packers.  As a current back-of-the-packer myself, I know that every runner has a story, and, especially for big events like marathons, every finish impacts each participant in many different ways.  

The marathon is the apex of the sport for lots of runners, the quintessential goal, the quest of the most dedicated amongst us.  And the Boston Marathon, or "The Boston" or just "Boston," as it is typically called in the athletic world, is the pinnacle of all marathons.  It's the world's oldest ongoing marathon, with this being its 117th year, and it's probably the world's most well-known road-racing event.  Boston is always run on Patriots' Day, the third Monday in April, which, unlike the majority of other marathons in the U.S., means that it's always held on a Monday.  Because of the many hills along the course and the tendency for the temperatures to soar into the 80-degree range during the event, the race is considered to be one of the more challenging marathons in our country.  The Boston Marathon is the only marathon in the U.S. that has a qualifying time requirement for entry, based on the gender and age of each runner, with the general rules stating that a runner must have completed a "qualifying marathon" within an 18 month period prior to Boston.  As a result of the strict qualifying requirements and the difficulty factor, Boston Marathon runners are generally revered by all other runners, or at least by those of us who have been involved in the sport for awhile. 

A masterpiece about Dad's first Boston by my sister, Jennifer

Growing up, I remember hearing my dad talking about Boston as if it were the Holy Grail of running.  Even before he had run it the first time in 1979 at the age of 35, I remember him telling my sisters and me about the course, which runs through eight different towns and finishes on Copley Square in Boston.  In the months leading up to his Boston debut, I remember him worrying aloud about Heartbreak Hill, the most well-known challenge in the race, even after he'd run up and down the levee alongside the Mississippi River literally hundreds of times as part of the 100+ miles per week he ran for months before the race.  I remember my grandfather, my dad's dad, coming to stay with my sisters and me for a few days while my parents went to Boston that April, and I remember my mom calling us after the race to tell us how Dad had done (his finish time was 2:46:04).  I remember standing in the kitchen of our house with my sisters, cheering through the phone line for my dad and then chanting his finish place over and over, so many times that the number was forever lodged in my brain.  In fact, one day, during the time when my dad was sick, we were talking about the many races he had run over the years, and he was surprised when I told him that I still remembered what place he finished in at his first Boston:  1,196th, which put him in the top 15% of finishers that year.

There are around half a million spectators and usually between 20,000 and 25,000 runners at every Boston Marathon.  The Centennial Boston Marathon, held in 1996, which was my dad's second time to run it, set a record for the most entrants, at around 38,000 runners.  

I remember Dad talking excitedly after he'd gotten back from the race the first time about going to the Bill Rogers Running Store and meeting Bill Rodgers, who had won the marathon for the third time that year, setting a course record in the process.  Dad commented that he especially admired the guy, "Boston Billy" as he was called, because of his modesty and his friendliness, which, ironically, were also two of Dad's strongest qualities.  The women's division was won that year by Joan Benoit, then 21 years old, who, with a time of 2:35, bettered the previously set record for women's finish time by 8 minutes. 

Joan, or "Joanie" as she was called, won Boston again in 1983, this time finishing in 2:22, breaking the women's world record by two minutes, and then she followed up by taking the gold medal in the Olympic marathon in L.A. in 1984, the year the women's marathon was established as an Olympic event.  She, incidentally, still holds the record for the American woman with the fastest finish in both the Olympic marathon and in the Chicago Marathon.  Yesterday, Joan ran Boston again to celebrate the 30th anniversary of her most recent Boston win, as did the men's winner from '83, Greg Meyer, who was in fact the last American to have won the race.  Joan, now age 55, was quoted as saying before the race that she planned to "go out fast," aiming to finish within 30 minutes of her winning time from 30 years ago, a goal that my dad would have absolutely loved hearing about - and one that she achieved with a finish time of 2:50.

To Joanie, from my dad and me: you're still a total badass!

Countless people - even those who have never even cared at all about the Boston Marathon before yesterday - watched the replays and read the recounts of the tragedy that unfolded after the bombings, the vast majority of people whom, I would venture to guess, realized that they could not even imagine the chaos and the terror than ensued on the race course and around the city, nor could they really comprehend the emotions  about the losses suffered by the runners and spectators of so many things: life, safety, trust, faith, and even reward for such dedication and effort on the part of the thousands of runners who trained extensively for the race over the course of the last six months or more.  

"To be a consistent winner means preparing not just one day, one month, or even one year - but for a lifetime." ~Bill Rodgers, 1979

"To be a consistent winner means preparing not just one day, one month,

or even one year - but for a lifetime." ~Bill Rodgers, 1979

My brother Lee has qualified for Boston twice and has run it once; he shares in the family's fascination with the marathon's history and with each year's competitive field.  No one in my family was at the Boston Marathon this year; however, on some level, we can imagine the turmoil experienced by those who were there yesterday because of tragic events that have affected us at other races in years past, which is a different story in its own right.  Like everyone else, my family feels so sad for everyone affected by the bombing; there is no understanding the evil that drives such madness.  The term Heartbreak Hill has a whole new meaning for all of the runners there yesterday and for those of us whose hearts go out to those injured and otherwise affected by the malevolence of those responsible.

In memory of Martin Richard 

Happiness and Perspective

I heard a line from the AMC TV show "Mad Men" quoted the other day on the radio.  The commentators were discussing the topic of materialism and how they feel it has affected our children's generation as a whole.  On the TV show, which is about an advertising agency in NYC, the agency's Creative Director Don Draper is disturbed by his observations of the actions of people whom he feels were motivated by their greed for money and success.  Don starts to reconsider his own definition of happiness and in the process comes up with the line from the episode that was being quoted on the radio:  

"What is happiness? It's a moment before you need more happiness."

lippsisters.com

That quote got me started thinking about the way so many of us set up happiness to be something that isn't really obtainable - or at least that isn't sustainable.  Maybe that's what makes some people feel like rats running on a wheel, as if they are "caught up in the Rat Race," always chasing after one more thing instead of taking the time to appreciate what is already in their possession or what has already been achieved.  

Something I've learned over the last couple of years is that happiness is a feeling that is often easy to attain in the moment but difficult to maintain over time.  Happy moments can be both big and small; happiness can come when its arrival has been anticipated, or it can come by unexpectedly, as a welcome surprise.  For most people, happiness is transient; it ebbs and flows depending on so many other factors.  The way one feels going into a situation or even at the start of the day does not necessarily determine the way one feels at the end; in the same way that you can start off on a run feeling great and end up limping home, you can wake up happy and end the day feeling miserable.  Happiness is unpredictable and oftentimes completely out of our control, which is exactly what makes it a defective goal.  In many cases, it's nothing more than perspective.  

It also strikes me that happiness isn't something that translates into goodness; a bank robber or even a serial killer can feel happy with what they have done.  A life can be full of happy moments but be lacking in meaning and impact, yet another reason that in my opinion happiness isn't a suitable goal.

Another lesson that I have gotten from life over the past couple of years is that during those times when happiness is in my grasp, when I am fortunate enough to be in the midst of joy, pleasure, or contentment, I need to breathe it in, to savor it and to remember it, because life is nothing if not uncertain, and we need all the reserves we can get.  

Happiness

Sometimes happiness is really just as simple as making a choice to appreciate and be grateful for what one has, instead of thinking about would have/could have/should have been, instead of worrying, instead of comparing what one has to what someone else has, and instead of wishing for something more or something different.  To me, it seems that happiness comes much more from perspective than from reality.

"Happiness is in the heart, not in the circumstances." ~Anonymous

One of the things that has brought me the most meaning in my life has been motherhood.  It has also brought me considerable happiness, even though not every moment of every day is filled with sunshine and singing.  In the words of an extended family member of mine, "Mothering is the hardest and the best thing that you will ever do."  I'm sure this extends to fathering, too.  Parenting is difficult, but it's an investment, a legacy that will continue far longer than the days we have left on this earth.


When I think back on some of the biggest moments of my life - graduations, weddings, vacations, things like that - so much of what happened then is a blur, and I don't think that the only thing that plays a factor in that is my increasing age and decreasing capacity for remembering things.  I wonder if I was present enough in those moments; I wonder if I took the time during those events to breathe in the happiness and the joy that I was experiencing.  If I did, maybe I should have done even more of that, enough to make more of what I felt in those moments carry over to my memory. If I didn't, I am regretful that I might have been thinking more about things that I perceived as being not just right, or about things that were bothering me or stressing me out in the moment, or about what came before or what was to come afterwards.  In either case, one thing I have learned is that sometimes all I can do is try to learn from the past - and try to do better in the future.

I thought about happiness and memories and perspective a lot during my sister Nancy's labor and delivery a couple of weeks ago.  "Remember this," I said to her several times during those hours before and just after she became a mother: "Remember this; be sure to remember this."  I hope she remembers it all -  and I know I will, because it was nothing short of wondrous.   As the newest member of our family was born, everyone in the room knew what happiness was: it's being together with the people you love, it's the warmth that comes from working together for a common goal, it's the promise of good.

"Remember this."//

As Lao Tzu said, "Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.  When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."

World Autism Awareness Day

There are many people who played a role in my career choice many years ago, and I regularly think about the fact that I am so lucky to have found a profession that is fulfilling, challenging, and rewarding on a daily basis.

Once I decided on and then entered the Occupational Therapy program at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, though, there were still several different career paths within the field of O.T. that I could choose, based on various demographics of the patients with whom I would be working in the future - from very young to very old, by diagnostic grouping like "hand therapy" or "neuro rehab," and/or in different treatment settings such as an inpatient hospital or a school system.  In fact, the diversity of the options within my chosen field was one of the main things that drew me into Occupational Therapy initially.

During my final year as an O.T. student, I landed a part-time job working for my favorite professor, the woman who taught the pediatric-focused courses in our program.  Some of the work I did was data input, mainly typing the treatment notes that she had recorded on a mini-tape recorder and entering appointments into her schedule on a brand-new Mac Classic computer that seemed so high-tech and cool to me at the time.  I liked that work; it allowed me to learn a lot about computers and my teacher's clinical practice from the sidelines.  A second part of my job was to go to the medical library and research topics about which my instructor needed more information; through this, I learned to love research and to how to be organized in my approach to finding out what scientific studies and data said about a particular subject.

There was one more part of my job, though, and it was the part that I thought was the best: going with my instructor to clinical visits.  I primarily served as a hauler/transporter/equipment cleaner at the treatment sites, but, rather than feeling like a grunt who was limited to schlepping and scrubbing, I felt like I was a sponge, soaking up knowledge and inspiration from all around me.  Two of the children in particular who were being treated by my teacher that year ended up influencing my decision to set a goal of practicing in the field of pediatrics as an O.T.; after getting to know each of them, I was certain that my future was in working with the younger population.  

One of these kids was a boy named Johnny who had cerebral palsy that affected all four of his limbs, his trunk, and his speech.  A couple of month after I'd met him, my instructor had me sit with him while she left the room to take a phone call.  I had to focus and listen closely to make out what he was saying as he chatted away about his love of the Cardinals, St. Louis's major league baseball team.  After a couple of minutes of that, he abruptly changed the subject by asking, "What does it mean to be handicapped?"  His question took me off-guard; I spent several seconds trying to think of the best way to respond.  He beat me to the punch, though, blurting out the answer to his own question before I could say anything: "Oh, I know: it means you have to work harder to do things,"  and then he went back to talking about baseball.  I thought his answer was perfect, and I knew at the time that I would never forget this exceptional child or his profound words.

The second child was a girl named Casey who was at a different facility than Johnny.  Casey was a six year-old girl who had been diagnosed with autism.  She was verbal but had many social and other challenges that affected her ability to interact with the world in what is considered to be a "typical" manner.  Casey wasn't as touchy-feely as Johnny was; in fact, she didn't like to be touched at all, but I still found her to be very lovable and sweet.  She had some "quirks" - some habits and patterns of behavior that I found to be both interesting and endearing during the year that I knew her; one of these idiosyncrasies was that she coped with stress by pretending that she was interacting with a cat that she kept in her pocket.  Cleverly, I thought, she used this as a way to divert attention to something other than herself whenever she felt like she was being put on the spot; instead of answering a question or completing a task that she didn't feel like doing, she often emulated taking the cat out of her pocket and petting and talking to it.  

I was fascinated by this tactic; I thought the fact that she had devised such a creative strategy for gerrymandering was brilliant in many ways.  Some of the people who worked with Casey scolded her for talking about or to her pretend cat; I, in my squeaky-clean lab coat and with my very limited knowledge base and experience in the clinical world, tried to find out more about her and her world by playing with her and by asking her about the imaginary creature.  In turn, she often made better eye contact with me, and she talked and talked about things that were on her mind, all while pantomiming holding and/or petting the make-believe cat.  

Not long after my job working with Casey ended, I decided to get a kitten, and, as I looked through the want ads in the newspaper, I knew already that I wanted to name this cat Casey, after the child that first drew me into the world of autism, a condition about which I was sure I wanted to learn much, much more.  I ended up getting a male cat instead of the female I had envisioned, but I still went with the name Casey for the first pet I had as an adult, the cat that was with me as I graduated from college, found my first job, moved into my first apartment, met and later married my now-husband, and had both of my children.  

Like Johnny and his words of wisdom, I will never forget the girl named Casey, the child who drew me into one of the main fields of interest in my profession.  Today, on World Autism Awareness Day, and on many other days, I will think of her and the cat in her pocket and hope that she is somewhere doing something she enjoys.

Preparedness

I have a confession to make, one that may surprise people who really know me, especially those who are aware of my love of having things organized and my love for preparedness and for planning.

I am not fully prepared for death or catastrophic accident.  

I don't mean emotionally, or spiritually, ... those are entirely different conversations ... what I am referring to now, though, is legally.

Here's what I think legal preparedness looks like:

*Researching and discussing various life and death and related financial issues so that legal paperwork including a will and a living will have been prepared to detail health care decisions, transfer financial assets, and to put thoughts and arrangements into writing. 

*Having had this paperwork reviewed and finalized by an attorney who also provides advice on issues such as creating a trust and custody of minor children.

*Having organized all of the above as well as information on assets (bank account numbers, documentation of property ownership, etc.), insurance policies, and contact information for key people and having informed several key people that such an in-case-of-emergency file exists and where it can be located. 

One of the many things I learned first-hand from going through the experiences that came as a result of my dad's illness and death is the need for legal preparedness.  While my dad wasn't young, per se, he wasn't nearly old enough to think that there was an urgent need for him to be fully prepared from a legal standpoint for his death or for an illness so devastating that he would be left unable to finish preparing.  He, like all of us, thought that there was still time left to do things like that.

There are other things in life that are different versions of preparedness, things you hear that you should do "just in case" but that you put off for one reason or another.  Sometimes that turns out ok, like if you don't buy the extended warranty on a new refrigerator and either it doesn't break or it does and the repair costs aren't too bad, but here's the truth about end-of-life legal decisions and planning: at some point, it will matter if you haven't gotten your affairs in order.  Unlike other things that can technically be put off forever, this is one thing that will cause great problems if it's left undone.

There are odd terms for doing this kind of thing, really: getting your affairs in order,  making final arrangements, pre-planning (isn't all planning "pre-planning"?).  But it is perhaps one of the most important tasks you can accomplish as an adult, if not for your sake (in case you go on ahead right away instead of hanging in the balance for awhile like my dad did), then for that of those you will leave behind.

People talk about their Bucket List items, things they want accomplish before they die.  But what about what they NEED to get done?  I didn't realize the complexity of what needs to be prepared before I was one of the people needing access to that information for my dad, and I hadn't really considered the implications that could ensue if that type of information wasn't organized and at-the-ready.  It's difficult enough, I'm sure, to pull those documents out and to go through them to see what needs to be done when a death has occurred suddenly and/or unexpectedly.  What we didn't know before, what we couldn't have know until we had experienced it ourselves, was just how tough it was to put all of that together while we were caring for my dad and trying to cope with our own grief during the ten weeks he was so sick.  Not only did we need access to the information that would normally be needed in case of a death, but we also needed to know about other things on Dad's behalf during his illness like long-term disability coverage, health care insurance benefits (Medicare and private insurance), and long-term care insurance.  It took a lot of time and effort from all of us to gather that information and to decipher what needed to be done to make any of it available for Dad's care.  It's something that I'm sure my dad wouldn't have left undone had he been aware of the implications of not being complete in organizing the necessary information.

Now that I've experienced the difficulty of it first-hand during his illness, I KNOW better.  Still, for a variety of reasons (excuses?), I am not prepared, but I have set a goal to get my things in order; I've started the process, and hopefully I can finish it in the next month or two.

It's a depressing and tedious and stressful thing to do; that's for sure.  Nobody likes thinking about the type of what-if's that are involved in this process, but I can only imagine what a gift it would be to have it all together, should a crisis occur.

Here are some resources, in case you aren't complete in your preparedness either:

A website with info about attorney Alexis Martin Neely's book "Wear Clean Underwear" - a great resource about legal planning, especially for parents (Here's a shout-out to my sister JB for finding this one!)

"Getting Your Affairs In Order," - a free Penn State reference guide

Online info from WebMD - "Putting Your Affairs In Order Before Death

Run The Mile You're In

When I was training to run my first half-marathon many years ago, I asked my dad if he would run ten miles with me so I could work on pacing before the race.  He agreed, and so my husband, my daughters, and I went for a weekend visit to the town where my parents lived.

On the morning after we got there, my brother-in-law drove Dad and me out into the country and dropped us off ten miles out of town so that we could run mostly farm roads with limited traffic, a course that Dad had run many times before.

I remember I was wearing a running shirt that said "Run the mile you're in." After we got out of the car and started on the run, Dad looked at my shirt and said, "I don't get it - what else would you do?"  That turned into a Who's On First-type of conversation that lasted for over a mile: "I think it's referring to how people should be happy with what they have," I explained, and Dad replied, "Why wouldn't somebody do that?"  "You know, Dad - some people aren't grateful for what they have; they always think that the grass is greener somewhere else or that somebody else is luckier than they are," I told him, to which he responded, "I just don't get that.  I mean, if you think you're lucky, then you are!"

And that's where the quote that has carried me through the time since Dad was diagnosed, two years ago this week, and up to this point, came from.  

Growing up, I knew that I was lucky, but not nearly to the degree that I knew it as an adult.  And these days, I'm finding it more and more bothersome that the more I look around, the more it seems that the feeling of gratitude is becoming a rarity in people in general.  It almost shocks me when I hear a person talking about how good they have it, how much they love their job, how grateful they are for things they have and for the opportunities they have been given.  People much more often seem to want more ... more money, more stuff, more power, more whatever ... and one thing I've learned over the past two years is this: none of us knows when the buzzer at the end of our game is going to go off, and, if we live with gratitude in our hearts instead of always wanting more, we are much more likely to feel fulfilled, not only at the end of the road, but all along the way as well.  A big part of living the lives we are meant to live comes from making the choice to see our lives as complete, to be happy, and not to dwell on the sadness that is bound to befall us at some point in our lives.

As a parent, I know what I want for my children when they grow up: happiness.  And I'm sure my dad's parents wanted the same for him, and my parents for me.  And really, happiness is nothing but a choice.  It's one that my dad made every day, whether he was doing something he truly loved, doing something out of necessity, or just having an average kind of day.  That's something I have really thought about a lot since he went on ahead, and that's where the irony comes in:  I know what he wanted for me was for me to be happy, and I know that's what I should make the choice to do, as part of how I want to honor him.  But, at the same time, I sometimes see being happy without him as too lofty of a goal, and other times I see it as even disrespectful, as if I am over him, or as disingenuous, as if this loss didn't change who I am to my very core.  The paradox comes from the fact that I know it's what he would want for me, and yet it's his absence that makes it so very challenging.  For me, at this point, realizing that I'm lucky - running the mile I'm in - isn't the same as feeling complete.  

"Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out."

~Oliver Wendell Holmes 

The Truth about Childhood Cancer

September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and I'd like to share some information about a project about which I have recently learned in regards to childhood cancer.

This project, called The Truth 365, is a ground-breaking, grass-roots documentary film and social media campaign that has set a goal to give a voice to all children fighting cancer and those who care about them.  They want to make all of us aware of the things that need to be done in battling pediatric cancer and to spotlight the state of childhood cancer research funding by uniting the childhood cancer community, government officials, top pediatric oncologists, and several of the country's most influential celebrities. 

This is an important effort, and here's why:  The Truth is that childhood cancer research is vastly underfunded, and the funding that's needed needs to become a priority for all of us, right now, because childhood cancer is the #1 cause of disease-related death in children under the age of 14, killing more than asthma, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and pediatric AIDS combined. In the United States alone, 13,500 children are diagnosed with cancer every year, which translates to 46 children and their families getting a cancer diagnosis every single day, 365 days a year.  And although one out of every five of these children who are diagnosed with cancer will die, those who survive are often left with life-changing side effects from the cancer and the treatment that was used, which is often based on research done on adults with cancer instead of on children. The Truth is that the incidence of invasive pediatric cancers is up 29% in the past 20 years, and yet only $20,000 is invested in cancer research for every $595,000 invested in pediatric AIDS research.  Of the National Cancer Institute's budget of $4.6 billion, breast cancer received 12%, prostate cancer received 7%, and all 12 major groups of pediatric cancer combined received less than 4%.

The Truth is that this isn't right - and that it's not acceptable just to look away, as if these statistics don't affect every one of us, because they do.  To learn more, check out the Facebook page for this campaign and the group's website  to find out what's going on in their efforts, and stay tuned for the launch of their film which is due out on September 13.  

One Telephone Pole At A Time

The year I turned 35, I decided to run my first marathon.  Dad thought it was a lofty goal for me to set for myself because he knew I didn’t have time to put in anywhere near the kind of high mileage that he used to when he was marathon training.

But he was supportive as always anyway, prodding me with weekly emails and phone calls to get out there and get the mileage in.  Prior to that time, the furthest distance I’d ever covered in one run was 9 miles.  I was nervous about breaking through to the double-digits of distance when it came time for the ten-miler in my training program, and so Dad said that if my husband, my kids, and I wanted to come and stay with he and my mom for the weekend, he would go the distance with me. 

On the morning of the run, my husband drove Dad and me ten miles away from my parents’ house and dropped us off on a country road.  Dad and I started off on the run talking about work and family and running and whatever other topics popped into our heads, and after awhile we lapsed into comfortable silence like we had done on so many runs together while I was growing up.  Every so often, Dad, ever the Pace-Master, offered me encouragement to “keep up the pace” or to try to go "half a step faster" as we went along.  One of Dad’s running mantras was “If you practice slow, you’ll race slow,” yet another of his pieces of Running Advice for the Road, as I began to call it in my mind. 

At one point on our run that day, he told me to keep running and he would catch back up to me in a few minutes, and then he ducked behind an old, abandoned barn to go to the bathroom.  Even with his pit stop, he closed in on me quickly, and we were soon running step for step again as we continued our dual effort on the road.  Over the last couple of miles, my body and my mind were wearing thin, and I told him I didn’t know if I could make it the rest of the way.  “Just concentrate on making it past one telephone pole at a time, and eventually you will get there,” he advised.  "It won't seem so bad if you just divide it up."  And so that's what I did until we made it back to my parents' house, and, with that, I had broken into the double-digits of distance.

These days, I pick up my phone to call or text Dad several times in the course of a week before Reality hits me.  Damn.  Again.  The tears that spring to my eyes are always followed by an emotion, like loneliness, despair, or fury at the injustice of it all.  I sometimes start to spiral into thinking about how much I miss him, what he would say to me at that moment in time, or even who I am as a person without him in my life now.

But, after so many times of this happening over the months since Dad went on ahead, I’ve figured out how to get through it, thanks to the strength, inspiration, support, perspective, and advice I was lucky enough to get from him over the years:  by just concentrating on making it past one telephone pole at a time, hoping it won't seem so bad if I just divide it up. 

Getting The Last Word In

 

Although my family and I will always remember so much of what happened during the time between October and January, I don’t want the focus of our memories to be from when Dad was sick.  He was so full of energy, humor, and adventure.  He always felt lucky and had such a positive outlook, and even though we miss him so much, we should try to follow his example, even and maybe especially when the going gets tough. 

The last night before Dad came home, my sister Jennifer and I spent the night with him in his hospital room.  It was very late, and he told us he was tired and was ready to go to sleep.  He said, “Night, night,” and we both responded by telling him good night.   Then he said, “OK, good night” and we said good night.  This went on for several exchanges until finally I said goodnight and he said “Shhhh! Quit saying that!” and we figured out that he wanted to get the last word in. 

 

So to give Dad the last word since he can’t be here to comment, here are five things I know he would want to say:

*Always try your best to laugh, especially at yourself.

*Don’t waste time thinking too much about something or worrying when you can just do it – set a goal and give it your full effort, or, as Dad liked to say, “Hit it!”

*Find something that you love to do and share it with others.

*When you make a commitment, stick to it.

*Live life to the fullest – don’t wait to do the things that are on your Bucket List – spend as much time as you can with people you love and doing the things you love.


Thanks, Dad, for the late-night talks, the laughs, the lessons, the support, the love, and the perspective.