Wishes

It's all happening.  Just the way we'd hoped.  My husband got the transfer he'd been working for.  We have dates and plans now.  Decisions need to be made.  More than anything I want to pick up the phone and call my dad.  I want him to give me his perspective, his ideas, his assurance that it's all going to work out.  He had a way of doing that.  Making anything seem possible.

We were going to be so close to his farm.  That was the plan you know.   To be on his route from his home to his farm.  Then when he retired to the farm we'd be close.  It's turning out like we planned but he isn't here to see it and enjoy it.  I have lived far from "home" most of my adult life.  My children never knew him as well as I wanted them to.  Now they will never get to know him better. 

While making plans and penciling in these dates on my calendar, I see it there.  His name and his birthday in big puffy letters.  He would have been 60 this year.  Just when I think I've got a handle on things, something will smack me upside the head, and I'm a blubbering mess again. It would make my dad crazy.  He didn't like for me to cry.  I try to suck it up but the tears just won't stop.  People tell me someday it won't be so hard.  For now I think of him daily, and hope I'm making him proud.

Slowly

The pills are helping mostly.  The dose the doc started me at was not sufficient to get me to sleep through the night.  It seems 2 pills does the job though.  I go to see the doc again next week.  We'll see what he has to say.  I'm hoping recent revelations will help my sleep.  I found out that my fathers second wife will likely be the sole beneficiary of my fathers estate.  I've feared this would be the case for years.  Their divorce was not finalized.  So she is technically still his wife.  She gets it all.  My dad would be so angry about this.  It's not what he would have wanted at all.  She didn't want to be his wife before he died but now that he's gone she wants makes sure to point out that BY LAW she was still married to him.  *SIGH*

I don't like it but strangely I seem to have found some peace.  There is no reason to fight now.  There is no impending battle to prepare for.  It is what it is.  My brother said she told him she'd make sure they'd get some of it.  Not sure if I'm included in that "THEY" or not.  I'm hoping she will do what's right but I'm not going to get my hopes up.  She has never liked me.  Never treated me as her own.  Why would she now? 

On the upside.  I know my father loved me.  I know he wanted me to be equal with my siblings.  To him we were not "half brothers and sisters".  I couldn't agree more.  My relationships with my siblings remains intact and strong.  I hope she can say the same when all the dust settles.

Bound by love

Writing about my dad's death is helping.  It's a place to release some of the confusion and  turmoil in my head.  I'm glad Blogger didn't delete my account.  :)

Last night I had a lovely conversation with the woman who sat by my dad's bedside while he was hospitalized.  We spoken over the phone before but finally met at his funeral.  This loss has bound us together.  Together we can share the grief and comfort one another.  It's an interesting place to find myself in.  My father had thrust us upon each other when I was asking about his meeting with the doctor.  He couldn't remember what the doctor had called his condition and needed her to repeat it to me.   I found her easy to talk to and very concerned and involved in my dad's care.  She was a lifeline to him when he was too sick to talk or when he was having surgery.  She kept me in the loop when he was sick, and I kept her in the loop when he died.  I find that I have shared more with her in the short time we've known each other than I would have ever imagined.

Last night she lifted my spirits by telling me he had spoken of me often and that he was indeed proud of the woman I had become.  I needed to hear that. 

Ebb and flow

We're back from burying my fathers ashes.  Instead of the heart wrenching sobs I was filled with silent tears and the realization that this is now so final.  Once again we were surrounded by those that loved him too.  (I'm not angry with these people.  They lived too far away to visit my dad in the hospital.) I had lots of hugs from those that I barely know.  Yet standing on the hill that will be my fathers final resting place I felt alone.    People talked of how he would love this place, near his father's grave, out in the country.  I didn't feel that way.  I felt like it was a cold place, lonely and silent.  Far from the bustling world.   A far cry from the kind of guy my dad was in life.

When my grandmother died I felt terrible pain.  My fathers death is different.  The pain is more intense.  I feel changed.  I can't quite put my finger on it but I am no longer the OGO I was before.  I often feel lost, I have trouble making decisions and I'm having trouble remembering things.  Thoughts of him invade my mind all day and all night.   I'm told it's part of my grief.  I hope it is because if it isn't I'm losing my mind.

Now we move on to divvying up my dad's worldly goods.  It makes me so uncomfortable.  He was so much more than the sum of his assets and yet that's what we've come to now.  I am trying to look at it as his last effort to take care of his children.  As if the situation wasn't icky enough I have to deal with his would be ex-wife.  Our relationship before this was strained and so far communication has been minimal.  This isn't helping. I'd like this step to get over with quickly so I never have to deal with her again.

The anger is slowly receding.  It's not gone but it isn't raging anymore.  Time marches on.

Ripping off the scab.

Just when I'm slipping into the regular routine.  It's time to put my father in his final resting place.  He didn't want to be buried in the place he died.  So we are putting him to rest where he wanted this weekend.  I'm afraid it's going to rip me up again but I HAVE to be there.  I would never forgive myself if I didn't go.  So it's a road trip for my family this weekend.  I hope your plans are more fun.

Anger

I have felt so angry since we got home.  I want the whole family to feel the pain I'm feeling and yet they don't.  They can't.  I know that in my head but my heart doesn't listen.  I'm angry because they go on living their lives, and going about their business.  I want them to feel what I do.  I want them to feel the loss the way I do.  I want everything to STOP for them too.

I'm angry because my dad could have been divorced before he died.  Something about the wording made him decide not to sign.  So now the woman who no longer wanted to be his wife is handling his business.  This woman has made me feel left out my whole life.  Now she's taking care of my dad's estate.  (Something he would be very unhappy about.)  I wonder if she will play nice and include me or if once again she'll treat me as the outsider.  My siblings say they will make sure it happens but they don't speak their mind when she is in the room.  It remains to be seen.

I'm angry because we had been making plans.  We were hoping to move to Tulsa.  It would have been an easy stop on his way from his home to his farm.  I was gonna have him over for Thanksgiving and Christmas when we got there.  We were going to be close enough to go to his farm and he was going to teach my boy to drive a tractor.  He was going to retire to the farm.  The place that made him the happiest.  I was going to be close enough to help care for him.  Not anymore. 

I'm angry because I will no longer get to talk to him on the phone.  Seeing his number come up on caller id would put an instant smile on his face.  In an instant I was daddy's little girl.  Since his hospitalization we talked daily.  I want so much to call him and tell him that we are getting closer to our Tulsa goal.  I can't.  I can't bear to take his number out of my phone, address book or calendar.  It would be like he didn't ever exist. 

I'm angry because at his funeral there wasn't enough room to hold all the people.  People were filling the sanctuary, the basement, the stairs and spilling outside.  It was touching, but where were all these people when he was laying in the hospital?  Why didn't they visit? 

I'm angry because I had planned to care for him when he got out.  I didn't go earlier because we couldn't afford for me to make two trips out.  Instead all four of us went out to watch him die.

I feel like a fraud.  People tell me how sweet and nice I am.  How much "grace" I exhibit when dealing with our family "situation".  I'm not nice.  I'm seething.  I want to scream at people and let them know how I feel.  If they only knew.

He's gone.

My dad is dead.  He'd checked into the hospital in the beginning of November.  One thing after another.  He died about a week before Christmas.  I'm heart broken.

After 30 minutes of resuscitation efforts they put him on life support.  He stayed that way till I was able to get there.  12 hours of airports, flights, and lay overs.  He looked so different laying in that bed.  My superman dad looked frail.  His hair was now white. .  After spending 7 weeks in the hospital barely able to walk his muscle tone was gone.  He still had blood on his hand and some in his hairline, presumably from his fall early the previous morning.  His chest was rising and falling as the machine breathed for him.  This was not supposed to be.  I had just talked to him..  He sounded terrific.  He sounded like my dad again.  Strong and determined.  It had been a long battle to get to this point, that's why this was so unbelievable.  Why had he been up in the wee hours of the morning?  Why wasn't there someone to help him?  Would he have got up on his own?  He knew better.

We had plans.  We were trying to move closer.  So that his trips to his farm could have a lay over at my home.  He was going to teach my son to drive a tractor.   He was going to let my daughter learn to drive in the open spaces of his farm.  We were gonna have family dinners together at my house.  Gonna gonna gonna.  Not anymore.  His divorce was nearly final.  Matter of fact had he signed the papers on Thursday before he died it would have been done.  Something kept him from it.  He had plans to do the things he'd been putting off.  Motorcycle trips and retiring to his farm.  Gonna gonna gonna.  Not anymore.

I held his hand.  I ignored all the beeping and whirring of the machines.  I sobbed.  Soul shaking sobs.  Somewhere from deep within me.  His hands looked so old.  Not like the hands I had rubbed ointment into the year before.  The nails were longer.  His once deep dark skin was so pale.  I rubbed and rubbed at the dried blood on his hand.  It wouldn't come off.  I begged him to come back to me.  I ordered him to come back to me.  I chastised him for taking this hoax on for far to long.  Nothing worked.  Then.  I felt his fingers move.  It was more like a twitch.  My heart leapt!  Could it be?  Was he hearing me?  Was he coming back?  NO.  The nurse came in to attend to all the beeping the pulse ox thing was making.  They had put him on 100% oxygen and yet the pulse ox was able to detect it anymore.  He was fading.

My dad died in the early morning hours of December 18th.  I have this gaping suck hole of pain in my heart.  I can't see it going away anytime soon.  He's gone.  He's really gone.