I’ve started this post four times. I don’t know what to say. I just want to say something, get something out, because I feel so sad and so frustrated and so lost. I never expected to lose my father so young - he was only 50, and everyone in my family lives to their 90s. He had a “completely routine” surgery to fix a congenital heart defect, but they didn’t sew up his aorta correctly, and he died two weeks after the initial surgery, one week after the emergency open heart surgery where they still didn’t find the problem. I’m angry with the doctors and angry with myself for not pushing harder when they didn’t find the cause of the problem. I feel like something has been stolen from my almost three-month-old son, who will never know his grandfather. My dad wanted so badly to be a grandpa, and we tried for four years without success. I found out I was pregnant with my son one month after my dad died.
I know there’s nothing anything can say to make this better. I know time heals all wounds. And in many ways, I know how lucky I was - my father was an incredible, amazing dad, and I have no regrets that we left something unsaid, because he never let me spend a moment of my life wondering if he loved me. I just don’t like crying in public (much like my dad), and I needed somewhere to share all of this.
This was my eulogy for him:
“My father was a family man. His definition of family was just a bit more expansive than most. In the military, as so many of you know, people move in and out of your life regularly. But dad - shy and diffident as he could be at first - dad could grab people and hold them close and make them family. He could never have married a woman who didn’t love my brother and I as unreservedly as he did, and so he gave us the gift of [my stepmom] and I know in the long years ahead of us I will only come to appreciate that more and more.
Because my dad was so young when I was born, I always assumed that I was a surprise. But when I was a teenager, I asked him, and he told me that he had always wanted kids and that my brother and I were very much planned and wanted. Looking at the photos all around the room, I know that my father never looked at us except with boundless love and devotion, and I will carry that with me for the rest of my life.”
That’s not a bad idea; my father was an amateur musician and at the wake we handed out a cd of some of his recordings.
Earlier, I watched the Dead Parrot sketch on YouTube with my son. It’s funny; that sketch was so much a part of my childhood that I think my first full sentence might have been “E’s pinin for the fjords”, but until now I’d never watched the real one. Why bother when my dad’s version was so great? (At the very leat, his English accent was better than Cleese’s :D)
well i am glad to hear more about him. i actually live with my father. we watch sports and play poker and he plays the guitar. i’m glad that i get to spend time with him.
A piece of me died that day. There will always be a empty void inside me. They say it gets easier with time. I’m not tearing up as often. It always hits at the most unexpected times.
Not much else to say. I still have my mom and am extremely grateful. Life goes on and I remind myself constantly to be thankful for the people still in my life.
It’s hard to imagine a world that doesn’t have him in it. He made everyone laugh constantly. When I had my son, it was my goal to get the nurses to laugh. I figured if he could make his nurses laugh in the ICU while recovering from his second open heart surgery in two weeks, I could do it while I was in labor.
He loved to get the laugh from my brother and I, especially when we were kids and starting to get into a grumpy mood. He would break out into a silly walk in the middle of a crowded store (thoroughly embarrassing us and completely cracking us up). He went to all of my brother’s games (and was usually the coach). He taught me how to ride a bike and how to play pool and how to drive and how to close one eyelid so you could pretend you were falling asleep when someone told a story. If I had to invent the perfect dad, it would just be him, all over again.
That was a beautiful OP. I’m glad the memories are good, and the family was tight. I also liked the part about loving the stepmom. I’ll bet she appreciates it too, because some stepkids wouldn’t be like that.
Now, you know how folks talk about “The Good Old Days?” B…aloney!
If we lived in 1936 I wouldn’t have a father with me still. He had a heart attack thirty years ago and is alive because of open heart surgery and angioplasty. I’m glad I’ve been allowed to have a wonderful father like him.
Unlike he himself. His own dad, my grandfather, died in 1936 because of heart trouble. So he lost his father when he was just a little kid.
Someday I’ll lose him too, but I’m glad to have had him for so long.
I’m sorry, iftheresaway. I just lost my dad a month ago. He was 73 and had a lot of health problems, but it happened very suddenly. We thought we would have more time with him, so it was quite a shock.
I’m angry because I wish he could have lived longer to see his granddaughter grow up, and I wish I could have said a proper goodbye. But I do like what Dr. Seuss has to say about these things: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
We are in the process of a suit. Still trying to figure out what actually happened.My stepmom is doing the first deposition in November; my brother and I will probably go after that some time. It is a long, slow process. After the first surgery, he was in the hospital for a week, then at home for a week. Everything seemed to be fine. Two weeks after the initial surgery, my stepmom woke up at midnight because my dad was breathing funny - he was having a seizure. She called 911 and he was rushed to the hospital and had an emergency open heart surgery. He had had a pericardial tamponade, but no one seemed to understand why - it’s not an uncommon occurrence after open heart surgery, but it almost always happens in the first couple of days. We kept asking why it had happened and how we would know it wouldn’t happen again, and never got a good answer other than that they couldn’t see a problem area when they had his chest open.
A week later, the day before he was set to be released after the second surgery, he collapsed in the bathroom around 4am, and they opened him up again but were never able to revive him. What I don’t understand - what kills me every time I think about it - is how my stepmom could get him to the hospital in time to save him a week earlier, but they couldn’t manage it when he was actually in the hospital, on a heart monitor, in a room 12 feet from the nurses station. When the lawyer got the records for us, we learned that it was 8 minutes before a nurse got to him, and over 20 before a doctor arrived.
I just feel like somehow I ended up in a parallel universe, and if I could open the right door, or go through the right wardrobe, or end up on platform nine and three-quarters, I’d be back in the real world watching my dad play with his grandson.
