Dad...

So, I lost both of my parents very young. You know my mom died when she was 48 years old and you know how. You know my dad died 5 years later. He was 53. But, I haven’t yet talked about how he died. Some of you might be assuming suicide since there were so many attempts and in a way, you might be right. However, suicide is not what is on his death certificate.

In August 2006, we took my dad back to the hospital. He was having suicidal thoughts again so we took him back for yet another 72 hr hold so that he could be assessed. A couple of days in, Dad calls and asks me to stop by earlier than normal so that I can sit in on his doctors appointment. This request wasn’t all that unusual. He had asked me to make arrangements to hear what the doctors had to say before. We usually talked about stuff like medication or tips to help stabilize him and once the psychiatrist tried to reprimand me for taking too much control – that my dad couldn’t learn to take care of himself unless I relinquished some of it (I usually laughed at him when he said that in total disbelief considering that all of this control was what was keeping him as stable as he could be at that point! They didn’t even have his meds stabilized and I was supposed to loosen my grip? Seriously!). I made it to the hospital prepared to have this battle yet again with his psychiatrist but when I got there, there was another doctor in the room. An oncologist explained that they didn’t like my dad’s blood work so they ran further tests and found it. Cancer. As if a bipolar father already completely dependent on you wasn’t enough. We now had a new diagnosis; non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

I retreated. From everyone. I pulled back my mental armies and tried desperately to regroup but for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find the strength to prepare for this new battle. My armor had holes in it and I had nothing left. Luckily, I am fortunate enough to have people in my life that wouldn’t let me retreat for very long. Jen called every day to talk to me about nothing and everything all at once and I eventually found my groove again. My husband did a lot of yelling to try and snap me out of it and I’m not really sure what worked but little by little I was able to find my voice again and I was yelling right back at him. I got my fight back and started coordinating appointments for his recovery and my world began to include chemotherapy and appointments about bone marrow transplants. And I don’t know how I would have got through it all without Linda and Steve - the 2 people that helped me out the most logistically with dr’s appointments and chemo and hospital visits. I could thank them every day for the rest of my life and I’m not sure it would ever be enough.

In the end though, having my fight back wasn’t good enough. It really wasn’t me that had to do the battle and my dad lost his fighting power the second my mother died. He just didn’t have it in him and only went along with it. He had his chemo because I told him to, blood transfusions because I said so, took his meds (both cancer ones and bipolar ones) because I sat there and made him do it and told me he wanted to live because he thought it was what I wanted to hear. It didn’t matter how hard I fought because he had already made his choice. Cancer was his suicide and less than a year later he was gone. Reunited with mom – the one person he just couldn’t live without.