Skip to main content

April 13th

Today is a difficult day for my mother. If my father were alive, today would be their 50th anniversary. We probably would have had a big celebration, especially since it fell on a weekend. We had talked about all of us taking a vacation together, or having a BBQ with friends and family. My mother made me swear years ago that we would not have a big formal party. She said it just wasn't "them" and a BBQ with a hay ride would be more their style.

Instead, my mother is spending the day at home, my sister and my aunt are with her. We went in together and got her a gift certificate for a facial at a really upscale place. We weren't sure if she would want to go out and do anything today. My father had said a number of times that he really hoped he would make it to their 50th. I think knowing that he was looking forward to it makes it even harder.

My father died last year of congestive heart failure. He started smoking when he was fourteen. He quit once for two years when I was in junior high, but said he never stopped craving a cigarette and so he finally gave in. He had his first heart attack one fall when I was still living at home. The ambulance took seven minutes to get to our house and it seemed like such a long time we actually called the hospital a second time to find out why they weren't there yet. My mother rode in the ambulance with him, and I drove in my car, breaking all speed limits and screaming at the top of my lungs most of the way.

He wound up having to have 5 bypasses done. Over the years he also had angioplasty, MRI's, a pacemaker implant, and so many other procedures I can't even remember them all now. Every time he went in the hospital, we all took off work, worried for days and weeks, would he live, would he have a stroke, would he suffer. We sat in the waiting rooms of many different hospitals trying to keep each other calm, waiting to hear how he was doing. We took time off work, we traveled long distances to be there, we drove like maniacs while crying and worrying, we paid for hotels and cafeteria food. When people smoke and use the excuse that it is "their" body and they "are only hurting themselves" I want to shake them. You hurt everyone around you when you smoke. Anyone who cares about you is hurt by it. Over and over and over. If only my father had never smoked...........

We could have all been celebrating.

Comments

  1. Oh, girl, that's a GREAT blog. It moved me to tears. From one daughter of a smoker to another....

    Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o

A Week After Surgery

Katie went back to the surgeon yesterday to have her foot checked.  It was the first time we saw the stitches.  When we saw her after surgery, her foot was already wrapped up in three inches of gauze and it's been wrapped like that ever since. The doctor decided that the sutures were not quite ready to be removed. There are stitches in the side of her foot where they inserted one of the screws.  The surgeon told us that she has to be very, very, very careful not to put her foot on the ground.  Any pressure at all could cause the screws to shift or break and that would be very, very, very bad. They knew we were going out of town for the wedding this weekend.  In order to protect her foot as much as possible, she was put in a hard cast.  It will come back off on Monday so they can check the sutures again.  This cast has a very limited time to be signed! Katie may not get to have a lot of people sign her cast  but she currently still has the initials of the sur