Tell your loved ones how
you feel about them
My dad III
My dad has always had my back.
Even when I didn’t have his.
I’ve just been on the phone to him and I’m
emotional. A bad time to blog.
Maybe it's the best time to blog.
He told me he was ready to cry when I called. He ended up having a little cry anyway.
He says he'd been driving and had a happy
thought about his sweet love. Then he says he fell apart.
I told him I thought his tears were a celebration. It means he's fortunate. Lots of people go through their lives and never experience it, but he loves truly and fully.That’s a good thing.
He was reminded about when his sweet love finally
agreed to marry him and he remembered the story with me. He told me about when he first suspected she had Parkinson's and told her that he would stay by her side.
Now he crushes up the pills she needs to reduce the
tremors in small teaspoons of water. A smooth spoon, with no sharp edges, puts
it gently in her mouth and turns in onto her tongue so the slurry slides in softly and she swallows barely noticing.
A teacher by profession, she has always been composed.
Now she yells, ‘Why do I have to take these?!’ Now she can be a bugger, but he
laughs anyway, seeing an unexpected vibrancy in the midst of obvious decline.
She’s forgetting how to swallow.
In your adolescence, you feel everything intensely.
When you become an adult the richness of your experiences deepen, and as you
get older, loss is more commonplace. But these things are only schooling for
your final years, when the day to day is weighed down by the physical and emotional.
Life is short is no cliché.
I have always known my dad was there for me.
He tells me he loves me and he’s proud of me. I
feel privileged.
I tell him, I love you. You were, and are, the best
father. I have the most wonderful memories of our time together and I treasure
them. I want you to know how much you mean to me and that the way you care for your wife is beautiful.
As much as I love Hobart, it’s in these moments I feel like I am a million miles away.
I can’t be there right now, but I can tell my loved
ones how I feel about them.
Why don't you?
If you liked this post and you want to know about
my old dad then check out:
