Blindsided.

I knew someone who used to talk about rollercoasters in terms of stress. When it is really bad it is sort of like this: you are stuck in a rollercoaster park. All of the coasters are unlabeled. You must choose one. So, you get the stress of the choosing, the stress while you wait in line, and then the stress during the ride, and then you get to do it all again. Of course, everyone likes and dislikes different coasters. Give me the smooth ones with lots of up and down and tight curves. The wooden coasters and the ones that go upside down are the ones that alternately make me feel like I need a chiropractic readjustment or just downright sick to my stomach.

Yeah, this post is about my dad. I spoke to him just about a week ago and he was doing well. In fact, he was doing about the same as when he was initially diagnosed. He was still getting up daily and his pain meds hadn't increased at all. In other words, his routine was pretty much the same as right after his initial diagnosis. On Thursday of this past week all of that changed. Bam. No longer did he feel capable of getting out of bed, and he isn't able to eat or drink much of anything. That has affected his ability to speak. His need for pain meds also changed. He went from doing very well to looking like he has a life expectancy of about two weeks.

There are no words to truly express how shocked I am. He was using an alternative treatment that I think might have worked had he found it six months to a year ago. However, I was beginning to hope that it was going to work ~ even now ~ since he wasn't getting worse. You see, I was beginning to disbelieve the original diagnosis. I thought my dad was going to be the person to beat stage 4 cancer.

And then today arrived. My brother called and told me how bad it was and that my dad was not going to beat stage 4 cancer. My dad possibly would not live to see the month of June. Wow.

Hope is the best and the worst thing in the world.

I had to go lie down because it gave me in instant migraine. I know I jumped right in line for the roller coaster. I remember the people in my dream, but I don't know any of them. I just remember my parting shot at all of them being, before I woke up, "I don't have time for your crap and your drama. My dad is dying of cancer." I was literally crying when I came out of that sleep.

I pondered the what to do for a while. Talking on the phone is never good. He can't understand me and now it hurts him to talk. I considered going back up there, but I don't want to remember him like this. That decision was reinforced when I did talk to him today. It greatly upset him when I cried on the phone. He wants me to be okay with his dying. And I will be... eventually. But, I am not sure that it will be in less than a month. I don't want to make his passing worse. This cannot be all about me.

So, I suggested to my brother that I write my dad an email every day and he read it to him. I have decided that it is unimportant if dad remembers our history or not. I remember it. I want him to feel the love in it. And if it jogs his memory, that is wonderful. If it doesn't, than I will be remembering for both of us. It is the last gift I can give him before he goes.

I am thinking that I will post them here. You can read them or not. I will call them Letters To Dad and then give them a subtitle. If that is your thing, read away. If not, come back when it is over. Either way, I understand.

image found at www.weheartit.com

DAY 17: LETTER TO SOMEONE FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD

Dear Stony Glen Camp,

The first time I set foot on your grounds was the summer between sixth and seventh grade. I only stayed for one week, but I knew I would come back the following summer. I loved everything about you. I had no idea when I signed up to take Riflery as one of my three summer activities that it would turn into something that I loved. Loved and Respected. The cabin I stayed in that summer didn't have electricity; in fact, most of the cabins didn't have electricity, so I became well acquainted with where my flashlight was at all times. I never was all that keen on swimming in the lake, but I loved to slip down there alone at quiet times for contemplation and reflection. This was church camp, and I was doing a lot of thinking about God, Jesus, me, and how that picture all fit together.

One of the things I loved best was all of the singing. We sang after each meal in the dining hall. After breakfast, the counselors who played guitar strapped them on, and we sang songs about God. Some of them were so pretty that they squeezed my heart hard. At lunch and dinner, the high schoolers led the songs. They didn't stand up or anything. They just took control by leading. Those were all fun songs acapella style. At night, we broke apart by division and did an evening activity. Those were always so much fun. That meant that four or five cabins would join up (girls all in the same age range). I don't remember so well now what the fun things were that first year. I know that as time went on one of my all-time favorites was Capture The Flag. After the fun was over, we always made a campfire, sang some more, a counselor gave the message, and then we went to bed. I always slept really well at camp.

My riflery obsession eventually led me to try my hand at archery. I never was quite as good an archer as I would have liked. I also became dissatisfied very quickly with just one week of camp. One week quickly turned into two weeks. Two eventually turned four. I would have stayed five, but I was too old by that time. I was already there for the duration of camp. I liked camp so much that I took the Camper In Leadership Training Program (CILT) when I was in high school. That took two years of overall time and two weeks of camp time for two years.

That second year of camp it hit me like a rocket launcher that at the end of the second week I would no longer be a camper. I would graduate CILT, and they would expect me to be a counselor. That meant that I could no longer hang out with my friends. My days of living at Sam Grey were over. This was devastating. Sam Grey was the best place ever. Sam Grey was this A-Frame house with electricity set far away from the rest of the camp, where the high school kids lived. Sam Grey was the bomb. I never wanted to leave Sam Grey. How did I not see this coming? Ironically enough, the theme song for camp this year couldn't have explained my predicament any better than I could. The chorus started like this: "Mmmmm I want to linger, Mmmm a little longer, Mmmm a little longer here with you." We sang it every day. Check that. Everyone but me sang it every day. I cried through it every day. Two weeks of crying.

Adulthood was coming for me and I wasn't ready. They didn't put it in the manual. I checked. I kept praying for time to stop or slow down and it steadily moved forward until the day of graduation. One day I was a camper and the next I wasn't. Snap. The next three weeks I was a counselor. I was a fairly miserable counselor, but I was a counselor nonetheless. The following summer, after my senior year of high school, I came back as a counselor and it was completely different. I knew I was coming in as a counselor, so this summer was I was perfectly aware that I was a grown up now. Being a counselor this time around was a lot of fun.

Stony Glen Camp, so many of my best memories happened with you. I learned so many things about fire building, riflery, archery, people, and myself, that I wouldn't have learned if not for you. Most people transition into adulthood so seamlessly that they are only vaguely aware that it is happening. One day they wake up and realize that it snuck up on them, passed them by, and they cannot pinpoint the when or the where. That is not my story. I know exactly when and where it happened. It wasn't painless, easy, or desirable. I was dragged through the doors of adulthood kicking, screaming, and crying, because I knew that something beautiful was dying. I would never get it back and there wasn't anything I wanted more. However, you are patient and waited for me to come and appreciate you from my new perspective of adulthood. I did. That next summer I realized it was my privilege to give each girl the wonderful experience that I had every year. If they left with a heart filled with more love, faith, songs, confidence, and joy, then I had done my job.

I haven't been back to see you in almost twenty years, but I can picture you clearly in my mind. The website indicates that you have undergone some changes. I prefer not to think of that. I like to picture you the way I remember you. On those nights when I wake up, and cannot fall back to sleep, I imagine myself in Milner Cabin. It is the only cabin close enough to the waterfalls that you can lie in bed and hear the water as it goes over the falls. When I was in junior high school, I prayed every year that I was placed in Milner Cabin so that I could fall asleep listening to those falls. The sound of those waterfalls is still one of the best sounds I've ever heard.

Love,
Robin


image stolen from Miss Angie at My So-Called Chaos

CAN WE PRETEND?

I have posted before about my insomnia. Nothing new there. Well... I think that I mentioned that one of the things that I have recently tried is cutting the TV down to "3" (volume) and changing the channel to HGTV. That would be Home Garden Television for those of you not in the know. My mom loves that channel. It has been fairly effective at knocking me out. At that time of night, they usually run back to back episodes of HOUSE HUNTERS. If I can focus in on the show, and shut out my mental craziness, I will often nod off.


Well, I had a particularly bad night earlier this week. I was up until REALLY LATE. So, that meant that I didn't wake up until REALLY LATE. If I am not up by noon, my mom is knocking on my door. She has this fear that I might accidentally overdose myself in the middle of the night. It is actually a valid fear. When you have a rager of a migraine, you can forget what meds you have taken and how much. I used to scare myself sometimes when I lived alone. Hence, the notepad and the need to write this crap down. However, when you aren't thinking clearly sometimes you forget to write it down. It's a crazy circle. Anyway, at noon she knocks on my door to check if I am alive. Sometimes she waits until 12:30. Whatever.

I think that this particular day it was more like 12:30 and I was alive. I felt terrible, but I was breathing. Terrible migraine. But still here. HGTV was still running on my TV. I took my pain meds, grabbed a granola bar out of the nightstand, ate it in bed, and waited. A half hour later, the world looked much more promising. And then the most amazing thing happened. You aren't going to believe this sh*t. Actually, this isn't going to have quite the same impact because I haven't complained on here about HGTV the way I have in the "real world." BORING is the word that I trumpet the most loudly and frequently.

INCOME PROPERTY came on. Scott McGillivray comes in and assesses someone's house (at their request), if they have extra space that they want to turn into a rental, and he (and his team) does the renovation. I turned the volume up to "9" and was transfixed. Start to finish. Was the renovation cool? Absolutely. Did I learn a lot? Oh yeah. Was Scott so hot he set my television on fire? Definitely. You are thinking very loudly, Purple Cow. I know I am having a mid-life meltdown. Let me enjoy it.



I've discovered that INCOME PROPERTY comes on weekdays at 1:00 pm and weekends at 11:30am, so I have to plan accordingly. Well, today, after INCOME PROPERTY, I got sucked into two episodes of DESIGNED TO SELL, and there were NO hot men in sight. That was an entire hour of just digging the whole remodeling crap. Uh oh. My mom's favorite show on HGTV is HOLMES ON HOMES. He is not a hottie, but he is handy. They ran several ads for his show while I was glued to the TV today and they started to look good. The show... not the guy.



I am pretty sure it's official. I am turning into my mother. Pretty soon we will be hanging out in the living room together on Sunday nights waiting for HOLMES ON HOMES to come on and discussing things like plumbing. And that wasn't sexual innuendo ~ I mean plumbing, as in for reals. And fixtures. Heaven help me.

Now that doesn't mean I am not going to ogle Scott on INCOME PROPERTY for thirty minutes every day. You bet your sweet your a**, I will definitely be doing that. People, I have to ogle something! And he is HANDY. He knows how to use a hammer, wrench, and all of those other manly tools. Right Guy was HANDY. He was/is a mechanic. Yeah, I like a man who knows his way around a shop and knows what to do with his hands. Unfortunately, I am fairly certain my chances of re-jumpstarting my relationship with Right Guy are only slightly better than my chances with Scott. And that is nil, because Scott is newly married. Right Guy slept through his plane and he missed it.



Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now, wish right now, wish right now. Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now, wish right now, wish right now.

And it seems like yesterday it was just a dream, but those days are gone, they're just memories. And it seems like yesterday it was just a dream, but those days are gone.

Cuz he never risked shit he hopes and he wished it, but it didn’t fall in his lap so he ain’t even here he pretends that…
Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now, wish right now, wish right now. Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now, wish right now, wish right now.

KID STUFF

Do your parents tell you stories about your childhood that you don't remember? I have a lot of those. I know a good many of them are true because there is photo documentation. Don't you love that? Lucky for me that I don't know where those photos are right now. Everything is topsy turvy since the move. If I didn't have it on my flash drive before we moved, chances are good I don't got it!


My mother says that when I was between one and two years old, she put me in the stroller to walk to the store. Apparently this was not unusual. It was a fairly long walk. We hadn't gone far and I told her that we should probably turn around because it was going to rain. She looked up at the sky and I was right; it did look like rain. She was stunned. I knew it was going to rain before she did. She turned around. No, this doesn't mean I was destined to be weatherperson and missed my calling. Actually, I am not sure what it means. I guess I was just observant as a child.


At about the same age, we were riding in the car after a bad thunderstorm, and there were a lot of downed tree limbs everywhere. She says I got very upset when she was about run over one of them in the road. I started crying and carrying on and made her stop the car. What was the matter? "Don't run over it. You'll hurt it." Yep, that's me. Apparently, there was a conversation that day about how the tree was already dead blah blah blah. If you've been reading my blogs and thinking, "This girl feels like she needs to band-aid the whole world, and she is setting herself up for crushing disappointment." Well, the whole thing started with this tree in the road when I was one and half.


When I was three, or so, my parents bought me this cute, plastic, yellow car that I could sit in and pedal around. We had moved to Florida and had this little patio outside our backdoor. I say patio. It was more like a concrete slab. Whatever. It was large enough that I should have been able to ride my little car in a circle around the slab. I say should. I would ride from one end of the slab to the other. My mother is saying,"Turn the wheel and pedal." Nope. That was just not happening. I dead-ended at the end of the slab. I stood up, picked up the car, because it wasn't heavy, did a 180 with it, put it back down, and pedaled to the other end of the slab, where I repeated the performance. Unfortunately, there is photo documentation of that somewhere. I am not sure what this says about me. Driving wasn't going to be easy, particularly a stick shift, is one possibility. Another was that life was going to offer up a lot of dead ends that needed creative solutions. It is a good thing that I am in the creative solution business.

So what childhood stories do you want to share? And what do you think that they say about you?