Jerry: Advice about your father, your son, and hospitals
zndr
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Lets get this out of the way, I've never really posted here, I'm not a "personality" on the forums, I'm not a regular, I've never been to a pax. I'm not even sure this is the right place for this post; or that you, Jerry, will even read it. Hell, I'm a shitty writer too.
What I am, though, is a man who has lost nearly every one in his life related to him. I've spent time in hospitals with family I hardly knew, at grave sides, and on cliffs with handfulls of ashes. I have trouble with emotion, and I have issues with connecting to people because of all that loss. But I'm about as expert as you can be on the subject with out actually dying. A lot of people will tell you "they know how you feel" and "I'm sorry for your loss". A lot of people will tell you about how they lost their parents, or friends, or family so they "get it". I lost my father at 14, He moved from the US to Russia when I was 9. I never really knew my father as any more than a tangible idea of "Father". He simply wasn't there when that transitions from Father with a capital F to father as a concept or generality. And I can say for certain, I have no idea what you're feeling. I have no real way of sympathizing or empathizing with you. Any one who says otherwise is lying, because aside from perhaps a few people in your life who you have let it, no one knows how you feel about your dad, who he was to you. Thats something for you, and it's different for every one. Don't let people stop telling you about their pain, because, in the end, it serves as a distraction from awkward moments and faltering inside.
When I was a kid, I don't really remember how old, I went on a trip to New York as I did some what frequently (every year or two) from California to visit family. But this trip was different. We didn't see my Pop-pop this time, he was my great grand father. He had passed away between flits back and forth across the country. I don't think I really understood that until years later. I have no memory of hearing of his death, just that he stopped being in his favorite motorized chair that he would give me rides in. It was different for another reason, we spent a lot of times in hospitals. And this set me in a weird headspace for almost two decades. All hospitals have a smell to me, a distinct one. It doesn't actually exist, I've asked others, but it's become engrained in me that this smell is the smell of hospitals, and I can't not smell it. It's the smell of a cheap, ill-santized, assisted/hospice care facility, filled with soiled wheelchair's and those sounds you described. The pulse of monitors, the sounds of pain, and confusion. The terror of realization that everything you've lived for up until now may have been for nothing, or worse, the complete and utter fear because you don't even know what you've lived for and accomplished because it's just faded away. We were there to see my grandfather, my mother father. My mother, like me, was acutely aware of death. Her mother had died of lung cancer from chain smoking for years. They knew it was coming. My grandfather would smuggle cigarettes into the hospital for her. But this was different, her father spent the rest of his short lived life in this acrid place after a surgery gone wrong had caused him multiple strokes. I don' think I could comprehend the suddenness of loss until years later, after hearing news of my own fathers sudden, and tragic demise.
For a long time hospitals represented only death and not healing to me because of this I hope that this is not the case with your own son, and I think because of the work you do with hospitals, or even his own stay in one (something I've never had happen) he will see them for what they are, beacons of hope on a sea of terror. An oasis in which sickness and fear mutate into health and happiness. Where answers are found and lives are changed. Hospitals are amazing, frightening places.
I have no idea how much knowledge you had of your father's illness, or how impending it was. I have no idea how much he let you into your life, and I don't necessarily understand the meaning of what you posted about his other family. I know that the news of my father's death was passed to my mother via email and late night phone calls from a world away. The harbinger of this news was my fathers new love interest. I have no ideas about her, more or less they were in a relationship. He helped raise her son, he helped fix her apartment. He helped add a window box to her apartment window, drilling into a wall, until his drill hit an unprotected conduit (it's Russia after all, they have no building code that stands the test of bribery) and died instantly, before his now extinguished life drifted 14 stories to the ground.
It took me years to not be angry all the time, it took me years to not hate every moment of every day of every year of my life. To not dwell on all the bad things that happened, or that I had said. My world filled with them, these awful memories. They clouded the good ones. And there are so many good ones. But something happened. On a trip back east, years later to serve as best man for my uncle, my father's brother, in his wedding; I heard stories of my father. My father before he was a Father with a capital F, before he was a Husband with a capital H. When my father was just a person. His brother, his best friend, and my grandfather told me stories of his youth. Things that had never been told before because no one had bothered to ask. Stories only one or two people knew. We sat around a dinner table a few nights before the wedding telling stories. Or more accurately they wove scene after scene of hijinks and capers, and I listened. I don't know your family, or your fathers friends, but in my experience, it's only after death, do you get to know the stories no one bothered to tell. It's happened to me now more times than I would like to count, stories about my grandmothers, and grandfathers, and friends, mentors, family members. These stories, these fractions of moments frozen in some ones mind come out almost like air bubbles trapped deep beneath the surface finally wriggling their way out. These pockets of interest are meant to be shared. Your wasp story is such a tale.
Again, its important to understand, no one knows what you, Jerry Holkins, are going through right now. But many people have been there, and many people will share their feelings. It's important not to shut these out. One of the ways you heal and overcome the feelings you have now is when you stumble on some one else's tragedy, and together, help them overcome it. Through this perspective do you grow stronger.
What I am, though, is a man who has lost nearly every one in his life related to him. I've spent time in hospitals with family I hardly knew, at grave sides, and on cliffs with handfulls of ashes. I have trouble with emotion, and I have issues with connecting to people because of all that loss. But I'm about as expert as you can be on the subject with out actually dying. A lot of people will tell you "they know how you feel" and "I'm sorry for your loss". A lot of people will tell you about how they lost their parents, or friends, or family so they "get it". I lost my father at 14, He moved from the US to Russia when I was 9. I never really knew my father as any more than a tangible idea of "Father". He simply wasn't there when that transitions from Father with a capital F to father as a concept or generality. And I can say for certain, I have no idea what you're feeling. I have no real way of sympathizing or empathizing with you. Any one who says otherwise is lying, because aside from perhaps a few people in your life who you have let it, no one knows how you feel about your dad, who he was to you. Thats something for you, and it's different for every one. Don't let people stop telling you about their pain, because, in the end, it serves as a distraction from awkward moments and faltering inside.
When I was a kid, I don't really remember how old, I went on a trip to New York as I did some what frequently (every year or two) from California to visit family. But this trip was different. We didn't see my Pop-pop this time, he was my great grand father. He had passed away between flits back and forth across the country. I don't think I really understood that until years later. I have no memory of hearing of his death, just that he stopped being in his favorite motorized chair that he would give me rides in. It was different for another reason, we spent a lot of times in hospitals. And this set me in a weird headspace for almost two decades. All hospitals have a smell to me, a distinct one. It doesn't actually exist, I've asked others, but it's become engrained in me that this smell is the smell of hospitals, and I can't not smell it. It's the smell of a cheap, ill-santized, assisted/hospice care facility, filled with soiled wheelchair's and those sounds you described. The pulse of monitors, the sounds of pain, and confusion. The terror of realization that everything you've lived for up until now may have been for nothing, or worse, the complete and utter fear because you don't even know what you've lived for and accomplished because it's just faded away. We were there to see my grandfather, my mother father. My mother, like me, was acutely aware of death. Her mother had died of lung cancer from chain smoking for years. They knew it was coming. My grandfather would smuggle cigarettes into the hospital for her. But this was different, her father spent the rest of his short lived life in this acrid place after a surgery gone wrong had caused him multiple strokes. I don' think I could comprehend the suddenness of loss until years later, after hearing news of my own fathers sudden, and tragic demise.
For a long time hospitals represented only death and not healing to me because of this I hope that this is not the case with your own son, and I think because of the work you do with hospitals, or even his own stay in one (something I've never had happen) he will see them for what they are, beacons of hope on a sea of terror. An oasis in which sickness and fear mutate into health and happiness. Where answers are found and lives are changed. Hospitals are amazing, frightening places.
I have no idea how much knowledge you had of your father's illness, or how impending it was. I have no idea how much he let you into your life, and I don't necessarily understand the meaning of what you posted about his other family. I know that the news of my father's death was passed to my mother via email and late night phone calls from a world away. The harbinger of this news was my fathers new love interest. I have no ideas about her, more or less they were in a relationship. He helped raise her son, he helped fix her apartment. He helped add a window box to her apartment window, drilling into a wall, until his drill hit an unprotected conduit (it's Russia after all, they have no building code that stands the test of bribery) and died instantly, before his now extinguished life drifted 14 stories to the ground.
It took me years to not be angry all the time, it took me years to not hate every moment of every day of every year of my life. To not dwell on all the bad things that happened, or that I had said. My world filled with them, these awful memories. They clouded the good ones. And there are so many good ones. But something happened. On a trip back east, years later to serve as best man for my uncle, my father's brother, in his wedding; I heard stories of my father. My father before he was a Father with a capital F, before he was a Husband with a capital H. When my father was just a person. His brother, his best friend, and my grandfather told me stories of his youth. Things that had never been told before because no one had bothered to ask. Stories only one or two people knew. We sat around a dinner table a few nights before the wedding telling stories. Or more accurately they wove scene after scene of hijinks and capers, and I listened. I don't know your family, or your fathers friends, but in my experience, it's only after death, do you get to know the stories no one bothered to tell. It's happened to me now more times than I would like to count, stories about my grandmothers, and grandfathers, and friends, mentors, family members. These stories, these fractions of moments frozen in some ones mind come out almost like air bubbles trapped deep beneath the surface finally wriggling their way out. These pockets of interest are meant to be shared. Your wasp story is such a tale.
Again, its important to understand, no one knows what you, Jerry Holkins, are going through right now. But many people have been there, and many people will share their feelings. It's important not to shut these out. One of the ways you heal and overcome the feelings you have now is when you stumble on some one else's tragedy, and together, help them overcome it. Through this perspective do you grow stronger.
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