Category: Doing Something New

This category covers things that relate to trying something different. It is a sort of catch-all category that contains things are more verb-like than noun-like. These things like be new movements, new ways to think, or a specific suggestion that you try something that you may never have tried before. It’s a big category because humans are action oriented beings that are kinesthetic learner who benefit the most from interacting with their immediate environment.

“I Can’t Make Your Feel Anything”

I was chatting with Leigh, an old girlfriend from university a few weeks ago at my fathers service, and the topic moved towards what did we learn from each other that carried with us? I try to mine smart people for gems of information and wasn’t expecting her to say anything other than “I was young once and didn’t mind wasting time having fun” but she floored me with something that I had forgotten I had said.

I had done something that she found really frustrating – I have no idea what it was and it probably doesn’t matter much. She said “you are making me feel so angry” to which I replied “I can’t make you feel anything.”

What struck me as profound about her mentioning this is that Leigh has three degrees, works as a educational psychologist and she said that she has given this piece of information out to a number of people though out the years. She never mentioned that it was to any of her clients so I’ll assume that it was just her friends and people in a non-therapeutic setting. I, however, have and will say this to my coaching clients and basically anyone who needs to see themselves as the source of their own emotional state of mind vs. holding other people responsible for their pain.

As I turn the corner and close off my Childhood I see and feel the truth of this statement made 17 years ago. My grudges are my creation. If I’m annoyed that someone didn’t live-up to an expectation that I created and pushed onto them, that’s my choice. I could have created smaller expectations or none at all. Even if I mentioned the expectation to them and they agreed to abide by it, my disappointment in their decision to look after themselves first is my choice. They can’t make me feel anything.

It is my love, my hate, my compassion, my sense of abandonment, my everything. Adults understand and live by this. They establish boundaries and let others in WISE to the fact that with them inside, the potential to hurt grows. But we own our emotions and our emotional responses to our subjective interpretation of reality. I have too much love to go to waste, BUT I realize, understand and accept that I risk emotional pain by reaching out and partnering with another human being. My responsibility is to look after myself and my interests; to direct this love to me first and then to others. Until I have children, I am responsible for just me. My family, girlfriends, friends, co-workers and peers need to look after themselves and their children / interests.

The only power others have over us is the power we give them. And even then, we choose our thoughts which in turn shape our state of mind and emotional reactions. It’s fine to give love away, but if you cannot handle not getting it back, you aren’t giving out love. You are sharing something dark and sinister.

It was a timely refresher from an old and dear friend. Thanks Leigh!

Reasons To Not Be Afraid

I’ve got a lot, but I am. I have been for years.

Sure, I can continue to wrack my brain, analyzing the hell out of my memories and ripping apart my actions looking for meaning, but that hasn’t gotten me any closer to the truth, happiness or to a level of satisfaction with who I am, my place in the universe and even a reason to keep going. It can’t, I’ve been lying to myself for a long time. I didn’t really realize it. When I was small I told myself a lie, a story, and I went with it. Then life became it, and finally I did too.

That isn’t good enough for me anymore. There is more to this world than these distractions I’ve been seeking and compulsively indulging.

My therapist suggested that I make 2 lists, one of the why’s and one of the what if I stop. I thought it would be tough, and it was kind of, I crumbled and cried and the self-loathing seemed to grow exponentially. But I had a lot to write and the ease at which it flowed out of me help me see that I have been ready for a sometime, but just afraid to step off the cliff and drop to my death. I liked the old me, but he was selfish, scared and offered only conditional everything. Those who knew me saw that things weren’t right, those who knew me really well would leave. My family and close friends were the only constants, and of the friends, only those who engaged me like an Adult, without judgement remain. And that was key unlocking the gate and convincing me to take the leap. I AM an Adult and it is okay to forgive myself for my past actions. Further self-judgment here is pointless.

The why’s of my compulsive behavior:

Predictable outcome – good or bad, I knew what would happen and there is some sense of security in that
It created a false me / them dynamic that helped me feel like I was different
It closed me off from other people, which helped me feel like I didn’t belong
It is wildly isolating, alienating and paradoxically not the person I presented myself to be
Being isolated allowed me to indulge my thoughts without outside perspective to balance them
It helped me feel different and deviant so not as good as anyone else
Doing it helped me feel a sense of shame that I could wear and feel inferior to others
It altered my emotional state temporarily so there was some escape for the emptiness / insecurity that I felt
It was childish and was a calling for some sort of love that I didn’t think I was getting
It was proof that I wasn’t okay and therefore not worthy of the things that others may enjoy
It helped me get a very nice body that I thought would compensate for my lack of confidence
It was easier to keep doing what I was doing vs. put the effort in to change

The what if I stop my compulsive behavior:

I will save money
My teeth, skin, and body will look better
I will feel my baseline, whatever that is, and be able to get the help I need to adjust that
I will improve my spiritual health as I become reconnected with the universe and the people on the planet
I will save a lot of time
I will feel my emotions clearly and in a timely fashion allowing me to properly engage and parse them for the information they are revealing
I will be free of the anxiety and guild associated with indulging compulsive thoughts
I will be able to recover from my fathers death more effectively
I will be acting with self-love and treating my body, mind and spirit with compassion
I will be acting more like my mentors
I will not be harming myself
I will have removed the monkey from my back and will have stopped doing something I am ashamed of
I will have gain the knowledge of just what these compulsive behaviors have been doing to me
I will be acting responsibly, I will be acting like an Adult
I will no longer be acting in a hypocritical way and this will restore my integrity
I will be thinking more clearly, my body will be functioning more clearly and I will be reducing a number of very serious health risks
I will be in a position for find a partner who complements my life but does not give it purpose
I will have a better idea of my actual worth and be able to take more effective actions to help me achieve my goals
My public self will match my private self and any dissonance between the two will be eliminated
I will not need to be living and managing two separate and incomparable lives

I looked at the lists when I was feeling absolutely crap over the last few weeks, picked an item and mediated on it. It didn’t take long for my chest to puff-up and for the fighter in me to come up to scratch. My actions are my choice so stopping is as easy as just not doing it anymore.

However, there is something going on inside my brain that this exercise was supposed to bring to light and my therapist was happy that it came out. I’m not necessarily afraid, but I am anxious.

I Love You Lungs

I love my lungs, not just because they bring in oxygen and send out CO2, but because they are working hard to keep me alive and to repair themselves from the abuse I was subjecting them to.

It was never personal, I wasn’t setting out to hurt them, I just was.

They are serving me well and over the last few weeks I’ve been clearing out a lot of stuff that I don’t recall breathing in. There’s no way I would sit down and inhale this black stuff that I’ve been coughing out if it presented itself to me as the black stuff in the first place. But it presented itself as a feeling of decreased tension, anxiety, stress, and the cessation of withdrawal symptoms; which are easy to consider positives. Now, a few weeks out, it’s very clear that there was NOTHING positive about them. Withdrawal from poison is a good thing because it means you are healing.

It is kind of shocking though. Some report that you can be clearing the nastiness for months, others claim that nothing ever came-out. I’m somewhere in the middle. Most of my coughing has stopped, but when the shower is really hot or I’m cooking a bunch of food and the humidity in the kitchen is high, I get my cough on and lumps or strains of black come out. I look at them and imagine what my lungs will look like in a few months and years.

For someone who presented themselves as giving a crap about how they looked, I sure didn’t pay much attention to keeping the lungs a nice beautiful pink.

Welcoming New Canadians

Last night, when I got home from teaching class, I saw that Mariam Makhniashvili’s body had been identified and that the police believe that she was not murdered. It appears that she feel to her death from a hwy 401 overpass above Young street.

Mariam was a new Canadian who didn’t have a lot of friends and who loved to read. She was a quiet 17 year old who mostly kept to herself. She parted ways with her brother at their school on September 14th 2009 and wasn’t seen alive again.

I don’t know anything about her other than what is being reported, but some of the information seems to resonate with me. Our family moved to Canada when I was 9 and almost immediately I was an outsider. I did make friends fairly quickly but found that many of the would turn on me or simply just stop talking to me. As a young person you are ill-equipped to make the call that their behavior says more about their past than it did about my present so you internalize it. I was the immigrant freak, who spoke funny and was the brunt of the jokes when the class bully was feeling small from whatever living hell he was going through.

I thought about jumping, a lot.

I never did and instead felt anxious and sort of went into myself finding the evidence to validate that I wasn’t the same as everyone else. Again, a child will do these things when because their brain doesn’t process information as effectively or in the same way as an adult.

Children are important and they are worth being nice to. The waste of one life is too many.

Rest in peace Mariam.

Transactional Analysis – Part 1 – Laymans Introduction

Sean gave me another critical piece of the puzzle. I asked him if he has been pacing the information so as to not blow my mind up and he claimed no that it just hadn’t come-up. Transactional analysis is an object-oriented way to document interpersonal interactions. Each interaction is a transaction and the currency of TA are strokes. Depending upon the depth of the transaction, a stroke can have little worth “hi” or a lot of worth “I noticed that you pasted your exam, it’s great that all your hard work is paying off.” Hi is simply an acknowledgement of mutual existence. The lack of this type of stroke will be noticed MORE than it being there. The comment about passing the exam is more complicated and validating to the ego. Acknowledgement of mutual existence is there, the recognition that they exist to the other person when they aren’t in front of them (noticing that they past the exam), the recognition of historic labor efforts, and the social recognition that passing an exam is a payoff.

Ego states and Social states

An ego state is the psychological state from which ones’ comment comes. Child, Parent, Adult. The social state is the apparent state from which a comment comes. For example, it being important that we are on time is socially adult but if we direct a comment towards someone who is always late it is from a Parent psychological or ego state. These states are indicated with a capital letter.

We learn these states from our parents and other caregivers and while we may never be aware that they are there, they are, and while we may never be aware that we jump around from one to the other, we do. They are biologically hardwired through years of experience and validation and for these reasons certain behavioral tendencies are really sticky and may never go away. Your Child is going to be your Child for most of your life. Your Parent is going to be your Parent for most of your life.

The Parent automates the day-to-day stuff that makes life manageable – shopping, cooking, cleaning, going to work, looking after loved ones – because it is both controlling and nurturing. The Child allows for play because it has been cultivated with a sense of freedom. Creativity is the realm of the Child and this represents an essential piece of a human beings spirit. The Child can become overly adapted however with the wrong proportions of control and nurture:

If Parent nurturing Then Child free.

If Parent controlling Then Child adapted.

The Adult ego state is reflective and purposeful. It exists in harmony with the universe as it calls upon past experience for information and solutions but transacts with the others in a deliberate way. It has well-established boundaries and accepts that each person has the right and responsibility to manage their own life and affairs. Adults engage in coaching with enlightenment or independence as the goal.

The goal of TA therapy is to coach the client to transacted with social and psychological states being aligned as Adult. They are aware of and use when appropriate their Child and Parent states but these are tools to use vs. compulsions to serve.

Why would Sean tell me about this? Because I needed to hear it as I was lacking a visual framework from which to logically represent what I have been feeling and living through.

My last post of 2011 was about how I had to accept that I didn’t know what my motivations were in most situations and why I act the way I do. I needed to give-up my belief that I know myself in order to finally observe how I act. This is still the case, but it’s getting easier. What is remarkable about it, is that once it was understood to me it became very easy to see things happen and feel the shift in my psychological state.

For example, I was recently compared to someone I didn’t like very much. There was a moment when I thought about what I had heard and what I wanted to say and then realized I didn’t really know what the comment meant. I replied with “yes, there are similarities between me and him.” It wasn’t the Child reply that initially popped into my head. Their reply was “well, actually, this is the one similarity” which was true. He and I both have a tendency to try and solve the problems of the people we care about; not necessarily a character flaw but it can be a Parent action. MOST people have this problem. The key thing with the interaction was that I didn’t let myself slip into an automatic Child-like reply of “yes, but…” The comment was accurate because the other person made it. The inverse comment would have been equally true – that he and I aren’t very similar. That’s the thing with conversations with people, almost everything is right under some circumstances so, well, what’s the point in arguing?

I know what I need to do, I know what I want to do and I haven’t been showing a lot of control over things. When I work and play, it’s purposeful and passionate. When I am a Parent, it’s about very few things in my own life and I do have a tendency to try and look out for the people I like. When I’m an Adult I’m okay and everyone else is okay.

Now High Risk For Cancer

Des let me know that he and I are now a high risk of developing cancer given that our dad and our grandmother on our moms side got it. I haven’t really thought about cancer in those terms before.

From a purely statistical point of view, up until December, my actions had a much bigger impact onto my future with the disease than anything else. For all intents and purposes my body was the same as any other low risk body in terms of fighting off mutations that become disease – if diet, exercise, stress and sleep needs were balanced the potential for life was not handicapped by anything.

That isn’t the same anymore. It is now evident that written into my DNA is a lower finite potential to correct cell replication errors. The fact that my grand mother smoked has nothing to do with how you interpret the statistics because she ended up getting cancer. And on its own, my dad’s brain tumor is random and has an much consequence on my mom’s chances for cancer as it does on Des or me. But when both sides of the family are paired together there is a significant statistical relationship worth considering.

Dealing with an increased risk for something means creating an environment that is NOT conducive to it being there. With cancer there are two things to do, the first is avoid things that cause cancer – keep away from chemicals and stuff that is burning. The second is to do things that promote a healthy immune system, the most effective cancer defense you have.

Below is a list of some of the things I can do to help my body stay sharp and stop disease:

Eat more leafy green vegetables and more plants in general. They help with reducing the acidity of the body which can help reduce inflammation and lower physiological stress. They also provide antioxidants which help clear the waste associated with metabolic functioning.
Consider supplementing with some plant based vitamins. The bio-availability of the nutrients may be higher than for those made from raw earth. The is a link however between increased vitamin supplementation and some cancers, so be cautions and consider eating whole food as the preferred source of nutrients.
Lower sugar consumption to reduce insulin secretion. Insulin is a critical and nontoxic hormone when present in the body for short periods of time. Insulin secretion is a sign that something has gone wrong (we’ve eaten too much). The less it is around, the better for over all health.
Stop inhaling things that aren’t good for me, be it smoke, the fumes from cutting wood or plastic, the pieces of insulation that break off when I’m making panels, the disinfectant spray at the gym.
Eat more diverse types of protein and as much from wild sources as possible.
Reduce stress in all areas of life. Create a budget and save a fixed amount of money each week.
Restore a normal social life that gives me a variety of opinions and personalities. Close off any open loops in terms of grudges or crap that isn’t going the way I need it to.
Stop judging myself for my past actions and present thoughts. There was no malice in them, and I’m as susceptible to the fundamental attribution error as anyone else.
Update my goals to reflect the needed changes in my life in order to live to as close to my life expectancy as possible. Change my behavior to move me towards these goals.
Treat myself with as much respect as I treat other people and this means approaching everything with win:win or no deal. This may mean less short term gain, but it will come with less long term pain. The sadness of a relationship ending before it gets off the ground is a small price to pay for avoiding the enormous heart ache that seems to come from ending all of my relationships that last longer than a few months.
Balance my training to make sure all areas of wellness are being addressed – cardiovascular functioning, strength, flexibility, join mobility, and spiritual health.
Surround myself with people who are able to love compassionately and unconditionally; this also means learning these skills myself. This is a big one, stress is a major contributor to disease and illness and social interaction is a great way to relieve stress and feel connected to others and therefore the universe. Social interaction serves not to transfer the stress, but to allow for the healthy emptying of whatever is on the mind.
EVERYTHING I do is a choice so when I say that I can’t change something I am lying to myself. I will be sad about loss, but I do not have to feel that loss non-stop. It is fine to table dealing with parts of it until I’m in an environment were it has less impact on others.
Start to see yourself as someone of worth and value who SHOULD live a long time. More over, start to do the things that PROVE to me that I have worth and pay more attention to the Adults who are engaging me about my talents. After Natalie died I wanted to be dead but wasn’t going to actively end my life. It’s a paradox in this world, but legal enough are the things that you can consume that will kill slowly – smoking, drinking, low quality food, raves in condemned warehouses, and a “woes me” attitude. I don’t want to die sooner than I have to, so taking the action to eliminate these types of things from my life will go a long way at helping me achieve my life potential.
Cheer-up, let go of the nonsense and go with the flow. I can steer myself along the river, but I can’t paddle upstream back into my past. What’s done is done. Be grateful for having had the chance to do your best with it.

The future is coming, and I will pay for my past when it arrives. What damage was done, IS done and now get round to reducing it by restoring the loving relationship with myself. I have to care because I haven’t cared for a while, and that attitude shows in my actions, my thoughts and my essence.

Antiquated Coping Strategies – Smoking

NOTE – I don’t know the person in the image above but her story is available here. I use this image because it is reminiscent of my dad’s last few days and because those last few days were like NOTHING I have ever experienced. Take a look at the Poo bear on the table and the pictures of her loved ones. Read her story and the final words from her husband. I could be her in a few years and the post below outlines what I need to do to stop that from being my future.

I started smoking again. I had the choice to not start but I convinced myself that I DIDN’T have a choice and set-out believing that it was a fine coping strategy.

It was embarrassing to lie to my father about it. “I’m going out to work on something in the workshop” was what I’d say, and I’d do something, but it was really a trip out there to smoke. The lie made him feel better, like I was finally taking ownership of my life and working hard to build the panel business and it allowed me to avoid disappointing him in his last weeks here. He was proud that I had turned my life around after Natalie’s death – stopped smoking, started eating correctly, got back to exercising, became a personal trainer, started teaching cycling classes and effectively stopped doing most of the things that were destructive. I was glad that my dad was happy and once I slipped, and it was evident that he was getting sick, the smoking habit took hold because I didn’t want to stop out of fear of what it might be like. I also didn’t want to rock the boat given his terminal diagnosis.

Now I have quit. I left everything as it was until I was able to deal only with the death of my dad and the impact it has had on my self-awareness. This was a request of my family to just try and keep things normal until you know what you are feeling and are ready to make the changes. Strangely, the thing that actually clued me into the fact that it would be fantastic idea to stop was a realization about my girl friend at the time. She’s an amazing women and I think we both knew that the relationship would be a 2 part thing if it was to last at all. There was not going to be continuity in it, a separation / break-up was going to be absolutely necessary because of WHO I am and where I am in my life. BUT, my time with her was good and I realized that I actually wanted to live for as long as I can. There was something about the relationship with her that helped me realize that you can feel connected to someone and this connection can help you see things about your behavior that aren’t working. I needed to stop for myself, not for her, my dad, for anyone. I tabled the stopping until after my dad died.

I don’t want to die. I want to live forever, floating through the universe with a smile and love in my heart. But I will not live forever, and if I don’t fix my bad habits, I won’t live for much longer.

Below is a list of the positive changes that occur when someone stops smoking. I like this list because there are benchmark to achieve and it tells a story about recovery. The body will heal itself from a lot of damage if you do the things to promote recover, but only if you stop the damage as well.

Last smoke plus …
20 minutes	Your blood pressure, pulse rate, and the temperature of your hands and feet will all return to normal.
8 hours	Remaining nicotine in your bloodstream will have fallen to 6.25% of normal peak daily levels, a 93.25% reduction.
12 hours	Your blood oxygen level will have increased to normal and carbon monoxide levels will have dropped to normal.
24 hours	Anxieties peak in intensity and within two weeks should return to near pre-cessation levels.
48 hours	Damaged nerve endings have started to regrow and your sense of smell and taste are beginning to return to normal. Cessation anger and irritability peaks.
72 hours	Your entire body will test 100% nicotine-free and over 90% of all nicotine metabolites (the chemicals it breaks down into) will now have passed from your body via your urine. Symptoms of chemical withdrawal have peaked in intensity, including restlessness. The number of cue induced crave episodes experienced during any quitting day will peak for the “average” ex-user. Lung bronchial tubes leading to air sacs (alveoli) are beginning to relax in recovering smokers. Breathing is becoming easier and the lungs functional abilities are starting to increase.
5 – 8 days	The “average” ex-smoker will encounter an “average” of three cue induced crave episodes per day. Although we may not be “average” and although serious cessation time distortion can make minutes feel like hours, it is unlikely that any single episode will last longer than 3 minutes. Keep a clock handy and time them.
10 days	10 days – The “average ex-user is down to encountering less than two crave episodes per day, each less than 3 minutes.
10 days to 2 weeks	Recovery has likely progressed to the point where your addiction is no longer doing the talking. Blood circulation in our gums and teeth are now similar to that of a non-user.
2 to 4 weeks	Cessation related anger, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, impatience, insomnia, restlessness and depression have ended. If still experiencing any of these symptoms get seen and evaluated by your physician.
21 days	Brain acetylcholine receptor counts up-regulated in response to nicotine’s presence have now down-regulated and receptor binding has returned to levels seen in the brains of non-smokers.
2 weeks to 3 months	Your heart attack risk has started to drop. Your lung function is beginning to improve.
3 weeks to 3 months	Your circulation has substantially improved. Walking has become easier. Your chronic cough, if any, has likely disappeared.
1 to 9 months	Any smoking related sinus congestion, fatigue or shortness of breath have decreased. Cilia have regrown in your lungs thereby increasing their ability to handle mucus, keep your lungs clean, and reduce infections. Your body’s overall energy has increased.
1 year	Your excess risk of coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke has dropped to less than half that of a smoker.
5 to 15 years	Your risk of stroke has declined to that of a non-smoker.
10 years	Your risk of being diagnosed with lung cancer is between 30% and 50% of that for a continuing smoker (2005 study). Risk of death from lung cancer has declined by almost half if you were an average smoker (one pack per day). Your risk of pancreatic cancer has declined to that of a never-smoker (2011 study), while risk of cancer of the mouth, throat and esophagus has also declined.
13 years	Your risk of smoking induced tooth loss has declined to that of a never-smoker (2006 study).
15 years	Your risk of coronary heart disease is now that of a person who has never smoked.
20 years	Female excess risk of death from all smoking related causes, including lung disease and cancer, has now reduced to that of a never-smoker (2008 study). Risk of pancreatic cancer reduced to that of a never-smoker (2011 study).

Establishing My Baseline

I’ve been making a lot of decisions over the last 2 year that I wouldn’t have made any time before. I needed to, my boat was floating in still water and there wasn’t a wind. Life wasn’t going anywhere I wanted it to take me because I was sitting on my hands waiting for someone to shepherd me towards the experiences I would judge and blame them for exposing me to. Yeah, I knew it wasn’t working so I had the change things up.

Looking back on the last 24 months it is with a mixed sense of satisfaction and complete disappointment. I’m satisfied because I understand who I am, what I need to be happy, what I do that doesn’t make me happy and I’m closing in on the reason WHY my life is exactly as it is. I’m completely disappointed because the ride has been a lot rougher since I started to get my life moving again. It’s hard to change things, even when you know you have to, it still sucks to go without the things you have grown accustomed to. You’ve normalize them, and while they my not be ideal, things are as they are and we suffer when they change.

This is life though. It’s always in flux. One is born, one dies, two fall in love, two end their relationship, There is a patterns of beginnings and endings and when you get it right there is a middle. And maybe if you get it really right there isn’t really an ending.

But with all the beginnings and endings that I’m going through, it should be getting easier at this point and it doesn’t really seem to be. The reason for this is that I don’t really have much of a stable identify to return to or hold on to. As a consequence I tend to view myself as not being okay and look to others for signs that things are good. I’ve said this before though, a bunch of times. The difference now is that I’m actually saying it to people who only engage me as an Adult – they don’t parent anyone other than themselves. And it feels ridiculous to say out loud to them.

My baseline is something that I haven’t seen in a long time – a little over a year ago was the last time I actually felt like I wasn’t working against the universe and the people in it. I know exactly why the switch flipped and it was because I made a mistake a number of months before that I ignored when I made it. The outcome was an assumption that led me down a number of unusual roads all of which were unworkable because they weren’t the roads that I travel best.

Now with my dad gone and having the freedom to just collapse, I’m taking the time to disappear for a while and come back when I’m me again. I am okay, other people are okay. I do see this now. I just need to take some time to establish my baseline so I have a point of reference to know if I’m off course. I’m actually really excited about it. There are challenges in the experience as I have been off for a while now. I think it’s time that I got to know the ME other people see and like.

“Stop Making Excuses For People”

My mom was almost yelling it. My ears felt like they went back the way a cats do when you sing to it. I rarely feel a wall of anything other than joy coming from my mom so when the chill hit me I shut my pie hole.

I thought we had been talking about the way past experiences can manifest themselves in the present and that by understanding ones past relationships of significance you can make a good prediction on future behaviors and get a notion as to why someone may act in particular ways. Valid but basically trivial information to me in every case other than my own life. It’s potentially damaging when it is used to explain away an action that had a negative impact on me personally.

In the theater of recovery, it’s therapy information. In the theater of a relationship / friendship, it is an excuse for things to remain exactly the same.

“Okay” was what I said when it was safe to say anything at all. Life can shape people in a particular way but they choose to act as they do. It’s better to leave them alone, stop making excuses for people and let it go.

7 Days To Die

When we took my dad to the hospital on Sunday January 22nd it was to get his cough looked after. It didn’t seem serious at the time.

He had pneumonia and was put in single room. On Monday evening, he, Des and I hung out and joked around. It was easy to laugh, my dad was laughing as hard as us. The jokes were funny as they came from and went places. The back of my head hurt from laughing. As I said good bye I was looking forward to seeing an improvement in the pneumonia at lunch when I saw him next.

Tuesday at lunch didn’t reveal the improvement in energy I had been excited to see. There wasn’t the same vitality that had been there the night before. The symptoms of the pneumonia seemed to be less, he wasn’t coughing as much, but he didn’t really want to get up. His appetite dropped and while he ate the hospital food and some of the stuff we brought from home, he wasn’t attacking it anymore. Before I left that evening we chatted trying to get out by the weekend. We believe what we want to believe and that colours how we remember things. I know I felt that there was a good chance we’d be home for Saturday or Sunday and he could be back to dying from a brain tumor.

Wednesday he was moved to a double room although it didn’t make much difference. My dad slept most of the day, only getting up to go to the bath room and when the staff needed him to do something. He talked quietly and very little. It was almost peaceful because I didn’t know what I was seeing. To me Dad was sleeping off pneumonia, the medication was working and rest was what was needed. I left optimistic again for Thursday.

I would have missed something about this day had Des not pointed it out when it was happening. The patient that my dad shared the room with on Wednesday night moved out before noon on Thursday. The staff seemed to change the way they engaged my father. I didn’t really notice it at first, although I realized I had seen it when Des said “they seem to be regarding this as a palliative case now.” They were.

Friday was the same thing. The family at the hospital as much as they needed to be. The doctors and nurses doing what they do. IVs to help with this and that. I’m starting to feel my grief cycle ramp-up. Great early, good for most of the day and then the low points later in the day. The walk to the car as I go home this night chills my optimism more than it chills my skin. I know he’ll be there in the morning, I just don’t know how much more of this he can take.

Saturday, mom and I meet Des at the hospital. Nothings changed. The IVs are current. Dad is breathing and resting. Lunch, some other stuff, talk with the nurses. Do whatever it is we do, but as the day progresses, it feels different. The day light fades, and I have what I believe are to be my final moments with my father. It’s close to 10 pm as I get off the phone with an old friend who had shared a mutual fondness with my dad. The room is quiet except for the IV and the oxygen. My dads breathing is slower and lacking the consistency it held this morning. I hold his right hand, look at his face and wonder why I didn’t think it would be like this in the end? When we were in Ireland and he would pick me up and carry me, I couldn’t have imagined that between that moment and this one, the path our time together would take. Strobbing through my mind are pictures I have of my dad doing the things I remember. Laughing, working, driving, cooking, teaching, everything that my brain seemed to ever experience with him taking its moment to reveal itself and the memory that has become a piece of my personality.

There had been a linear decline over the last 7 days. I don’t know how someone leaves a parent knowing that they’ll never see them again but I did. When the phone rang Sunday morning I knew why I left.