That's pretty much what I tell myself these days.
Keep your shit together, focus on the one hundred other important things that you should be focusing on and stop thinking about the fact that your Dad is dying. Forget the "4 years with treatment" prognosis and stop blaming the Oncologist. Erase the day you were working and your Mother called 2 weeks or so ago to tell you chemo was an "epic failure" and that your Daddy lit up like a Christmas tree on his CT scan. Stop listening to the voice in your head reminding you that your Father is now in the final days of his life and under hospice care. Try not to cry when you think about how scared you are to lose him but how much it hurts to watch his life get sucked out of him hour by hour. Don't get angry when someone says "sorry about your Dad" like he's already 6 feet under.
You shouldn't be sorry, that bastard cancer should be sorry. It wasn't there to sing to me songs about everything from trimming my fingernails to how much he loves me or even to dance to a favorite Motown tune when its time to check his blood sugar. Shape up, your pregnant...you need to focus on taking care of yourself and celebrating the life you are creating. Cancer didn't walk you down the isle sing to you to calm you down or hold your hand on the happiest day of your life. Cancer didn't push you through college and help you learn how to parallel park like a damn boss. Cancer will never feel my daughter kicking or live through me in every sarcastic expression or quirky word that I cannot help but say or even sing in tune when I belt out the hundreds of songs that my Dad loves.That stupid disease didn't get to spend 28 perfect years with the most loving father on the planet. I did. What the c-bomb might rip away from me in 4 short months is no match for what I have to hold on to.
This has become my inner monologue.
People talk all the time about how hard it is to grieve the loss of a loved one. There's even special Pinterest boards and blogs and what not for daughters who are grieving the loss of their fathers. But nobody wants to talk about how it feels to be in the process of losing their father. People will tell you how to grieve their death and how to cope with the loss and that it's ok to be sad for years to come. Why hasn't anyone attempted to talk about how it feels to be in the process of losing them? There are tons of support groups for those mourning the loss of their loved ones, but I have found it impossible to find a support group for people who are coping with the part that comes before that. So I write.
My OBGYN wanted me to get into counseling so I can talk about my feelings and I guess so I don't upset myself into preterm labor or something or like, have my water break when I am enjoying a slushie of some sort while crying. That's where my frustration started. I have great friends who call me and text me and send me facebook messages on a regular basis to check in on me, but I haven't found a place or an activity to actually feel better. Not yet. I still have hope that it will come. People have been asking me why I haven't blogged about the baby or anything else in a while. I guess it's because (those of you who have been through this know) when you prepare to lose a loved one, it consumes your life. Every minute is spent worrying about them and wondering what you can do to help and fighting with your inner monolog to understand what is the right thing to do or say or feel. Its horrible. Toss in 27 weeks of pregnancy, a little heartburn, working on my Masters, nagging my injured husband to death about putting up a ceiling in the Man Room (shit pit) soon-to-be-nursery, coordinating traveling for baby showers, trying to stay healthy, trying to be happy, David (my brother) moving to Miami, coordinating doctors appointments and going back and forth to Marietta to see my parents and you've got my recipe. Kind of like border line panic attack-meets "holy crap I'm a lot tougher than I think"...sprinkle in some pretty fantastic ugly cries and ta-da. Meet current day KP.
This isn't about me though. This isn't so people read this and feel sorry for me. This is therapy. Writing. Blogging. Whatever.
I WILL post about the showers and my Aunt being in town and how the nursery is coming along. I feel like it's healthy and deserved to be excited and happy for Roslyn's arrival. Trust me, the sorrow I feel every single day is a bungee cord of up and down when I receive a sweet text or like today when I arrived to TWO baby gifts waiting at the door. But as soon as I am excited, I feel the slingshot pull me back into my next thought. Which is about my Dad.
I'm never going to be ready to let him go. I had plans. I was going to get pictures of Roslyn taking naps on his chest in his recliner like I did so long ago. I was saving to buy my parents matching Kindles for their retirement gifts this May and exciting upcoming travels. But cancer had to go a screw all of that up. We are lucky though. We have an amazing hospice nurse who comes to check on my Dad named Victoria who is like this mid-western saint with fun socks and dry humor. She knows how to talk to us with this brutal, yet gentle, honesty and makes me believe that she farts daffodils.
I know the end is coming. I know that I have to step up and accept that my Dad will no longer be here in human flesh. I feel like I already know that his presence will be with me forever and that I know this is not the last time I will see his sweet face. I have dreams to look forward too, and that "feeling" when you know someone who you reallllllly love that you've lost is present. My Mother and David and I are in agony when we watch him struggle. When his sparkling blue eyes look at me and we hug and he is perfectly lucid...if only for a moment before he either falls asleep or becomes confused again. I know what is to come, but that does not mean that I have to like it or be ok with it. All I can do is soldier on and know that the intense bond and endless love between my Father and I was not given to us for no reason at all. It has made all of this bearable. My parents have a rock-solid and 45 year long marriage full of love. My stupid-faced brother and I have an amazing relationship and incredible spouses in our lives. We love our Father and he loves us endlessly.We also have a Mother. She is the one who will be left behind though all of this. But she can do it. She has unconditional love from all of us (including my Dad) and a granddaughter on the way. She may frustrate the hell out of us by refusing help and breaking down at every given moment, but I know my Mom -like my brother and I- will get through this with grace and class.
So I apologize for the random large breaks in my blogging. Life is more than crazy right now, but I will continue to do it because this is sort of like my diary.
I'm sure that my Dad has a tune he can hum to all of us to make even in the face of what is the hardest thing I have ever been though, seem ok. That's just him. He is the melody to my opus.
