Mourning sickness

Today is one month since my Dad died. I have been writing blog entries in my head since I found out…somehow I feel like if I put something on paper properly it will help me understand, help me heal. That really is a load of crap. As I am sure everyone else who has lost a parent knows, there just is no sense to be made really.

As I was gearing up to enjoy my friend’s housewarming party on

Labour Day, my Dad was having a heart attack at our local hospital. I feel somehow guilty that I was off having fun and drinking Sangria's as he was dying..As I was leaving for the party I called my parents house and not getting anyone left a message “Hey call me back with Dad’s number at the hospital, I haven’t spoken to him this weekend, hope everyone is having a good one etc.” My brother and I have since figured out that the reason no one answered my call was because he and my Mum had been summoned back to the hospital—being told that my Dad wasn’t doing that well. He has been in the hospital so many times in the past ten years it has become a family joke. I mentioned it in my speech at my wedding, as he had missed my university graduation because he was in the hospital getting his knee fixed, and helping mum and I move as he was getting his hip done. We joked that it was on purpose. Him wrecking himself to avoid family functions. This was the one time he was in hospital that I wasn’t worried about him. His kidney was doing well and he was going to start dialysis two weeks later. He had bumped his leg and it was all swollen so the doctor wanted him in the hospital to try to make the swelling go down. His body, having been poisoned for years with anti-rejection drugs, just couldn’t keep going any longer. And he had a massive heart attack.

This was just such a shock, and even as I write this I am almost distancing myself, thinking “this isn’t really real, he is just at home or at work”. The finality hasn’t sunk in yet, and I am terrified for that to come. I just miss him so much and I can't believe that he is gone. I am feeling a lot more spiritual in the past month. I am seeing things realizing how much he would have enjoyed them and taking them as signs from him. I am mad, not at him for leaving, but just that he is gone. I wanted him to get to be a grandpa, to be healthier and able to come to Philadelphia to visit me, to just be.

For the first few days after it happenned I kept waiting for him to come to me in a dream, tell me he was ok. I don't know why I thought that. Last night was the first time I dreamed of him, but I don't remember what he said to me. I have been spending all morning trying to remember. He was sitting on a bench, talking to me. I am trying to think of blessings like knowing he didn't suffer and he wasn't sick wasting away and that he knew how much my Mum, brothers and I love him...but still I can't be thankful yet, I can only be angry.