Surgery

My Dad had surgery on his badly broken foot last night.  The surgery went well and took almost 5 hours.  They put a few pins in and 2 plates. He didn’t get out of recovery until midnight, so I ended up not going to the hospital last night.  I get up at 6 am for work and I have just been exhausted lately.  My brother and sister-in-law were up there with my Dad’s girlfriend. He will have months of recovery and can’t put any weight on the left foot for 2 months.

So can someone please tell me why I feel so friggin guilty? Probably because I’m the girl and I’ve just always been the one who does ALL the caretaking. I guess I’m just having a rough week and I’m extra sensitive.  Doesn’t help that he was in the same hospital that my Mother-in-law was in having her hip surgery a month before she died 5 months ago. I don’t need a psychology degree to realize I’m avoiding certain feelings regarding grief and the eventuality of losing him some day.

He’s always been my rock and I need him more than I’d like to admit. We have been there for one another through everything.  That first year after my Mom died and he didn’t leave the house some days? He always called only me just to say he was still alive and so I didn’t worry.

Growing up when someone asked are you a Mommy’s girl or a Daddy’s girl? I never hesitated to say “BOTH!” LOL. I have always been close to both my parents and kept very few secrets from either of them.  I’ll never forget when I was about 5 and he took me to lunch so my Mom could clean the house on a Saturday. My brothers had gone to the movies with their friends. My Mom figured we’d go to McDonalds or something similar. But technically she didn’t specify lol. We went to this fancy and expensive restaurant with cloth napkins which is known for great steaks and lobster. Boy was she pissed when we got home and she had just finished eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Not that he had taken me there, but that we hadn’t brought her home any lobster 🙂

Well he was discharged a little while ago and I am going to the drugstore after work to pick up his prescriptions and then meeting them at his house.  I’m sure he is going to have some smart ass remark/joke about me not going to hospital last night lol. And that’s okay. I know he just feels more secure when I’m around as I do when he’s around. We’ve been through a lot together, more than most. My cancer, my Mom’s, the time I got roofied the night before Thanksgiving and stopped breathing on the way to the hospital with only he and I in the car and ended up on a respirator for 3 days. Oh and then the time when I was underage and got literally thrown out of a bar face first (not because I was underage because we all were but because I had given the bouncer a fake number a few weeks earlier). He thought he could do whatever he wanted because we were all underage and I guess they figured we’d never tell our parents. But like I said, I didn’t keep secrets from my parents. My Dad and brother made me take them right back while my friends waited at our house and point him out. The music stopped, the lights went on, and the bouncer tried to hide lol. He was a pretty big guy, over 6 feet, and my Dad just grabbed him by the neck, lifted him off the ground and made him apologize to me. My brother knew the bar owner and the rest of the bouncers/bartenders, so everyone hung back and just let him get what he deserved.

We’re family, always there for one another through thick and thin.  Yes, we drive one another nuts but we’re still there when it matters, no questions asked. And I think that’s what family means. More than simply a blood relation, it’s shared history and shared experiences. Family, friends, love, and laughter mean the most in life.  If you’re rich in those things, I think you’re pretty damn lucky.