usmcsis's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #399 well mama and i talked last night for the first time about daddy. the most we had ever said to each other before was that we thought he was a lot worse off than he would admit to us. we both have thought he's been having heart attacks over the last few months. but last night we both came out and said what we've been thinking, what we've been dreading. that he's dying. he's giving up. and i can't say, honestly, that i blame him. he's tired of this. he isn't really living and he hates it. he has lost everything that made him who he was in the past two years and he'll never get it back. i can understand why he doesn't want to go to the doctor. if he does they will put him in the hospital, hook him up to a bunch of tubes and wires and monitors. and he doesn't want to die like that. he doesn't want us to sit there and watch him wither away in some anonymous hospital bed. and i don't blame him for that either. looking back now i can't decide if the transplant was even worth it. he went through so much with it. he was in the hospital for over a month. he was delirious on morphine. mama and i had to help do everything. he couldn't shower or even use the bathroom by himself. he felt humiliated by the weakness. one day in when i was staying with him in the hospital last summer he got sick all over the floor. i had to practically carry him to the bathroom and hold him up while he leaned over the toilet vomiting blood. i helped him back to bed and got him a little bit of water in a cup. and he cried and cried when i got down on my hands and knees and cleaned the floor. he apologized to me over and over. he just kept telling me he was so sorry. it broke my heart. i got up and went to him, leaned down and looked him straight in the eye and told him he had absolutely nothing to apologize for ever. and i kissed his forehead and he closed his eyes and leaned against me and cried his heart out. i thought that would kill me. my daddy is the strongest person i know. it hurts to see him so weak and helpless. and i know it hurts him to be weak and helpless. he doesn't want us to take care of him. he's the daddy, the husband, he should be the provider. he hates it that my mama is killing herself at work everyday spending nine or ten hours on her feet and coming home so exhausted that she sleeps for hours and hours and doesn't even eat most nights. but we are doing what we have to do, what we want to do, what we need to do. he took care of me when i was a little girl and it's the least i can do for him now. i remember when i was little he loved to fix my hair for me. he would brush it and put it up in a ponytail or in a side-ponytail or braid it. he would brush it until it was so shiny. when i had trouble sleeping when i was a girl he would come in my room and find a classical station on the radio and pick me up in his arms and dance me slowly around the room until i was able to sleep. he made up songs to sing to me to lull me to sleep. he smoothed my hair off my forehead when i was sick. he brought me cool washclothes when i had migraines. he taught me how to ride a bike. he taught me how to drive. he taught me how to check my oil and change my headlights and wiper blades and how to change a tire. he taught me how to use power tools and how to paint and how to hang wallpaper. sorry, he's sick and i have to go. mama needs me. 8:36 pm - 27 Aug 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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