Waiting

I've done a lot of waiting this year.  Waiting for good news.  Waiting for answered prayers.  Waiting for my belly to grow.  Waiting.  Trying to be patient and trusting.

I sat by my Dad's bedside as he slowly slipped from this world to the next.  For more than a week I watched, and I waited.  I waited for him to take his last breath.  Every moment wondering if this would be it.  Every night when I kissed him on the forehead and told him what an incredible Dad he was to me I wondered if I'd see him again.  Every night I fell asleep with my phone next to my bed, waiting for the dreaded phone call that was bound to come.  And then one night, about an hour after I had said yet another "final" goodbye to him, the phone did ring.  And it was it.  The waiting was over.  It had actually happened.  And I arrived at my parents' house just a couple minutes later and sat with him and loved him and cried.

And now I find myself waiting once again.  Though this time I'm not waiting for a final breath.  I'm waiting for a first breath.  A first cry.  I'm waiting for my heart to become whole instead of waiting for it to break.  

In just a few short days I'm going to give birth to our precious little girl.  Maybe on her due date, March 25th, which would have been my Dad's 59th birthday.  And when I'm in those horrible, painful moments of labor, I'm going to remember how brave my Dad was throughout his entire journey, but specifically during those final weeks.  I learned, as I held his hand, that dying isn't easy.  That it's physically exhausting and draining and challenging and heartbreaking and scary.  I learned that going from this life to the next takes courage and, if you believe in heaven and eternity with God, death is, in a way, being born into a new world.

I'm going to take what I learned from my Dad and tackle this labor with the same courage and strength that he showed me at the end of his life.  I dread labor.  I have had some pretty horrendous experiences in the past and I can already feel the pain of the back labor I've had with both of my previous births just thinking about it.  But I'm ready.  I'm ready for new life.  I'm ready for a little precious person to bring hope and joy and grace to our family.  I'm ready.  And so I will wait once again, but this time my heavy heart has been replaced with one of hope. 

Grief

As most of you know, I lost my Dad on Thursday night, January 31, 2013.  I've been taking a little hiatus from the blog.  I mean, how do you address something as major as this loss has been for me in a blog post?  And yet, it wouldn't be right to just carry on with my usual happy posts without even acknowledging the pain I am experiencing.  So here is my attempt to share just a piece of this journey with you...

I have always been a Daddy's girl.  Not in the way that might first come to mind when you hear that phrase.  He certainly didn't spoil me rotten or buy me anything I wanted.  I grew up in a family that believed in living a very simple lifestyle without a lot of frills or extras and that was fine by me.  No, I was a Daddy's girl in that he really could almost do no wrong in my mind.  We were very close throughout my entire childhood and into my adult life.  I loved to spend time with him, I was never embarrassed by him, and much to my mother's dismay it seemed like I always took his side in any disagreement within our home.  Trying to come to grips with the fact that he's actually gone has been very difficult.  In a way it all seems incredibly surreal...like it's just a dream that I'll eventually wake up from.  I'm not sure the reality of what has really happened has sunk in yet and I'm not sure if or when it ever will.

A part of me had been grieving for the last 10+ months of his life.  Watching him endure all he did was incredibly painful - trips to the ER last March following days of being unable to move at home and leaving undiagnosed, until they finally did a CT scan a week later and discovered a tumor that had completely eaten away one of his vertebrae in his back causing his spine to collapse...standing with him as he came out of anesthesia many, many times over the course of these months...being the only person in the hospital room with him last March when the spine surgeon came in and discovered that he was paralyzed from a hematoma that was pressing against his spine as a result of too much blood thinner given to him in the hospital following his major surgery and seeing him rushed off to the operating table once again...watching him work SO hard at Health South for six weeks as an inpatient and another number of months as an outpatient trying to regain strength with the hope that one day he would walk again - only to be told months later that actually the cancer on his femur and pelvis would never allow him to walk again and to immediately stop all the work he had been focused on for months...

holding his legs as my mom worked the lift to carry him from his bed to the living room chair - the two places he alternated between for the last 3-4 months of his life...so many trips to the hospital for radiation, blood transfusions, operations, all of which required transportation in an ambulance...sitting by his bedside keeping vigil during those final two weeks when his health plummeted so fast.  Waiting and watching for that last breath.  Telling him time after time of my love for him, that we would be OK without him whenever he was ready to let go, that he was such an incredible father, husband and grandfather, that I wouldn't be who I am today without him, that I was proud of him and proud to be his daughter.

I've been grieving.  I've been grieving for 11 months now.  And I know there is more to come.  I'll grieve the first time I step on the soccer field this summer and the realization that he won't ever see me play again hits like a truck.  I'll grieve the next time I make cheesecake and he won't be there to share our favorite dessert together.  I'll grieve when I welcome my daughter into this world in March (potentially on his birthday which is her due date) and he won't be there to proudly hold her in his loving arms.  I think I'll carry grief with me in some form or another for the rest of my life, but I know, I know, that he's not suffering anymore.  I know he's in a place where there are no more tears, no more pain.  I'm thankful that there is hope and life after death - but it still hurts.  And I still miss him.  And I think I always will.

 I love you, Daddy.