[Apr 2013] Compassion in Grief

I am scheduling events in my calendar, and I don’t really believe it. It is absolutely unbelievable. As if it didn’t happen to me and to my daddy. I have events in my calendar like “Choosing grave”, “Going for father’s ashes”, “Father’s funeral”, “Mass for father”. So unbelievable, so distant, while I still have the reflex to grab my phone and call daddy to talk to him. Or that I just step by the hospital to visit him. Or many times I just don’t think about it, as if everything was alright, and he was living his little life at home, carefree…

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[Mar 2013] Broken Family Idyll

Today is my first morning without my father. I can hardly get out of bed. I hardly woke up and I am already thinking about how to say to mother that we should not hire the cheaper mortician from next town, because it is complicated and conflict-prone to bring him to town, even if it is cheaper. I want to keep the family peace as much as I can, but I don’t want to create a conflict about the funeral. I am afraid that she is not going to understand the situation and my point, no matter how nicely, kindly, and calmly I try to say it.

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[Mar 2013] The Day my Father Died

After finishing our lunch, we went home with my car, but I asked my brother to drive. I sat to the rear-right seat. I prefer travelling there, especially because I wanted to hide from everything and everybody. I didn’t want to be noticed at all. I asked my mother to wait with all the phone-calls for a while, we could figure out everything at home. She told me that she had already told it to three of her friends. But when? Right away after I called her? Or during they came to the hospital?

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[Mar 2013] The Death of my Father

It is Friday evening. It was exactly 13 months ago, when we started our fight with cancer, and now I am sitting at your death-bed in the Oncology Institution, and I am watching your last breaths. Your last roommate could go home today, so there is only you and me in this two-bed room.

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[Mar 2013] My Father’s Last Days

Tuesday

I knew this was the beginning of the last days. I knew it for sure. I was still lying in my bed in my apartment, when my brother called me happily, that father was let home from the hospital. I couldn’t believe what I just heard.

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[Mar 2013] Intact Soul in a Rotting Body

It is Sunday evening, and I am back in the city. I am at the hospital with my father. In the familiar, intimate atmosphere. The city outside is far away, nearly sleeping. Everybody has done everything for today. Even the hospital has quieted down. In most rooms the night has already arrived. Even the resident nurse has returned to her room. Nobody and nothing disturbs us. Time has slowed down, nearly stopped. Nothing matters to my father outside this room anymore. He has nothing left to do in life. This feeling has caught me as well. I have to go to work tomorrow, but I don’t really care. Now it seems so far away, that it may never come.

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[Mar 2013] Relief in the Mountains

I still remember vaguely from morning, that the boys woke up and were preparing for the day, but I kept on sleeping. The next picture is one of my friends knocking on the glass-door of my room from the terrace. I opened the door, and the freezing cold air blew into my face. He asked me if I wanted to join him, but I said a firm no. I didn’t want to go anywhere. He went back skiing on the mountain, and I went back to sleep. I only woke up a few hours later. I haven’t had such a good long sleep for a very long time.

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[Mar 2013] March Madness

It had been a long hard week already, and it was only Thursday afternoon, but I knew the pleasant part of it was going to start, because we were going to go skiing with my friends next day. Wednesday morning we had brought father to the Oncology Institute to stay there for the first time, after another very difficult night. It was a relief to me, after the previous days, when he had been feeling really terrible. He could hardly sleep because of the pain and the water in his lungs again. My mother was really stressed out after those horrible nights they had suffered together. It was a relief to all of us – maybe even to father – when his oncologist told me to bring him in the hospital and let them treat and take care of him there. She told me that they were going to clean his lungs and fix whatever they can. So my father had got into good hands, my mother was able to sleep again, and I could go on my trip more peacefully, with less worry.

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[Mar 2013] Death Sentence

Last evening I felt quite good, but I couldn’t fall asleep until very late, so I knew waking up this morning will be difficult. And it was, especially because I knew today was going be a very hard day. I started at the hospital in the city, meeting with my father’s oncologist, in order to talk about the results of the latest CT-scan and the things to come. Meanwhile my father had to go to the nearest hospital from their home with my mother, because he had water in his lungs, that had to be drawn out. I decided to turn off every communication tools, until I can talk to his oncologiest. Then I wanted to go home to them and tell them about the certainly bad news.

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[Mar 2013] Fighting Hard

God can see my soul, I am fighting so hard day in and day out, to keep myself together, to live a healthy life, in the middle of elemental storms attacking from all directions.

I’ve read a book of a psychiatrist, who had a patient, a young woman. She was always complaining whining, although she had everything to be happy, to live a successful life. But instead, she was always blaming others for her misery and failures, and never did the things she sould have done. He asked her if she had ever seen a disabled child trying to draw. The woman didn’t understand the question. He explained it to her: the child grabs the pencil so strong that it almost breaks in half, his little eyes google, they want to fall off their places, his vein wants to blow up in his neck, his tongue lolls out of his mouth. He hasn’t got much from God, but he uses every little drop of what he has, in order to create something on that paper. He is fighting with all his parts. And what does the woman do? She got everything, but all she does is crying that nothing works for her. If one day this little child meets God, I can see, that he is told: “Good job, little boy, you really did everything you could.”

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