Comments on: Lucky man

By: BeethovenLives

BeethovenLives — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:54:02 +0000

I wish I could have had that time with my Dad. He had an interesting life that I would have loved to talk to him as an adult about, but luekemia took him at 59, when I was 15. There are so many things about myself I never told him. I suppose deep down all you can do is hope that he wouldn’t mind.

By: eyejunkie

eyejunkie — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:29:15 +0000

Beautiful and poignant as usual, LD. How often the close proximity of sorrow serves to focus our attention on the “core.” Thanks for sharing — and thank you to Pops for his service on my behalf.

Hope you and yours are doing well

much blessing,
Haley

By: SJnky

SJnky — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:22:54 +0000

Beautiful. I hope your Pops had a fantastic birthday, and it’s interesting (although heartbreaking) to realize all the loss he’s experienced in his lifetime. I guess the hardest part about growing old is that not all our commrades get to grow up with us. My grandmother has expressed the same thoughts numerous times, as she lays in the nursing home, and I wonder sometimes who it’s all serving–her? Us?

Very difficult questions, indeed.

Either way…the smile on your dad’s face is priceless! Lucky him, lucky you, and lucky kids.

By: hatched by two chicks

hatched by two chicks — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:05:31 +0000

You father is a treasure. I love getting to know him through this blog.

By: Lesbian Dad

Lesbian Dad — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:27:08 +0000

Thank you. I’ll definitely pass along your thanks to my Pops, Shane. My heart goes out to your friend. My mom’s breast cancer was diagnosed, but not its metastasis (text book, a 1st year intern could have seen it in the x-rays but not we as-yet cancer ignorant family members). A decade and a half later I am still getting to the deeper consequences of not having been able to wittingly say goodbye, or to ask for (and receive? or not receive?) any final benedictions. If your friend and her mother have the time for this, I’d encourage her to speed, speed to the core emotional work (whatever it is between them, or however they can engage it). Which I’m sure she’s doing as best she can, amidst calamity.

I do hope that if I’m as long-lived as my dad, I will have (by then) accumulated enough gratitude, grace, and internal fortitude to greet whatever it is that’s facing me, even if it’s with many fewer loved ones around me than I now imagine. (George Saunders said at David Foster Wallace’s memorial, “Grief is the bill that comes due for love,” and of course it’s true. All loves will end, somehow, usually in a way or time unexpected or unwelcome, and it still utterly boggles my mind.) For years following my mother’s death, I would look at old couples together — still do, really — and think: that is one of life’s hugest gifts. Old age with an old beloved. We never expected my dad to negotiate his final decades without his pilot.

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:38:12 +0000

Beautiful post as usual. Thank you for for posting it, and thank your Pops for his service for me.

I always figured a long life was a good thing. More time to spend here with those you love and some you don’t, but as I sit back watching someone close to me grasping for a way to cope with the very real posibility of loosing her Mom to breast cancer that should have been cought early but was not (malpractice suit forthcoming I am certain) it makes me wonder if shorter might be the way to go. Arrive to the party, hang out while it’s going strong, make your impact on the crowd, and exit quietly out the back door while no one is looking. I guess there is something to be said for both the long and truncated versions of life.