Father’s Day: NOT JUST ANOTHER DAY
On February 16th, I posted, “When I get married, me and my dad will dance to this for the father daughter dance”. My dad literally LOVES 24K Magic by Bruno Mars. Like if you know then you know, this fool cuts up when this song comes on ! 😂🤦🏽♀️
If I just made that post and that was that, well then, I’m sorry, that just wouldn’t be my life! 🙄😫🤦🏽♀️ Here comes a twist to that post.
On February 18th, my mother called me and said, “I think I need to take your father to the hospital because he can’t really walk on his own again and he feels dizzy”. Ok, so for me that’s a no brainer, “aight, take him and let me know what happens”.
After he kept telling her that he doesn’t need to go, she finally gets him there. He gets admitted.
I go up there. He’s out of the room for testing. They roll his bed back in. He’s weak. Struggling to open his own water bottle type of weak. They move him to another room and I leave after some time.
He stays for a few days and it’s determined that he needs to go to a facility that does inpatient physical therapy to help him to be able to fully walk on his own again. After some back and forth with the insurance companies, they finally decided that they would pay for him to go somewhere. But they decided that he would go to rehab at Future Care. 🤔🤷🏽♀️ Ehn wasn’t a fan of that, but whatever, I guess just get him the help he needs.
Some time goes on. It’s time to transfer him. My mother is gathering his stuff and giving me stuff to carry. He goes to get dressed. He stands up and is trying to walk all fast to the bathroom, which is about 5 feet away from the bed, if that. His gait is slow. It’s hard. It’s as if he’s suddenly become an 93 year old man who has to stomp with his slow shuffle instead of taking long, normal strides. That scared me. Like whoa, could this be something that was permanent? Could this be the beginning of his old age and deterioration? Would we not be able to dance to 24 k magic?? But I brushed that to the side and kept on doing what I needed to do. So he’s now at Future Care.
One day I was there, he said, “That show still come on”? “What power, yeah”. “Oh ok, we gotta watch it”. “Yup when it comes back we can”. That was cool to me cuz I actually like doing stuff with my parents. So to hear that he was wanting to do that was cool. But I was still concerned. Concerned because he was still there and there was no telling of when he would be released. This was now the second time he was in the hospital, and now rehab this time, for this same ailment. Clearly, something was wrong. Something more than vertigo like he was tryna claim. “If I can just get this therapy for my inner ear, then I’ll be fine”, is something that he kept saying. I found myself growing more and more impatient and annoyed and losing the compassion that I had when it all started. This was happening for two main reasons. 1. It wasn’t vertigo and I was sick and tired of him TELLING the doctors to just treat him for that. Like SHUT UP and let these doctors work so that you can be HERE and healed! 2. He was still be stubborn and saying that he was going back to work when he was released. Like umm 😐 🤔😒🤦🏽♀️😯🤬🤯🥺 WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! Are you TRYING to die?!? Like none of what he was doing or saying was making sense! Clearly you aren’t suffering from vertigo, your experiencing residual effects from the stroke that you had!! Clearly you need to retire because you keep having health issues! What if you were at work and passed out while delivering mail and nobody was around to help you because they were all gone to WORK, just like you were working?! Then what?! You’d just be dead or a vegetable, unable to do anything for yourself!!! Like I’m sorry, but ain’t NO job or amount of money worth losing your life. Quit while you’re ahead and choose LIFE. Those are the thoughts that I was having, at least some of the recurrent ones anyway.
So some time goes by and he’s like really OVER being in that “I’m just here waiting to die” place. It seems like he’s not getting out but he was only being prepared. Prepared for what his new life would be. You know a life that was much slower and not constantly running. One where he could enjoy his time and the people he loved the most. March 19th, he finally came home. He was now in outpatient physical therapy, but for some odd reason, he still thought he was going to be returning to work. So I finally let it go. I said ok, whatever, it’s your life, do as you must. May 5th, I was finally able to say, “thank you for choosing retirement 🤗 well really to live...”. I wish I could say it’s because he finally came to his senses but naw that ain’t why. He told my mother something along the lines of, “well I guess I should go ahead and sign the papers cuz ain’t no other way we gonna have money coming in here” . 😂😂😂 But hey, either way, a signature on them retirement papers is a SIGNATURE, and I’LL TAKE IT!
Moral of the story is, life happens, and it happens quickly. You are not above hardships, we ALL have them. Some big, some small, many, or few, we all have things occur in our lives that really give us a run for our money. Cherish your life. Cherish your loved ones. Pray fervently, because the Word does say that the prayers of the righteous availeth much and that we should pray without ceasing! Be open and honest with your family about your needs. Tell God about what you’re going through and what you stand in the need of. He can handle it! It seems as if we have all the time in the world, but trust me, when things change, you’ll feel like you never had enough.
So today, I’m grateful. Grateful because my dad chose better. Grateful because he chose to put work behind him and to just live. Grateful because he’s alive and well. Grateful because he’s still here to get on my last nerves, and boy is he GOOD at that. Grateful because I was just able to celebrate my birthday with him on Thursday. Grateful that I have a dad. So HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to my only dad, I love you!
❤️MrR❤️
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