All Rainbows and Unicorns

My Superheroes story was written in Fall of 2007. It has now been four and half years since my dad's stroke. I wish I could tell you that life is all rainbows and unicorns but that simply isn't true. There are bad days and good days. I would like to be all inspiring and tell you that we have found a way to rise above it all but that fact is we are human. We haven't risen above it. We may put on a happy face but it just masks the pain.

I am constantly asked how my dad is and how my family is handling it. While I truly appreciate those who genuinely care, I have to tell you that I hate that question. How am I supposed to answer that question? He isn't dying but he isn't great either. How do you explain to someone that my dad had to learn to walk again, and learn to live with the use of only one hand while the other just hangs from the shoulder, and his ability for driving has been limited? He can no longer play the guitar, go backpacking by himself, or have normal cognitive reasoning like the rest of us have. The things he once loved to do, have now become challenges. He is no longer the person he wishes he was. I can see it in his eyes how badly he wishes he could go back five years.

Sometimes when people have asked me that question I have actually answered "he's alive." I know how lucky I am that he is alive when he could have died. I try to tell myself each day that I should appreciate what I have while others have lost or are losing their loved ones. I know that there are people out there who are in worse situations than the one I am in. However, this does not console me. I really try and then when I get upset or down on myself, I just feel guilty about how ungrateful I am being. But frankly, I am just so angry.

My father's stroke has affected me on so many levels that I can't begin to delve into the specifics. I ask myself and "God" why this happened all the time. Is there some important lesson that I am supposed to learn? If there is, I haven't found it yet. Someone recently told that God doesn't let things happen to people who can't handle them. I think that is some one's way of making them feel better about what comes their way. Honestly, I don't know how much more I can bend before I break. But if what this person says is true, God has a lot more faith in me than I do in myself and in him.

Despite all the anger and sadness, I keep on keeping on. I wake up each morning and take on the day. I love my family so much and I am so thankful for having them. I try to look at the positive and appreciate the improvements and the accomplishments that my dad makes. And although today may not be all rainbows and unicorns, I try to remind myself that tomorrow will be.

Conclusion to only the Beginning

I wrote this story for a class in fall of 2007. I thought after a year of not posting, that I should finish the story. It has been 4 years since my dad's stroke so I thought now would be a good time to move forward and tell you what has been happening since this story ended.

Stay Tuned...

Now back to the story

My dad had finally progressed to a point where he could go up and down the stairs. In the beginning, he always had to have someone watching him. When he would go down the stairs, he would have to go down facing backwards. Since my dad was still paralyzed in the left arm, we had to put a railing on the right wall also, since the railing we had was on his left side.

One day my boyfriend(now my husband) and I were hanging out at my house. My dad was upstairs hanging out and my mom was cleaning. My dad decided that he wanted to go downstairs. My mom was busy and had asked us to help him down the stairs. I asked my boyfriend to watch from behind and I would watch from the front. I figured that if I were to watch from the back and he were to fall, I would go down with him. It was image that I didn’t find appealing. I watched my dad has he gripped the railing firmly with his right hand. He would slowly swing his left leg out and backward and then would lower his left leg down onto the next step. His right leg was obviously moving more smoothly than the left leg. My eyes became filled with tears. I was happy that my dad was getting his life back, but I assumed the first time I was helping someone walk up the stairs for the first time, that someone would be my child. I couldn’t get the image of my dad in his hiking boots, wearing his cowboy hat with his backpack strapped on out of my mind. This man could hike for miles, and now he is struggling to go down the stairs. It was a slap in the face. Last year my dad made a comment that he wanted to get all the backpacking in he could because he thought it might be his last year to go. I thought that he was silly for making that comment. How could someone with his determination and physical stamina not go up in the mountains for at least five more years to come? Maybe in the back of his mind he knew there would be a reason why he wouldn’t go this year.

I considered my dad’s stroke to be a cruel joke that someone was playing. He couldn’t go hiking, fishing, bowling, or even play the guitar. All of which are his favorite things. If his family were to be taken away, he would be completely stripped of the things he loved. Despite the outcome, I have yet to hear him complain or put himself down. He has never told me that he would never be able to do something. We already have plans to go camping next summer. He even speaks about when he will be able to play the guitar again.

Although his determination has been beneficial in his recovery, it has also been a hazard. One day my mom caught my dad trying to climb a ladder by himself. Another time when I was over at my parents, my dad had tried to turn on the gas fire place. My mom was cooking breakfast so we were all upstairs eating. When my dad was done eating he went downstairs. When he made it down the stairs he told us he could smell gas.  Within taking two steps down the stairs, I was overwhelmed with the smell of gas. My mom ran downstairs and turned off the gas. I opened every window and door in the house to air the gas out. It was so bad they were afraid to turn on a light in fear that it would cause a spark and blow up. To make matters worse, it was cold and raining. So while we were trying to air out the house, we were freezing our asses off. Luckily since then, he has been making better decisions. 

My dad’s condition is slowly improving but at least it is improving. The next obstacle we are all facing is a financial one. Since we have been home, the medical transport company has been trying to charge us sixteen-thousand dollars. That is double the amount they told us we would have to pay. If we didn’t have eight-thousand dollars then, how in the hell would we come with eight-thousand more. Then another company threatened to send us to collections because we didn’t pay the bill. My mom explained to them that we never received the bill. When she asked where they were sending the bill, it turned out they had mailed the check to our insurance company. Why the insurance company didn’t forward the bill to us, I have no idea. Since we had not paid the bill they wanted to charge us seventeen-hundred dollars. My mom was so frustrated with what she was hearing that she yelled at the company for how they were handling the situation. As a result, they arranged for her to only pay the original five-hundred dollars. With my dad out of work and my mom having retired in March, money was tight. Both my brother and I ended up having to get additional loans for school. I even had to get more financial aid from school to help out with the rest of my tuition.

Seven months have past since my dad has had his stroke. It feels like a year has gone by. Where we will be in year is unpredictable and it feels like it will be a lifetime before life is back to normal.

The truth of the matter is there are no superheroes, just people. And villains can come in any form-- even a stroke. No one lives forever and everyone can feel pain. People can sense it, people can feel it.  We want to believe nothing bad will happen to our parents and that they will live forever. But even though parents aren’t superheroes, they are still heroes. They show us who we want to be and who we don’t want to be. They help us overcome our weaknesses to find our strengths. They may not live forever, but my “super” heroes will live on in me.