From Dragonfly: All the Tools of My Program

It's when the worst things happen that I am so grateful for the recovery I've obtained and the new tools I've learned to help me "walk through" life's downs. It's so easy to walk through the ups, but it's the downs that balance those out that are so difficult for so many of us. For me, I found some healthy ways to walk through the bad news of yesterday...

My father has fast-growing, terminal, brain cancer... That word "terminal" just sat with me like having eaten the most foul brick of food in my life. In less than a year, my father will no longer walk this earth. With such a complicated past, this reality made me know for sure that I've forgiven my father. All I want to be is by his side. I hate thinking that he may be alone when he passes.

Of course my step-monster is there. However, when I called last night - at dinner time where they live, my dad's wife was no longer at the hospital. She was in her car, headed to her "bunko" night with her girlfriends. They received such horrible news just hours before, but she couldn't cancel her plans and be by his side. Perhaps he was sleeping, but he'll likely wake in a panic. Only nurses will be there. My dad can't express all his needs since his stroke. Only my step-monster knows his needs.

I can't get too mad at her, though. Everyone deals with loss in different ways. Everyone, especially care-givers, need to take time for themselves. You can't take care of another person if you fail to take care of yourself. But, I am selfish and I don't want my dad to die alone. I don't want him to lie in bed thinking of life's mistakes. I want him to feel loved, cared for, and prayed about. I want him to know that people are and will shed tears for him. If I were there, I would stay. I would help. I would happily be his voice and advocate.

Instead, I am in cinder block walls behind a barbed wire double fence. Never did I wish circumstances were different more than this moment. The powerlessness of loss, while incarcerated, is intolerable. I've learned of women losing children, spouses, siblings, parents, and best-friends. We mourn together and apart. No one here knows the loved one who is dying or died, but we all somehow feel it. We all understand that inability to be by the bedside or at the funeral. The real idea of "furlough" does not exist. It is rarely granted for even 24 hours, and it costs thousands when it is.

I'm lucky though. I have my program to lean on. I have all the tools I've been provided over the years to help me walk through this experience. I am unable to control this situation and I'm not going to waste my breaths trying to. My thoughts and prayers are with my father constantly. I will reach out to others and hold nothing inside. I will get a lot of fresh air. I will feel (something I failed to do for 20+ years). I will accept.