family

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There is a sort of emotional pain that is small and nagging - it's persistent and always there.  Like an achy joint.  It's annoying, but you can live with it and most of the time you don't even notice.

Then there is the emotional pain that is so overwhelming that it crushes the breath out of you.   You want to avoid it or make it stop, but the only way out is through.

You feel so pressed, so brittle - if somebody touches you, you'll shatter into a million tiny pieces.

I am familiar with this pain.

I need to understand that this is also the emotional pain that my dad is feeling right now.  His wife of 50 years has gone from being (in pain, but) relatively independent - to not being able to stand up or even use the toilet by herself.

How much will she recover?  Nobody knows.  We hope that she'll recover to the point that the doctor originally thought she would.  But it's going to be a very long time.

My dad is serverely diabetic, he has a cardiac history and he's 72 years old.  He's very afraid that he won't be able to take care of her the way that she is now and he's right.

The pain in that helplessness - knowing the one you love is hurting and not having the ability to fix the hurt...hurts.

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My mom is doing pretty poorly.  Her feet do not do what they're supposed to do and she's not strong enough to lift her body weight.  Her surgeon isn't talking (or showing up) and the therapist tell them that they need to talk to the surgeon.  She's depressed and right now I'm not much help in that regard.  She's also worried that Dad wants to put her in a nursing home...

Dad...is really scared that he's not going to be able to take care of her.  One option (if there's going to be an eventual improvement) is a short term stay at a nursing home.  Mom cries and tells him not to give up on her.

Dad cried tonight when he was talking about what he's going to do.

He's remembering when Aunt Joyce died and how my cousin and could not lift her when she fell and how they all felt when they had to put her in the home.

and he talked about how he doesn't know how my aunt copes with an invalid husband in a wheel chair - how does that work and what is he going to do?

And how my Aunt Pat lives alone now...

My dad is really down.  I don't know what to do.

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Robert & Julia Brown
I read your post today about your grandma - you are very fortunate.

I loved my grandma very dearly - but there was pain in her life that was evident until she died.  She had given birth to 9 (maybe 10) babies...5 of them lived to be adults.

My grandma and grandpa were married in 1919.  Grandma was 23 and Grandpa was 26.  I had thought they were younger than that.

I've written about a possible first child, Leila.    If there was a Leila, she would have been born in 1919 and died very young.

  • Jordan was born September 6, 1920 and died February 5, 1921...5 months old.
  • Lydia was born July 5, 1923 and died August 29, 1929...age 6
  • Robert was born January 17, 1922 and died September 30, 1923...age 1 year, 9 1/2 months.
  • Marian Ellen was born April 7, 1925 and lived to adulthood, but died before her parents in 1970.
  • Joyce was born January 17, 1927 and lived to adulthood.
  • Pat (Helen Patricia) was born May 26, 1932 and is still alive.
  • Marilla was born January 24, 1934 and died April 4...1935.

My Aunt Joyce once told my cousin that she never felt loved by her mother.  I'm sure that my grandmother was emotionally drained by that time...and lost yet another baby when Aunt Joyce was only 7.  Did Grandma fear (did she brace herself emotionally by being distant) losing her baby Joyce?

  • My dad, Thomas, was born a year after Marilla and missed sharing her birthday by a day...January 25, 1934.
  • My Aunt Roberta was born  August 12, 1937 and is also still alive.

Her first 3 (maybe 4) babied died and she lost another when she still had three children under 10 to take care of.
How would I - or many women living in the medically modern world today - have handled this grief?  Would I have done any better than Grandma?

The look on her face in the photo...this was the typical Grandma look.  If she smiled ever...I think it was seldom.  It's the same look she had in my parents' wedding photo.

The more I see life, the more I understand how important it is to draw into God in grief.

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I spent a while with my parents this weekend and my dad talked a lot about history. Times have changed and we forget how fortunate we are to live in a part of the world where life is taken for granted.

These are the graves of four of my aunts and uncles that died as babies (or young children). The first born died in 1921....(maybe). My grandmother and grandfather lost their first four (maybe five) babies. My dad told me yesterday that somebody in the family has my grandpa's Bible. The page where they recorded deaths is there, but the birth page is torn out. Just gone.

We had some very nice talks...about the past, relatives, time.