Oh where to even begin this blog post...
hmm. I've been pretty
sucky about not posting regularly because life has flung me both moments good and bad that can all be encapsulated as chaotic.
The short storyShortly after St. Patrick's day, actually two days after on Friday, March 19
th my dad suffered a heart attack. Luckily, he experienced the heart attack in the hospital and even luckier - he had minimal heart damage and was released from the hospital the day after. He continues to do remarkable with his recovery and after taking a week off of work - he returned to his normal routine.
The longer versionI got the phone call from my brother who told me that Dad had been admitted to the hospital but not to head to Riverside just yet. YEAH, RIGHT is what went through my mind as I verbally said, um...
ok to my brother. I hung up the phone, quickly changed from my pj's to jeans and a sweater, put my shoes on as I was walking out the door.... crying... hysterically... while
handsome's kids watched. Oh, what a moment that was. The thirty minute drive felt like 30 billion years and I was bargaining with God like you could not even begin to imagine.
I pulled into the hospital parking lot, the same hospital where I was a week prior visiting my brother, sister-in law and newest member of our family - Paige McGee. It's the hospital where my other niece and only nephew, my brother and myself were born as well. Only life began here... not ended.
There was no news that differed from the 187 times I called my brother and as I ran into the hospital I hugged both my brother and my dad's fiancee,
Khanh. Ryan (my brother) and I negotiated on who would call all ten of his siblings and argued over who would call the grandparents, my dad's parents. Each sibling had a different response but the consistency of care and concern remained.
I will NEVER forget when the doctor walked in the room and we all stood there looking at her and at each other...waiting for words, good words to come out of her mouth. "He's out" she said...in unison we repeated her exact words. "Is he awake?" I said. "Yes, come on in and say hello to him", she replied.
Walking through several sets of doors, we then turned a corner where a curtain had been drawn on a specific patient. A patient I know as Dad. We all hugged, the tears flowed heavily and we all told him exactly how much we love him. The doctor came by to explain that there was 100% blockage in one of the artery's and a stint had been placed into that artery that caused the heart attack when the blood flow stopped. With the stint, the blood flow returns to normal and that there was minimal damage done to the heart itself.
There are about nine million other details I could bore you with but I am so TIRED of talking about it, explaining it and thinking about it because as happy as I am that he is doing so well, the rethinking and rehashing is almost too unbearable at times to think about.
I will leave with one interesting conversation I had with my dad shortly after his follow up with the cardiologist. My dad stated that the doctor really couldn't explain why he had the heart attack, my dad if fit as a fiddle, mostly everything in moderation, not a smoker, practices meditation but the old DNA is where it gets us....family history of heart disease, high cholesterol until he started using
lipitor. What my dad said next will forever be imprinted in my memory "Kara, it's like they can only guess what happened, they don't know for sure. In fact, only one person knows for sure- God." My dad rarely talks about his faith so I was stunned but I felt like he was ready to hear it so I followed with " I know exactly how you feel Dad, I experienced the same frustration when I was going through infertility." I felt like he finally might have a sense of what I went through the bitch of the diagnosis that is unexplained infertility. Anyway, enough of that.
*****
I vaguely mentioned above that we had three of
handsome's kiddos visit us, all at once - which is like crazy to go from being a household of two and then exploding to five in one day. Fortunately, we had his youngest for a few days before the others to help get us into gear but whoa.... three kids. We were totally outnumbered and yet I loved every (well, mostly every) minute of it.
*****
Handsome, as I mentioned before, is Jewish and I have attended temple with him several times. Happily, we have found a temple that is accepting of inter-faith couples and has a great rabbi - think Joe
Pesci meets Danny
Devito and speaks Yiddish. I hope that I can *eventually* get over the awkwardness, fear and anxiety that plagues me as I walk into temple. The Jews are very welcoming but certainly not stupid and I feel as though every woman is scrutinizing this
shiksa, from top to bottom. The last time we attended temple, the service was great and I was able to really pull the main lesson from the Rabbi's message. Thankfully, the temple here in
Murrieta has the phonetic pronunciation of what the congregation is saying in Hebrew so I was able to *fake it*, kind of. The sad part is that this temple, the oldest in
Murrieta - has some of the oldest people in
Murrieta attending it.
After we said our
Shabbot Shalom's to our neighbors and the other 30 people in attendance, we were greeted by both the Rabbi and the President of the temple. They were
ecstatic to see people in attendance who were not medicare eligible, who might have children, young and gasp- JEWISH. They were both so nice and welcoming. Handsome explained that it was imperative that the temple we attend MUST accept interfaith couples.
Ahhh, did I tell you that I am so in love with him. He has, never once, asked me to convert because he knows that I identify myself so much with the Catholic church. And this is where it gets difficult to think about let alone type out here in the world wide web. I love that when I attend temple it fulfills a piece of me that hasn't been fed in years, perhaps since I attended Catholic school. Apart from the latest crisis the Catholic church is facing, I have other issues - for the past several years I have not been able to understand what most of the
priests say. I have decent hearing but it feels like there is some passion being left out of their sermon and I have never once thought - I can't wait to come back next week and attempt to decipher what this guy is saying.
Ok, back to where I was before I spiraled out of control....My temple experiences have been both spiritually rewarding, cleansing and thought provoking to the point where I am considering conversion. I know, I can barely believe that I just typed the words myself.
The part of the world we live in is HEAVY CHRISTIAN and I mean a big emphasis on the word heavy, which is great because I am happy that people are finding faith and boy does the local Barnes and Noble have a pulse on the local demographics. The
Judaic section was 1/8 of the Christian side and folks, numbers don't lie. I was happy to find
Judaism for dummies which I promptly purchased and have already begun to get a really good idea of this new religion that has brought some clarity to my life.
*****
Sydney has been adopted to a good home and yes that was a sigh you felt on this side of the computer screen. My heart is still very heavy regarding her mental health but handsome and I speak about her almost daily and always with good memories.
*****
Handsome's mom resides about 20 miles from my grandpa and we went and visited both last Friday. His mom is an excellent physical condition however she has full blown Alzheimer's (he has to remind her who he is, each time he
visits her - YES, totally heart breaking) and my grandfather is sharp as a tack (wanted to discuss the Ted Kennedy autobiography and the passage of the health care bill after learning that handsome is from Boston and democrat) coupled with a myriad of physical illnesses.
We were talking about growing old which sparked the question - when we get older and if you could only have one which would it be - Your physical health or your mental health?
Here's hoping we get to keep everything healthy, as long as possible.
