Post: #26

Sorry for your loss man. I hope you guys had a good relationship.

The only 'close' relative that's died on me so far is my grandmother and I thoroughly hated her. Suprisingly I was still very sad at her funeral.

Post: #27

My condolences to you and your family.

I lost my grandpa just two years ago and he also had COPD, so I know how it feels like to lose someone who has had that disease.

Keep strong and hang in there.

Post: #28

Kaii: Sincere condolences on the loss of your father. The death of a family member is one of the hardest, most bitter experiences of our lives. May you find peace over time. And live your life in a way that would make your Dad proud. I've got a name, I've got a name / And I carry it with me like my daddy did / But I'm livin' the dream that he kept hid...

***
To everyone reading this: How about calling your parents?

I know that so many of you are out there hustling, striving for great things, and there never seems to be enough time in the day. And many, if not most, of you here have chosen to lead lives that cut against the grain of convention and your parents just don't understand. You probably get quite a bit of flak from them.

But they're your parents and they love you. They want the best for you and (except in the rarest of cases) they've always done what they thought was best for you. I can think of fewer sadder scenes in this world than an aging Mom or Dad somewhere, not hearing from the son they raised from the cradle into young manhood. All you have to do is call; they only want to hear from you. Tell them a bit about your life -- but you can redact out the salacious details. (Oh hell who knows, maybe the story of your latest +1 might just warm Dad's blood...)

The Japanese say, with the wisdom of ages:
親孝行したい時には親はなし。
By the time you want to be a good son, your parents are already gone.

Call your parents.

Post: #29

You have my condolences, Kaii.

I lost my cousin and my last remaining grandparent last year. I know this is a difficult time for you. Things will get better with time, I promise. Stay strong.

Post: #30

Thank you all for your support and kind words.

Kaii

Post: #31

Condolences.

It's always sad to lose someone you love. Personally I think that we are immortal as soul, so you will meet again in one way or another.

I hope your father had an interesting eventful life.

Post: #32

Stay strong brother.

Post: #33

Condolences kaii.

Post: #34

So, my dad died a month ago today. I wish I could say I feel better, but I don't. I think the memorial last week really made it final.

At this moment, I don't seem to care about work, my relationship, hobbies, or working out. I feel just kind of empty.

Thanks again for all the kind words and support, just trying to get through this.

Kaii

Post: #35

Most genuine condolences.

Post: #36

Kaii, it takes time. You're still grieving and you cannot rush through that process. Just take it one day at a time, and you will get through this. I lost my own dad almost 8 years ago, and while I still miss him greatly, it does get easier by the years.

Post: #37

(07-15-2015 11:53 AM)Kaii Wrote:  So, my dad died a month ago today. I wish I could say I feel better, but I don't. I think the memorial last week really made it final.

At this moment, I don't seem to care about work, my relationship, hobbies, or working out. I feel just kind of empty.

Thanks again for all the kind words and support, just trying to get through this.

Kaii

Spend a lot of time with your family. Go for walks together, picnics, go to Church, anything that helps share the pain. You will get better.

Post: #38

My dad had a stroke a few months back. He's alive, but he's not the same, and it's been affecting me. I've never lost someone in my immediate family (mom, dad, siblings). He's 83 and before the stroke was in excellent health. Most of his hair is black, about a third is white, full head of hair. He has all his teeth, or all that I can tell, I actually have several crowns on my back teeth, but he has all of his teeth, all in good health. He can make biceps, they're big, he calls them "conejos," which means rabbits. He's a big man, tall and broad shouldered. He has a deep voice, I wonder if mine will get deeper like that as I get older. My voice is deep, but not like his.

Well after the stroke, his voice is different, it's not booming anymore. Due to the stroke, he fell. At first he thought he had fallen and hit himself, but then it came to him and he said, "I didn't fall. I blanked out and woke up on the floor." So as he came down, he hit his ribs on the side of the bathtub and made a very deep purple bruise about 4 inches wide, and running across his entire side, from the front/side of his chest to his back/side. He also had a purple bruise on his head, on the side, crossing through his ear.

I've never had an impact as hard as what he got during that fall in my life. So after the fall, he was fine, but in the days after, he started losing mobility, until he could barely move his arms and legs and couldn't even grab a sheet of toilet paper to tear it. My brother and I, but mostly my mother, would help him bathe and use the restroom and such, but eventually it was too much and he collapsed. He would have been at the hospital earlier, but he had refused to go the whole time.

I mean, I'm talking he's laying on the ground unable to move after one of the subsequent falls, with the paramedics that my mom called in the room, and he's like, "I'm fine, it's nothing." So the paramedics help him up (he's like 6'1" or 6'2" and fairly large, not obese, but a large guy, so my mom can't lift him, she's petite) and he's just like, "Ok, go now, I'm fine." My mom tells the paramedics to take him and they're like, "he says he's fine, we can't take him if he says he's fine." So my mom forces the paramedics to stay until she can force my dad to say he's not fine, which takes a long time.

So the doctors took him, drilled a hole in his head, and took out a lot of blood. Over the next couple of months, he recovers so much that now he can walk short periods without a cane. He never used a cane before the stroke, but he started using one after. It's been difficult for my mom, my siblings and I to watch this very strong man be affected like this. It's kind of like seeing a lion get old. You can still see the majesty of the creature, and it really hits you.

I keep thinking of all the times as a kid that my dad was awesome, how much he sacrificed for us, how he always put us first. Like he'd wear leather shoes with holes on the bottom to his law office while he would send me to school in the Shaquille O'Neal shoes, the ones that were black and white circles, they cost like $100 or $200 I don't know. I didn't even want them, I wasn't into the NBA or anything, he'd just buy them for me so I could have the best, you know? So then I'd go to school wearing these funny shoes, thinking, "I look so bad," and then all my friends would be like, "Whoa! You have the Shacks!!!" Haha.

So it's weird because it comes and goes, like I'll be just having a normal day, and then boom, it hits me, the feels.

I had a job when I was younger where people would call in and let me know about their loved ones dying, and it usually went like this, "He/she had a fall, and was never the same after that, then died after." So in my mind I'm like, ok, never move my parents to a snowy place, that way they won't have falls, and we can decrease the risk of that happening.

But after what happened to my dad, I now see that he didn't fall. Something snapped in his brain, his body collapsed, and he suffered a strong impact, causing more damage on top of the snapping in the brain.

So then we can see that if we take care of ourselves, and if we're lucky enough not to be taken out by a moped in Vietnam or a taxi driver in the Philippines or a drunk teen in America, or cancer, for example, we're going to live to a certain age. At that point, we might take an actual fall and break ourselves. Then we lose our mobility and life becomes something very trying.

Or we avoid the car accidents and the cancer and the falls. If we make it that far, then at some point, our brain snaps and we fall anyways and take an impact and lose our mobility and life becomes something very trying.

There's no out.

There's no out, that's what's waiting for all of us. For those of us that make it that far. If you all have never been to a nursing home, they can be clean, but they also make me think of one of the layers of Dante's Inferno. People repeating things over and over, people with missing limbs from diabetes asking for more sugar, people sitting there with their necks at a crooked angle, staring at a wall.

That's what's waiting for every one of us, and that's IF you're "lucky" enough to make it that far.

So my family's really close, and this thing has brought us even closer together, but it also had the effect of shifting my priorities in life. I feel like before I didn't value my time as much. And now my focus is on making good memories.

I just want to say that I hope all of us, every one of us, makes some good memories before our bodies betray us, as they inevitable will. Memories with romantic conquests, with loved ones, with friends, etc.

And I don't know about making it past 70 or 80 anymore. I'm 36, and I now see myself as having 34 years left. Anything after that is a bonus, even though in reality, even tomorrow is not guaranteed. So now I see things more along the lines of, "what memories do I want to spend my time on making in the 34 years, max, that I have left."

My dad's awesome. He lived a full life, and right now he's also living a very good life, all things considered. My mom dotes on him and I drive out there frequently. He knows I'm moving abroad soon, in part to search for a wife, and he tells my mom, "Don't worry about yourself, I've spoken to Spaniard and he will be making children soon, so you'll have someone to take care of once I'm gone. Don't worry."

My mom's laughing about that whole conversation, "It's so convenient how your dad always makes sure I have something to do, he's so considerate."

It's hard. And it puts things in perspective.

But mostly it's just hard, haha.

That's the gist of it.

Post: #39

@spaniard88

I got nothing profound to say. Hold your head up and do what you can while you are there for your father.

Sorry to hear.

Post: #40

Spaniard, your father is very lucky to have not only a doting wife, but a son who loves him as much as you do. When the time comes, he will die content.

Post: #41

(09-08-2018 10:40 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  Spaniard, your father is very lucky to have not only a doting wife, but a son who loves him as much as you do. When the time comes, he will die content.

Post: #42

I am sorry for your loss.

I have had the shock of a number of people that I knew pass away over the last few years. None of them were family members of mine but it still was a shock, especially with how sudden it was with a number of them.

One friend, that I had known of since college and had helped him and his family for a little more than a decade to the point where I helped take care of his daughter while he and his wife worked, passed away without warning a few years short of retirement. We use to talk about what he was going to do when he retired and also the extra time he would have to do things once his daughter was grown and away at college someday.

Then one of his friend's passed away a few years after that, and that guy was months away from being able to retire also. I had not seen him for a few years and I had tried to visit him in the weeks prior to him passing away, but always missed him and thought I would just 'see him in a few weeks'.

One of the people I knew from a customer site for years went to the doctor in May of this year, because he was not feeling well. He ended up passing away the week after 4th of July. He was in his mid 50s.

While I always knew and expected that as I got older, I would know more and more people that passed away, it is still a shock at how I am not even 60 and the number of people that I know that are simply 'gone' who did not make it to retirement age and there was nothing that could be done for them.

In the first two stories that I relay here, they did not even have a ride in an ambulance when their time came, they were just 'gone'. One of the 'dark humor' in both cases is that we (myself and my friends that had passed away prior to that happening) had discussed what could be done so all of their assets would not get eaten up with a long stay in a nursing home. Since both of them had various health problems, it was sort of expected that in their declining years they would spend time in a nursing home. Instead, in both cases, I got a call as soon as they were found (one never left his bed and was found when his wife went in to see why he had not gotten up for the day, the other was found slumped against a wall in the living room while he was getting ready for work that morning) and it was clear that they were gone. That was the part in these cases that was the real shock, not that they were gone, but that it happened with no real warning. Even in the case of the guy I knew at a customer site, it was only about 45 days from being 'not feeling well, to going out on sick leave, to having his funeral.

The friend that had the daughter that I helped take care of, I still help the family, because even though there is nothing I can do for him at least I can do something for his family. Once in a while I go out to the cemetery to visit his grave site. He use to go out almost every Memorial Day to the same place since his family has a set of plots there, plus his father-in-law a few hundred years in one direction, plus another friend of his that passed away in that late 1990s is about 100 to 200 ft in the other direction from his cemetery plot. The 'another friend of his' had no family when he passed away, so my friend was the only one that may have visited that grave; now I may be the only one to visit that grave.

The first friend it has been almost six years since he passed away and the other friend that was near retirement it has been a little over three years.

Part of me thinks that it is morbid that I think about this every day, and I do remember an old saying or belief that 'you are allowed to think about it, the death of a friend or loved one, for 5 minutes per day'. When I first heard that I thought it was kind of not enough time, but then realized it is a balance between being remembered but not to the point where it makes the person remembering sad or interferes with their ability to do what they need to do to live.

One thing that I does seem to be a recurring theme when remembering or thinking each day, is that I do not want to forget about any of them because if I do then they will really be totally gone and, in a sense, even worse than their having passed away.

With my friend's daughter I do mention things about him, and tell stories about him, as the opportunity presents itself, so she will remember him.

Post: #43

Sorry for your loss.

I feel you, I don't think a lot of people understand a lot about dealing with death in modern times. My best friend died in February 2017 at 25 and his parents are still dealing with his estate, bills, finance issues, insurance stuff, all kinds of shit I never would've thought of. Really sad.

Post: #44

I lost my Dad last year. Worst extended pain I ever felt in my life. It will get better over time. Surround yourself with loved ones and true friends.

Post: #45

Sorry Bro, thanks for feeling you could share that on here.

This is a really touching song about fathers, sons and legacy. Listen at 3.45 min. Makes me tear up, to burst in to tears at times. But there is a kind of peace after.








My father is an alpha, stoic, old skool as you can get. Never expresses feelings. I will most likely never tell him how much he means to me and visa versa. Sometimes I dont know if thats good or bad.

Post: #46

@spaniard88

You have a right to have these feelings. Don't downplay them. Been there myself, and in retrospect, you aren't fully an adult male until you see your father fail.

That was a beautiful post. You have helped many men by having your experience and taking the time to write it down in a ruminative way.

A long time ago, I read "The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming" by the Catholic priest Henri Nouwen.

The greatest insight from this book was when Nouwen recounted that he was having trouble relating to the parable of the prodigal son, of returning home and being accepted despite your flaws, until he realized that as he grew older, it was no longer his place to be the screwup son coming home to be accepted.

Now it was his place to be the father.

So, feel your feelings without excuse or shame, and trust the process of life. Your dad is lucky to have good son.

Post: #47

I lost my father 25 years ago. We were close. It really sucked and I'm guessing what you are going though is as bad. Hang in there, other folks really have been in similar situations and it was miserable.

Post: #48

Sorry for all of you that Lost. Make him proud.

On a different note, I now have 4 or 5 ‘friends’ on fb, who are dead. Of course they can’t log in to delete their account. They are like ghosts.

Post: #49

(09-09-2018 03:10 PM)Ski pro Wrote:  Sorry for all of you that Lost. Make him proud.

On a different note, I now have 4 or 5 ‘friends’ on fb, who are dead. Of course they can’t log in to delete their account. They are like ghosts.

I have some of these friends too. I generally like their Facebook pages better than the people who keep their pages up to date.

Post: #50

Sorry to hear about your dad, Spaniard. It’s difficult to see your dad go, and it doesn’t really get that much easier with time. But you learn how to cope and grow as a man with him as your model.