Your Dad's Diagnosis

Your dad needs help and cannot live alone anymore. He has been found several times cold and unconscious. He hasn't been eating properly. What are you going to do about that? 

These words are still echoing. What can I do about a father I never had? 

My father has been diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy or PSP. 

I don't know much about it - except that it is not curable. He is 63. We haven't spoken to each other since 2013. I have no desire to do so. I offered some financial help and so did my brother. I am surprised with this turning of events. 

Not only did my father survive my mother, but he will also, I am afraid to say, as opposed to her, die a slow death. It seems like even in that regard they could not agree or be similar. Not even once. They were married for 33 years when she died. I didn't use the word happily. Now that I think about it, their marriage helped me learn and conceptualize the word happiness. Their marriage was anything, but a happy one.  Their marriage also helped me define what I don't want in a relationship. 

I feel bitter now. My dad was not the luckiest of all men. Even at the beginning of his life. I feel sorry for him. I want to remember him from the times we were on vacation in the 80's. Most of those memories are happy ones. We went fishing, walking, swimming and for the most part our Summer's were fun. We didn't have a lot of money, but we had enough. We didn't have to strive or to push ourselves to be happy then. It just was what we were. 

Maybe what exhausts us is the constant pressure we feel that we have to be happy. That we have to be happy all the time. A sense of normalcy is not enough.We have to see fireworks all the time. But no sometimes it's just me, no fireworks. No toasts, no fancy dinners. 

Life was simple then. We knew nothing about the sacrifices adults have to make, or had to make, so we could have a decent life. I wonder now what other sacrifices have them made to be married for so long. Even if it has been an unhappy marriage, it must take a lot of sacrifices to endure unhappiness for that long. 

I am still wrapping my head around the circumstances my dad now faces. I have no idea how he reacted to his gloomy diagnosis. I can't help it, but feel lost and devastated. For what we could have been as a family. And had that happened at some point in our lives, what would have I become? 

My motives are very self-centered I am afraid to say. I like to play scenarios in my head. Had my dad been someone, would I have become someone as well? Isn't that how the cards are mostly handed over? 

I can't help, but wonder. What now, dad? What now?