The Pain Of Living Longer Than Your Father
You ever have one of those moments where you become your parents? It's pretty damn scary. It's also pretty damn cool.
A few weeks ago, I had an incident where I had to call my daughter by her full name. You all know those..."Kimberly Ryan Moore, I need an answer ASAP!!" She got the point as she texted me in less than five minutes.
I was telling my therapist this last week and how it made me feel like my father. I started choking up and it took a few minutes to compose myself. We revisited the same thing today.
My dad died 32 years ago and I seem to have more of these moments lately. I'm not sure why but let's take a shot.
My father had his first heart attack at age 45. He had another twelve years later and died at age 57.
In my mid-40's, I started worrying about my mortality. My dad and both grandfathers died of heart disease. I figured genetics were not going to be on my side.
Every time I felt a twinge in my chest, I headed off to the local ER. On trip #5, my doctor decided to teach me a lesson by keeping me overnight and running a full series of tests.
She showed me the results and then the lecture began:
You have no signs of heath disease. You aren't your father. You don't have diabetes. You don't smoke. You're going to live a long time. Quit stressing over this. Learn the symptoms of a heart attack and stop going to the ER!
And I did!
So now I've lived five years longer than my father and yet it doesn't make me feel any better.
It makes me sad that he lived a short life. It makes me sad he never got to meet and spoil my daughters or his other grandchildren. He would have loved that and they would have loved him. It makes me sad when I see other men of his generation still alive and active and he didn't get that chance.
Sigh....sometimes life is unfair.
Over the weekend, I saw two friends write about missing their parents. One lost her mother seven years ago. The other lost her father just a few months ago. You can feel their pain in their writing. It runs deep in their soul. They wonder if the grief will end. It won't...and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not a bad thing to feel bad. At least you're still feeling.
The funny thing is it'll come up when you least expect. After thirty-two years, it's still there........