My Dad, My Hero

I've had this in my drafts for a while, it's what I read at my dad's memorial. I figured Veteran's Day was an appropriate day to post it because it focuses on how he had always been my hero... it brings back sad memories to read over these words again... I miss him so much.

----

Ever since I was a little girl, my dad has been my hero. I was in awe of him. As far as I was concerned he was the smartest, handsomest, funniest man on the planet.

It wasn't until I got older that I started to notice a pattern. I started paying more attention to the stories the our family and friends told about my dad. People always talked about how he was a stellar athlete, smart, kind, helpful, dedicated... the list goes on and on. What I started to realize, was that I wasn't the only person who looked up to my dad; I wasn't the only person who thought of him as my hero. Former teammates, friends, colleagues, and family all looked up to him for a variety of reasons. In these past weeks my mom and I have received countless emails, letters, CaringBridge comments, and phone calls and all of them have shared the same common message - that my dad was every bit the hero to them as he has been to me for my entire life. I had always thought that my feelings were simply the embodiment of the typical 'daddy's little girl' - I have since realized that it was not simply because he was my dad that I looked up to him as I did, but even more-so because he was the kind of person that everyone admired.

While Derek and I were planning our wedding, my dad was horrified at the cost of my 'dream' wedding. He always was a man who weighed the pros and cons of finances and he could not comprehend how flowers, a cake, or a wedding video could mean so much to me and cost so much. At one point, he made Derek and I an offer. He said that if we would elope and have a small wedding somewhere, he would give us the budgeted money for the wedding as a down payment on our first house. At the time, I was young and totally naive about both the importance of lilies AND the value of a down payment. I chose my dream wedding and even though I don't think he agreed with me at the time - he didn't argue again. For the remainder of the time leading up to the wedding he obligingly wrote the checks as the bills were due and held his tongue - even though I know it was difficult for him. On my wedding night, during our father-daughter dance my dad asked me one question that has stuck with me since. He asked if I was happy. I smiled and laughed and said, "Of course!" He looked at me very seriously and said, "Then it was worth it - every penny."

I learned an important lesson from my dad in that moment - that the memories that we make with the people we love matter more than anything else. I feel like my dad lived his life as an example of that lesson. 

Cancer wasn't supposed to happen to my dad. He spent his life being healthy and fit. It wasn't supposed to happen to him... the star quarterback, the Vietnam veteran, the man who taught me how to ride a bike and shoot a gun, who walked me down the aisle at my wedding, the man who had a secret handshake with my baby girl, and wanted nothing more than to throw a football with my son. Cancer stole my dad away too soon - but it can never take away the love, the admiration, and the memories that we made with him, right up until his last days.

--

There is a verse in the bible that I have relied on during some of the darkest points in my life. This verse comes from Hebrews chapter 6, verse 19. It reads:

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. 

At various points in my life, I have wondered if God had forgotten me. My plans and hopes for my life weren't coming to pass as I had expected - I was devastated and angry at God for these disappointments. I realize now that this was simply God telling me that he had better and more important plans for my life and this led me to understand the importance of hope. I have discovered that anything is survivable if we are able to hold out hope. Over spring break, during my last visit to see my parents in Arizona, I had an anchor tattooed on my wrist. Later that night, I explained the motivation behind it to my dad. I had hope for the success of his medical treatments and the possibility of remission, and although I didn't say it at the time, I had hope that my dad to come to Christ, to find his faith, and as a result, that even if our time together on Earth was limited - we would be together again in heaven. That hope is was sustains me today - the understanding that even though we are all flawed - my dad and myself certainly included, that we will be welcomed into the gates of heaven as children of God. So today as we say goodbye to this amazing man I feel that it is better for me to think of it as, "see you later".

I think I've said this before...

but parenting is really hard.

I thought it was hard with a newborn - no sleep, no clue what I was doing, pumping milk every 3 hours, spit up, blow out diapers, packing an entire car load just to run to the store... it was hard.

Then I had a toddler - suddenly I was operating on no sleep {okay, more sleep than in the newborn days but compared to pre-baby, it was hardly sufficient}. We had moved past the pumping and spit up and cruised right into a cupboard raiding, electricity outlet seeking, temper tantrum throwing 2 year old... and it was hard.

Then I had a preschooler and a newborn and shit hit the fan {pardon my language... but in some instances, we could be talking about actual poop here... this is the stage where potty training when horribly wrong AND I had a new born with blow out diapers}... and everything that was hard about the first two stages got smooshed together under one roof and this mama may have come ever-so-slightly unglued.

Now, everything that I've just written up there ^ is exactly why this blog has been neglected since Cohen's birth. Parenting TWO children is exceptionally more challenging than parenting one... and I would hedge a bet that it is even more fun with three, and four, and so on... but I have no intentions of discovering that first-hand.

So fast forward to now, I'm mama-ing a 4-year-old and an 18-month-old, working more than full time, grieving the loss of my dad, holding together a marriage that on some days feels like it's on the verge of crumbling down {and on others, feels like perfection.. go figure.}, and trying to do it all and make it look like it's no big deal.

So, basically, I'm a big, fat liar.

Like I've said before, parenting is hard. Being an adult is hard. Being a wife is hard. LIFE IS FREAKING HARD.

{I do have a point, pinkie-swear}.

In the pre-baby days, I could lose my shit - scream, cry, throw things, buy things, starve myself, do whatever it took to make myself feel in control. I looked like an idiot more often than not, but it worked for me. Even in the early days when Addison was so little that I could be letting loose with a string of swear words that would make a sailor blush, but as long as I did it in my 'mommy voice' and had a smile on my face, she was none the wiser. Then, she started to get it. Addison knew when I was mad or sad, reacted when I was angry, and paid attention to whether or not what I did matched what I said I was going to do. Suddenly, I had to follow through. I had to watch what I said. I had to be a PARENT {read: role model} and it was terrifying. Back in the days when Addison was tiny and she cried or did something naughty, I could soothe or scold her and move on with life. However, four years old means memories and grudges tiny broken hearts over tiny broken promises. Four means laying down the law and teaching respect and asking WHY did it seem like a good idea to bite daddy... four means shit is getting real.

Addison is a mini-me... it's adorable most of the time - she's wonky and silly and loves people and runs on high octane... but minus a nap or with an unplanned change in the schedule or just because the moon is full, she can turn into a small, but mighty terror. Please understand, that until she turned three, I just thought that 'those people' with 'those obnoxious children' simply had no parenting skills and knew that no offspring of my womb would EVER dare act that way sohelpmeGod. Mmmmhmmm... That was the naivety of a first time parent. I know better now. The higher the stakes, the classier the joint, the more likely it is that my child will do something crazy. And I never wanted to be 'that parent' with 'that kid'... so I scolded and I YELLED. And then one day, Addison dropped her drink in the kitchen and I turned around  with what I'm assuming it the typical "take cover, mom is going to explode" look... and my kid flinched.

My child was scared that I was going to yell. She was expecting it. And it stopped me dead in my tracks.

{^ point, if you missed it}.

I don't want to be that mom. I want to be a mom who has well-behaved kids because they don't want to disappoint her, not because they fear her. I want to have kids who come clean about their mistake before I even find out because they know that I am a safe haven and that even though there will be consequences - they are SAFE. I don't want to be the mom who screams. I never want to see fear in my child's eyes.

So, I'm starting over. I don't think you really get to do that but it's better than mucking through the way I've been going. I read several articles today as I planned this blog and, as He has a way of doing - God guided me to this decision and gave me the resources and the support from other mom's to say that I'm not going to yell anymore. {I realize this is the goal, and not likely the actual reality... but I'm talking about my children, so I'm setting the bar high.} I'm taking the OrangeRhino Challenge. 365 days {and hopefully many, many more - of no yelling}. I may vent on here, I may lock myself in the bathroom to count to 100, but I will do my absolute best not to yell.

Because as I realized today... that even though I carried these two tiny humans inside my body, pushed them out into this world, nursed them, and fell madly in love with them - THEY ARE NOT MINE TO KEEP. God blessed me with these to precious souls and has charged me with caring for them and raising them up until they are ready to go out into the world and do His work. When I fully realize that these are children of God, not just children of Stefani and Derek, I feel even more pressure to do the right thing. And the right thing, the thing that God has done with me, is to raise them with love. God has never yelled at me and I want to mirror that parenting that He has shown me. I want to be worthy of being called 'mama' by these two precious souls.

So, my first step, is to stop yelling, to treat them with love and to be honest with myself, with God, and with my children about the kind of parent I need to be.

Today was my first day... 364 to go {and hopefully 6552 after that...}

I had one major trigger and I snapped, but I didn't yell. I caught Addison coloring in pencil on the door panel in the new Pilot while we were driving to the store. When I realized what was happening, I snapped at her to stop and give me the pencil. I asked her why she thought it was okay to color on the car {and herself, which happened yesterday when she came home from preschool with washable marker toenail polish, fingernail polish, lipstick, and body paint}. Then I handed her a wipe and made her clean up every mark of pencil we could see. She didn't get a treat at the store {as she had been promised} but I explained that it was a consequence of making the choice to color on the car. She didn't like it, but she didn't cry and she still held my hand as we walked across the parking lot.

I have a long way to go and I know that I am going to slip up more than once and end up back a zero, but I can handle that as long as I can turn around when juice goes crashing to the floor and not see fear in the eyes of my child.

I will do this. With God, all things are possible. {Matthew 19:26}

Here is a list of what I've been reading today:

Orange Rhino Challenge
10 Things I Learned When I Stopped Yelling At My Kids
When Your Temper Scares You
How To Have A Temper Tantrum {This is the one that started it all for me... it brought tears.}
The Passion of Parenting

The pain and the loss...

I haven't blogged in awhile. Not because of a lack of topic-worthy events, not because I haven't been craving the time and emotional release that come with writing... simply because life has spun out of control so quickly that I'm just now feeling that my feet are back on the ground long enough to start trying to process things.

On June 9th, as I was waiting to board a plane to Las Vegas with my husband, anxiously awaiting the celebration of our 9th anniversary - I answered a phone call that changed my life. My mom was on the phone and she very calmly, very clearly said the words that I've dreaded since I was old enough to understand their meaning.

"Dad died this morning."

Four words. Less than two seconds of my life. And yet everything changed.

I don't remember how long I was in the phone, or what I said next. I don't remember getting off the phone or how I told my husband. I just remember looking around the terminal at the airport and feeling like somehow, even though I was in a crowded room - I was completely alone. My life was crumbling around me and the lives of all those people around me were continuing on as planned that day. All of the sudden there were decisions that had to be made right away - get our luggage and go home, board the plane? My mom had begged me to go on our trip - to try and have the vacation we had planned. My rationale was simply that Vegas was two hours closer to Mesa, and that once we arrived in Nevada I could make travel arrangements to get the rest of the way. So we boarded, and in a haze of tears and shock, we made our way south.

Once we were airborne, I dug out my tablet and started to write. Putting my thoughts down in writing has always been a form of therapy for me. At first I didn't know what I was writing, but it quickly became clear to me that it was something that I would read at his memorial. Something I wish I would have written and read to him much earlier in life. I am still working on that piece of writing, and I will share it here once the memorial has passed. This piece, this entry, serves a different purpose. The blog that I am writing today is selfish, it's focused on my feelings, my pain, my loss. The piece I'm writing for the memorial is focused on my dad, on his life, and on who he was to so many people.

When I was in the 7th grade, I lost two of my grandparents within weeks of each other. In September, my mom's mom passed away after a long battle with breast cancer. Less than six weeks later, my dad's dad passed away from complications with emphysema. I watched both of my parents grieve their losses, make final arrangements, and try to pick of the pieces of their lives to move on. In that short time, I came to understand very clearly, that someday, I would lose my parents. It's something that we all grow up understanding to some degree, but it always seems like it must be so far in the future that worrying about it and imagining what life will be like or what will need to be done, is nearly impossible. Even when my dad was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2011 and after he came out of remission in early 2013, I never really could wrap my head around the idea that this disease could kill him. Logically, I understood it. I knew that his cancer was very aggressive, that the treatments hadn't been successful, that we were running out of options. But, the idea that my dad would be gone at 68 was something that my brain simply couldn't process. I have lost someone who has been a part of my life from the very beginning - someone who brought me home, loved me, protected me, taught me, guided me, and shaped me. I still have a hard time understanding how the world can continue on, seemingly without a hitch, while it feels like my world has come to a screeching halt.

The only other loss that I've ever felt that has compared was the loss of my pregnancy in spring of 2011 - just before Dad was diagnosed {I wrote about it here if you missed it...}. Losing a baby before you ever get to know them is a heart-wrenching, soul-crushing experience. I already had a child and I knew the capacity for love that my lost pregnancy represented and I grieved it very deeply. I knew I would never see that baby's face, hold him in my arms, send him off to school, or have any other beautiful moments with him. That grief was hard to stand because, on one hand, I felt like I had no right to grieve for someone I had never known. On the other hand, there was a loss of life and of potential that was simply too agonizing to ignore.

I feel like losing my dad has been equally agonizing, but for almost opposite reasons. I cry because I have so many memories - good, bad, funny, scary, mundane, special - and I loved him so deeply and knew him so well that his absence has left a gaping hold in my life. I know that these memories are something to treasure, and eventually, when the pain of loss is no longer so acute, I will cherish them and share them with my mom and with my kids as they grow up. Right now however, it's the knowledge that there will be no more memories with my dad to make. Even last night, as I was organizing pictures for a book I'm making for my kids, I caught myself thinking it would be fun to go on the boat again with Derek and the kids and my parents. In the next moment I was caught with a lump in my throat and I realized, again, that there would not be any more boating trips with my parents. I won't get to fish with my dad again. I won't see him on the bridge of our boat, grinning at me. Those times are done and THAT is the part that hurts. It seems unfair that he is going to miss so much - he had so much life in him and so many plans. He looked forward so much to being able to toss a football around with Cohen, taking the kids camping and boating, traveling with my mom, and countless other hopes and dreams that will never be realized. It breaks my heart to look ahead and see what he's going to miss and what my kids are going to miss. Addison and Cohen will never KNOW their Papa. They will see pictures and hear stories but they won't have any memories of their own with him. As painful as remembering is, the thing I fear even more is forgetting. I worry that I'll forget the way his eyes crinkled with he really smiled, how he always squeezed several times during a really good hug, how his voice sounded, and a million other things that made him MY dad. I recorded his voice-mail message on my phone so I can replay it but that will never even come close to being enough.

I do have things to be thankful for, despite this loss and all the tears. I'm thankful that I had an amazing relationship with my dad. We certainly didn't see eye-to-eye on everything {I learned my stubbornness from him} but from the time that I moved away to college, we never ended a phone conversation without saying our "I love yous", we played cribbage often, and hiked up to see Praying Hands on my last trip to Arizona.

My single regret is that we never had the graduation dinner that he promised me almost a decade ago. Before he retired, he used to have lunch at the Met in Seattle. I begged him to take me there and he promised me that when I graduated from college he would take me to dinner. Since then, I've graduated with three different degrees and each time we've joked that it was finally time to have our special dinner - and each time things got in the way. I looked forward to that dinner for the better part of two decades - not because of the food {which, I'm told is amazing} but because that dinner meant that my dad was proud of me and THAT meant more to me than anything else I could think of.

I don't know how you are supposed to end a post like this other than to say that I was lucky enough to be the daughter of an exceptional man and I am thankful for every moment that we had together.

Papa finally has a boy to love on...

Summer 2012

Summer 2012 at the summer house

The last picture taken of my dad,  five days before he died.

A letter to myself at 20...

First picture [age 20] taken circa 2002 on Dad's weekend at WSU {and obviously not on a digital camera}, second picture [age 31] taken this fall. We are in the process of selling/packing/eventually moving and I wanted to participate in this post but wasn't about to climb into the attic to retrieve a photo from EXACTLY ten years ago. Please forgive.

Dear 20 year-old self,

As I sit here and look at your smiling face I find myself trying to think of the things that you need to know to survive the next ten years. You are so young right now - although as a new college student, finally living on your own, and experiencing life in a whole new way - you think that you've finally made it to the adult world. There is so much that lies ahead of you - both good and bad. You will experience some of the highest peaks and lowest valleys in the next decade but you will come out of it a better person - stronger, wiser, and with a vision of what you want the next ten years to look like.

You are two years out of high school and starting fresh at WSU. Little do you know, you have already met the man you are going to marry and with whom you will create a family you never dared to dream of having. You will cross paths with him several times and through mutual friends, you'll spend time together. Then, one night - when you have been careless and others have malice on their minds, he will save you. He will carry you home, keep you safe, and respect you enough to keep his distance. The next morning you will understand how much differently the situation could have been. You will start the friendship and eventually the relationship that will lead to your vows just a few short years from now. On your wedding day, you will be caught up in all the details and emotions, and the idea of being husband and wife. Shortly thereafter, you will buy your first home, start to search for a career, and begin to think about a family of your own.

During these first few years of marriage you will learn a lot about yourself and about your husband. First, and foremost, that neither one of you are perfect. You will learn to fight and make up, negotiate and compromise. You will find yourself wanting to throw in the towel somedays and others you will be hoping and praying that he doesn't give up on you. You will learn that you picked up more from your parents' relationship than you ever thought possible - about roles in a marriage, acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and you will discover that you are very much like both of your parents - much to your surprise.

You will decide that you no longer have the desire to find  your birth parents - something that you have waited for all your life. You will finally be mature enough to see that you have all the family you could ever need and that no stranger - blood relative or not - could be more important that that.

As a result of your first degree, which you earned carelessly I might add, you will find yourself unable to settle on a career. You will go to work for a small school district tutoring middle school students and working at a summer camp your first year. That experience will show you that your guidance counselor wasn't crazy and that teaching really is the profession you want to dedicate your life to. You will go back to school at night and will come out with a teaching degree and dreams of educating middle schools in literature and writing. That summer you will search for work and miss out on one opportunity after another. You will be devastated but it will work out perfectly because a language arts position will open up at the school you had been dreaming of teaching at and you will find yourself setting up your classroom that August.You will spend each year trying new things - some that will succeed and some that will fail. You will have the chance to find friendship among your colleagues and they will mentor you and guide you when you get in over your head. You will come to love your students and will learn that middle school truly is your calling. You will watch your first group of 8th graders move on to high school and you will be there in the stands, cheering them on the day they graduate.

You will decide to start a family and after two years you will begin to feel the stress and weight that come with infertility. You will meet with doctors and surgeons and specialists who will all tell you that, while having a baby is not impossible for you, it is not likely. You will suffer through tests and procedures and will again and again hear the same devastating news. You will reach a low at this point - you will feel inadequate because you can't give your husband the child you both want so badly. You'll question whether it's fair for him to have to be married to you even though he will reassure you every day that there is no place else he'd rather be. You will finally hit a wall where the options will have run out - you're young and there won't be enough money saved up for IVF. You will give up on trying to have a baby and simply try and get yourself back together. One of the ways you will do this is through acupuncture. One month after you meet with the naturopathic doctor, who is also your friend, you will discover that you are pregnant. It will be a Sunday morning in mid-January and you will go to church and cry throughout the sermon in sheer relief and awe. You will learn several months into pregnancy that, although your body was able to get pregnant, it is not well suited for staying that way. At 28 weeks you will be put on bed rest until your due date. It will be miserable but you will crawl into bed one night after watching the Seahawks game and wake a short while later to your water breaking. You and Derek will rush to the hospital and the next afternoon you will welcome a beautiful, healthy baby girl into this world. Motherhood will change you on a molecular level that there are not words to explain. The center of your universe will shift and your purpose, your life, will revolve around this precious baby girl.

It won't take long for you to discover that parenthood is both exhilarating and terrifying, energizing and exhausting. You'll forget what it means to sleep until 10am or to drop everything and drive to the beach or to a movie. You'll learn that you never leave the house without a diaper bag and a change of clothes and that any errand you run will take twice as long to prepare for and twice as long to complete. You will watch this little baby that you nurtured and carried for nine months grow into a baby, and a toddler, and then a child. You will marvel at how fast the time flies and how much things can change in week, a day, even an hour. You'll learn what it means to have a blood relative for the first time and it will give you a sense of belonging and home that you have never known before. That little girl will teach you patience {and test it} and will give you the chance to see the world through a new, fresh pair of eyes. You will marvel at snow and pretty rocks and stop to watch the leaves blow across the park. You'll take her to the ocean and watch her squeal and kick and the salt water washes over her and the seaweed tickles her feet. You will look at her and realize that you never fully understood what love was until she came into your life. You will also want her to have the one thing that was missing from your life as a child - a sibling.

You will fight the same battle to get pregnant again but after six months you will see that + sign appear. You will know in your heart this time that something isn't right but you will refuse to admit it to anyone. Less than a week after discovering the pregnancy, you will discover the blood. You will find yourself in a sterile ER room, looking at an ultrasound, and listening to the doctor explain that there is nothing there anymore. The life that was growing inside you will have vanished and you will feel the soul crushing loss of a child. You will want to curl up and die those next few days and the agony will drive you to scream one moment and cry the next and stare blankly at the wall after that. You will find yourself sobbing on the bathroom floor and a tiny pair of arms will wrap themselves around you and a little girl will crawl in your lap. She won't say anything, but the tears in her eyes will be enough for you to see that you have to be strong and you have to pull through because that beautiful little girl is counting on you. So you will start to piece yourself back together. You will reconsider for a while the idea of having another baby - the fear of another loss outweighing the potential joy of another life.

Not long after the loss of the baby, you will be hit with equally devastating news. You're dad will go in for a routine appointment for back pain and will discover that he has multiple myeloma - a cancer that is eating away his spine and bones. You will watch your dad age ten years in the matter of a few short weeks and will find yourself in mid-summer, sitting next to his hospital bed, holding his hand, and praying to God that he will pull through. You will stare at the tubes running in and out of his body, hear about the chemicals being pumped into him every day, and watch as he becomes more fragile with every passing hour. There will be a point where you believe that he won't pull through - and for the first time in your life you will begin to realize the gaping whole that would be left if he were not to survive. Thankfully, he has taken care of himself and has the stubborn, iron will that you have inherited and you will watch him slowly, painfully slowly, begin to return to his former self. It will take cutting edge science and months of rehabilitation but eventually, the dad that you have known and loved all your life will start to make his recovery.

You will decide to try to have another baby and just before your 30th birthday, you'll discover you are pregnant again. This time, the baby will stick but you're pregnancy will be wrought with preterm labor and bed rest again. You will make it to 29 weeks this time but in mid-February, you'll rush to the hospital with contractions and learn that you can either stay there for the next 11 weeks or stay at home in bed. So again, you will find yourself on bed rest - but this time will be so much harder. You will be a bystander to your daughter's life for what will feel like an eternity. She will come to expect you to be in bed, will understand that you can't play with her because 'your tummy hurts', and will turn to her daddy to meet all her needs. And just like always, he will be amazing. He will parent, keep house, care for you, work, and still manage to have a smile on his face most days. When you go into labor this time, it won't be on your own terms. The baby will be in distress and  you will be induced. It will be terrifying to watch the heart monitor for hours on end and wonder if everything is going to be okay. But you will deliver a perfect baby boy the next day who was simply wearing his umbilical cord around his neck. You will learn again what true love is and you will realize that, with each child, your capacity for love only grows bigger. You will fall in love with this little boy and you will be brought to tears watching his big sister fawn over him every chance she gets. He won't stay little for long and before you know it you'll be watching him crawl across the floor as you are searching Pinterest for 1st birthday party themes.

The next ten years will probably be filled with more change than at any other point in your life. You will have to be strong, have faith in God and the people you choose to surround yourself with, and realize that no good thing in this world comes without hard work and dedication. A good marriage is work. Being a good parent is work. Being an educator is work. Maintaining worthwhile friendships is work. Nothing good in this life comes for free... but it is so worth the effort that you will put into it. You will look back on yourself in ten years and wonder where the time is gone, wonder where those wrinkles came from, and when 9pm became your bedtime. You will still feel like you are a 20 year old impostor - pretending to be someone much more accomplished and mature than you really are. You have an amazing path laid out in front of you. Enjoy it. Savor every moment because minutes turn to hours, hours turn to days, days to weeks, and weeks to years... and in the blink of an eye you'll be 31 and left wondering where all the time has gone.

Love,

Me

-------

Linkin up with MamaKat