Hope In Everyday Life

Sometimes, just getting by day to day can be an act of hope. My father has had a bad heart for years and that isn't generally something that improves as you age.

Dad has a problem with chronic ulceration on his lower leg as a consequence of poor circulation from a long-ago sports injury and from the venous removal for a prior heart bypass and as a consequence of a heart powering at maybe 40%. Due to the aforesaid sports injury, he also had a collapsed lung and one of his lungs has never been very good since, so he has maybe 60% of normal lung capacity.

Add all that together, along with the nerve regrowth pain from having a continuous, seeping, frequently infected, open wound of very large size on his leg and you have a life that comes with brutal pain in the leg, chest pain, chest heaviness, headaches, flushing and chilling, light headedness and unsteadiness from variable blood pressure, and challenges from getting fluid build up in the bottom of the lungs (shortness of breath, difficulty sleeping lying down).

Anyone having to deal with all of that on a daily basis could not be blamed for losing hope, temporarily or permanently. And there are very bad days. There's nothing quite like having a relative ask you to go get a gun and shoot him to offer him surcease from the pain (except of course being the sufferer of such pain).

And yet, he keeps going. Part of that might be a natural human survival instinct. Part of this might be that he knows Mom, gradually decaying from the reconstructive surgery from her run-in with a dump truck and from advanced osteoporosis brought on in part by prior run-ins with cancer earlier in life, needs him to help her maintain an independent life. Part of it might be that he clings to the faint hope that I'll straighten out my life and get settled down and be happy and give him and Mom some grandkids.

Whatever is behind it, he keeps going. Some days his spirits are really down (whose would not be?). But he keeps going.

Somedays, just getting through ends up (intentionally or otherwise) being a testament to hope and courage. I think a lot of days are like that for both of my parents, two of the most courageous and enduring people I know. The fact that they manage to worry about me and our many family friends while in the midst of their own challenges, instead of becoming totally introspective about those challenges, is amazing.

I've been very lucky to have two wonderful role models. Their courage in the face of adversity gives me an enduring sense of hope. I have always loved my parents and thought myself fortunate to have had the two fo them as my parents (even in my worst moments). As I age, I see even more clearly how blessed I was by random circumstance of where and when I was born and to whom.

I guess this post is just my way of acknowledging their quality as parents. They inspire me to keep on fighting the good fight and to endure. They show me that, when I think I'm having a bad day, it really isn't anywhere near as bad as others are having. They help grant me a perspective on my own challenges which seem meagre in comparison. All in all, they give me the gift of hope.

Thanks for that, Mom and Dad.

Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. -- Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), the Shawshank Redemption