When Mary reached her 25th year, I sent this note to her.<\/p>\n
Hi Mary;<\/p>\n
I remember when I turned \u201ca quarter of a century\u201d.\u00a0 It was a very exciting time in my life.<\/p>\n
For your birthday, I thought I would put some thoughts down about what it meant to me at that time, and since, and some of the things I would do differently if that were possible.\u00a0 You can save this to remind you of your DAD in the future.<\/p>\n
The first thing that comes to mind is that I was only 23 when my DAD passed away.\u00a0 Right off the bat, I really wish that I had been able to spend more time with him before he passed away, because for years, I wished that I had been able to talk to him about so many things.<\/p>\n
There have been so many times when I wanted him to be there to be proud of me for my achievements.\u00a0 There have also been many times when I wished that I could call him up to ask for guidance or suggestions, or to just listen to what was going on in my life.<\/p>\n
I had far more time with my mom than my DAD.\u00a0 When I think back, one thing that made a really huge difference for me was when I was 17 years old.\u00a0 I remember my brothers hating our father for so many reasons, he was too hard on them, he wanted them to be the best they could be, and he wanted them to succeed – probably many of the same things that all parents want for their children.\u00a0\u00a0 Because he was older than most parents when he had me, 59 years old, he wanted to try to keep us from experiencing some of the same painful things that he had encountered in his life-time.<\/p>\n
So when I was seventeen, it dawned on me one day that I could stay angry with him for the rest of my life, like my brothers and sister, or I could change how I felt about him and not be angry.\u00a0 I remember that it was a conscious decision.\u00a0 I realized that I didn\u2019t have to like everything about him, but I could still love him because he was my father.\u00a0 I began to look to him differently, with love and admiration, because I realized that he was as much a product of his upbringing as I was.\u00a0 Then I realized that his parents were the result of their parents, and their parents, etc.\u00a0 So many of the things we all do are just learned behaviors that have been passed down from generation to generation.<\/p>\n
One of the things that I decided was that just because I had learned certain things from him that I didn\u2019t agree with didn\u2019t mean that I had to continue acting the same way.\u00a0 I could change that too.\u00a0 I could stop certain behaviors that had probably gone through many generations without question.<\/p>\n
Some things happen at an unconscious level that we don\u2019t even know about.\u00a0 I remember being asked why I wanted to become a doctor during interviews for med-school.\u00a0 When I really thought deeply about it, I realized that I first got the idea when my \u201cpop\u201d as we called him, was diagnosed with prostate cancer at the age of seventy-two.\u00a0 I was twelve at the time.\u00a0 In those days, cancer was a very scary word, and nobody walked around saying that they were a cancer survivor.\u00a0 I remember the look of fear on my mom\u2019s face when it was first learned that he would have to have surgery and the results were not known whether they could remove it all.<\/p>\n
I must have picked up on the fear in the family, but because I was the youngest, I was most likely kept the most in the dark about what was going on.\u00a0 Looking back, I realize that I wanted to somehow save him from dying.\u00a0 That childhood wish turned into a strong desire later on to study medicine.\u00a0 When I talked to others who pursued medicine, they almost always had a similar event in their life that led them in that direction.<\/p>\n
Because I started down that path, I ended up becoming a respiratory therapist, and treated many children with CF.\u00a0 Little did I know that would be of benefit later on in my life.<\/p>\n
My parents had divorced when I was nineteen.\u00a0 I struggled with my mom\u2019s decision to leave my father when he was almost 80 years old.\u00a0 Obviously, she had her reasons, which I never asked about.\u00a0 It must have been a very painful decision for her to make as they had been married for over 30 years.\u00a0 It\u2019s funny how emotions can build up and finally take their toll, like the proverbial hair that broke the camels back.\u00a0 I know that my dad never got over it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Mary reached her 25th year, I sent this note to her. Hi Mary; I remember when I turned \u201ca quarter of a century\u201d.\u00a0 It was a very exciting time in my life. For your birthday, I thought I would put some thoughts down about what it meant to me at that time, and since, … <\/p>\n