Saturday, July 03, 2010

And I'm not talking about Robert Downey Jr. in this post...

I told my friend Payam tonight that time was ticking and I needed to log a blog post before the clock struck midnight. I asked "what should I write?". He said "what was significant about today?". Hmmmm it was a jam packed day of errands, dinner with friends, shopping, movie watching, internet surfing, reading, beauty treatments and other insignificant things. When I really looked at it, one thing stood out.

The most significant of the day was realizing how I'm not ready for my parents to leave the planet.

Wow. Heavy thoughts from a silly girl huh? Well recently my dad, who going forward will be referred to as Little Donnie, gave us quite the scare. Short version of the story is that he fainted on the golf course on a hot day (really it was cardiac arrest), went to the hospital, was told he was having a heart attack, was rushed to another hospital, had a stent put in for the blockage and then ended up having a defibrillator and pacemaker put in. A lot of stuff for an active 80 year old to have going on, but he came through it like a champ.

He's out of the hospital, and can't drive for 46 more minutes(well officially in 46 minutes it's tomorrow), so my sister and I have been doing driving duty to the various things he and my mom need to go to.

Today was my job to drive to cardiac therapy at a local hospital. Cardiac therapy is like a mellow, very supportive gym that isn't a meat market and has emergency personnel available at a moment's notice. Little Donnie took his place on the recumbent elliptical machine and put in an hour long work out. Afterward, we ran an errand, going to Sam's Club. Little Donnie likes to have bagged salad and bananas on hand at the house, and of course, why wouldn't you go to a super warehouse store for those items?

While we were at Sam's Club, he told me to drive into the gas station there to fill up my gas tank on him. I felt like a teenager that just learned to drive, and my dad was making sure the tank was full before I took the car out on my own the first time.

Then inside Sam's, we walked around the store as he put stuff in the cart, and I was transported back to when I was his little helper at the home improvement store, in charge of pushing the cart.

Driving back home, and just chatting with him in the car, I realized that I haven't had my fill of conversations with him as an adult. I appreciated how fantastic he is, and how lucky we were that something bad didn't happen last Tuesday. I'm not ready for Little Donnie, or Joyce Ann (my mom) to go anywhere any time soon. Thank heavens the doctors implanted his little power source in his chest - kind of like Iron Man lite - and that it keeps on glowing (figuratively) indefinitely.

Little Donnie is IRON MAN.

2 comments:

Seestershelly said...

What a great post about Little Donnie (who I refer to as Big Dad). we need to take a moment to appreciate that our 80 year-old parents are with us, in fairly good health. What I want to know., why didn't he fill my car's gas tank on Friday? I told you, they like you best!

Anonymous said...

Nice.

BB