El, I lost my father, who was my pal, 9 months before I had surgery. It was his death that crystallized all my thinking about the consequences of living life out of control. His father died a few weeks after I was born, of a massive stroke. My dad had his first stroke at 59. After that, it was hospital hospital hospital, bypasses, mysteries, deteriorating heart muscles, diabetes complications, exhaustion, horrible quality of life. He had always been active and was a nationally known landscape gardener & floriculturalist, but he had lots of bad habits, including yo-yo dieting He was never obese, but was often pudgy or even fat. Yet he ran up hillsides like a mountain goat. We worked together for 12 years after he taught me the trade. He was so proud of me being a third-generation gardener, and I had the knack. But my heart was in writing and art, and where I live, winters are from hunger when it comes to work.
My younger brother Tim and my older sister Kathy both emulated Dad's bad habits. They both developed diabetes. Tim also had multiple strokes. Kathy ended up having one amputation after another and her health problems made it impossible for her to carry a pregnancy to term. I was sitting next to her bed when she passed a five-month fetus and barely felt it. All in all, it was a horror story.
Tim was also an alcoholic and drug user. He was the only one of the eight of us who had this problem, though four of us (including me) lived the getting-stoned & drunk life for a few years in the Sixties and Seventies. Tim just never quit. In 2008, after I'd lost so much weight and was 6000 feet in the air on my first mountain hike, he was being airlifted to Harborview Trauma center with a brain bleed. He spent 81 days in that hospital undergoing so many procedures and in one coma after another. But eventually they stabilized him so he could go back home and with his wife's care, he lived until 2017. He died at 56, a year after my mother, who died at 93.
Kathy seemed to want to die, though she'd never admit it because she espoused Christianity. But when I was with her, and her husband had died and her obnoxious children were verbally and emotionally abusing her, she exuded pain and self-loathing. Everything she had went to her kids, every second of her time. And those children, unfortunately, were the worst people on earth. They were poorly raised by her & her late husband, but they kept getting louder and worse. They had no concept of kindness. They didn't even visit her in her repeated hospital stays, as doctors took toes, then feet, then legs up to and above her knees. By that time she was in a coma. She was only five years older than me and she died a year or so ago.
So I had a lot of people in my family (well, I had a lot of family--18 pair of aunts/uncles, 70 first cousins) to look at. I saw in my family history a lot of overindulging of every sort. I knew that could be me, but I was always rebellious, mostly because they said rude, mean things about me & my looks. I was kind of cute & sexy & they were jealous, so they did everything they could to kill my ego. To this day I'm not close to any of them, and after Mom died & we sold the house, I divorced them all. I had resolved to have the surgery after Dad died and part of my motivation was to make all the fat ones feel bad. That backfired because they were so good at being mean. They acted like nothing had happened. Only Kathy congratulated & complimented me, but she never knew I had surgery.
You're not lucky to have lost your dad, but you are lucky he didn't hang on for years in a horrible state of health. That's the only thing you can take comfort in now. Losing my dad was one of the worst days of my life. I had no idea I had a scream buried so deep that when I let it out, it felt like my guts were coming with it. I wept for days. I fainted on stage at his funeral. I barely remember the intervening days. He was my bridge, my buffer, my pal, and when I lost him, all that was left was my own sorry life. I didn't want to do to my son what he did to me--checking out early--so I decided to change my life. That was the cherry on top of the love we had for each other. Had he not died, I probably never would have gone forward with a resolve to change my health and my life expectancy.
I hope a year from now you won't be feeling sorrow about your dad, but grateful for what you have accomplished and learned. Stay true to yourself & live the life you deserve. You are loved.
Here's me with my maternal grandmother. I was 24 and she was 74. She died a year later:
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And my five sisters and one brother at Mom's 90th birthday party in 2013, though she was born in 1922 (2/22/22, in fact). I don't know where my little bro is. He was there, in his wheelchair. You can see clearly why I wanted to change my life. My late sister, Kathy, is in front, on my right:
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The whole fam-damily in the mid-1970s, contrary to the photo caption. I remember the night it was taken. I look goofy as hell and fat, but in fact, I wasn't. Well, at least not fat. Goofy, yes. My little brother Tim is on your far left, sister Kathy is far right. We cruelly talked about how fat Kathy was. If we hadn't been so mean, if we'd given her an ounce of consideration, maybe she wouldn't have actually become obese. She probably doesn't weigh 170 pounds here but we all valued being thin. Vicki, in Hawaiian shirt, weighed about 110. I weighed about 120.
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So El & all, right now, even though so many good things are happening to me, hearing about the grief of others makes me feel alone & sad. When I look back at this family I wonder, Why couldn't we just love each other? We were pitted against one another by my mom so we'd compete for her love. Dad was busy all the time, and often gone on business for many days at a time. And mom was abusive in every sense because she was so unhappy. Who wouldn't be, with 8 raucous kids, an absent (unfaithful) husband, endless laundry that included ironing clothes every day, plus working in a dime store to make ends meet, and she never even began to live up to her potential as an athlete, which she was. She was a champion bowler & golfer on yhe local and state level. But her sadness led to her cruelty. Displaced anger meant constant abuse of some of us and a few others spoiled rotten & treated to stuff while the rest of us watched & went without.
So, life is complicated and there is sure a lot to be sad about. But I hope you have found some joy today. That's going to be my quest. Thank you for your inspiration.
And that last pic is great, completely embodies the 70s!