life and death, the irony

Monday morning my dad had heart surgery....again. I would have to double check with him on the official numbers, but he has had something like 3 massive heart attacks, a couple "regular" heart attacks, quadruple bypass, stents placed 2 or 3 times, and 2 difibrilators. The man seriously has 9 lives. The surgery was a success. He is home and resting already. Praise God.

I was thinking of the irony of his life today. As a teenager I recall my mom and dad having a VERY rocky relationship. When I was 16 they divorced. During my teenage years, my father was suicidal. I remember him telling me often that his life meant nothing and he might as well just end it. It was had to hear and even now, it is hard to write. However, I also remember getting to a point where it was so hard to hear, I kind of wished he would do it.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I love my dad. I would have been devastated, shattered if he would have taken his own life or died from consequences of his bad heart. For someone who has never known a suicidal person, let me paint you a picture so maybe (hopefully) you don't think I am as terrible as the above sounded. To me it was like ripping off a bandaid...it hurts. The slower you try to rip it off, the harder it is to handle it usually. It pulls one hair at a time and eventually you get so tired of the drawn out pain, you want to just rip it off so you can start to tend to your wounds.

That was how I was...the emotional drain on me, as a teenager, hearing on a regular basis that "life isn't worth living," and "get me a gun, I'm really done," and more was too much. For a long time I hurt, but then, somehow in my young, inexperienced mind, I thought that if he would finally just do it, I could grieve, heal and move on. I know now that the healing and moving on would have been a long road, but at the time, it seemed so simple to me, really.

In contrast, here he is today, much healthier mentally, but so frail phsyically, battling heart disease head on. He has been doing so for nearly 25 years now. As far as I know he no longer entertains the idea of ending his own life but instead he begs for another day, another week, another year from his doctors.

Praise God that he came through this last surgery well. We have been told for the past 15 or so years that "he probably won't make it through the next procedure." But, as a follower of Christ, I know that the doctors aren't the author of life, God is.