The Good Live

It’s two weeks now that my father (79) is in hospital. He suffered some severe intestinal pain caused by a huge inflammation that clogged the whole system. Together with the medical staff we hoped that it would get better by just resting, and indeed his situation seemed to get a little better every day, until Friday night when his belly swelled up so rapidly that he felt like he would literally burst. So Saturday they performed surgery on him in which they took out a part of his intestine and created a temporary stoma.
Me and my mom saw him couple of hours after the operation. We expected to find him all dozy and sleepy but to our surprise he was crystal clear. He even made a joke: ,,This stoma thing could come in handy on long car trips when we are on vacation, honey’’, he said to my mother. And to the nurse: ,,I always have to go on the most inconvenient moments, you see.’’
But he was very emotional too. The hard part must be that he realizes that he reached an age where he has to let go of certain things bit by bit.
He made some decisions, he said. ,,I’m going to throw away my old bike and just use the new one.’’ He bought this new one a couple of months ago because his old one is falling apart really, but he still saves it for nice bike trips on sunny afternoons.
He also said he would stop ice skating. Now that is a tough one. My father is a ice skate fanatic. He takes his sport very serious. He loves the ice. Just a week ago he grumbled that it would be useless now to get a season-ticket for the ice skate stadium, because he would never be fit in time to make it worth while. ,,I’m going to make it a goodbye in style’’, he told us Saturday.

With tears in his eyes he told my mother that she was the first on his mind when he woke up after surgery. He said that he had been thinking about all the places they had visit and the many vacations they had enjoyed – together and with their children. ,,I forget to think about these things when running around in daily live, while I know that they are so imported’’, he said. ,,We had a very good live, didn’t we? We did.’’

That’s when Richard couldn’t hold back his tears and grabbed his hand…