You Have 2 Dads?

Luisa and I have been catching up on our DVR recordings of "This Is Us" recently.  It was a show we used to watch religiously with an amazing script, great acting and themes that manage to pull the strings of all of our emotions.  

Our viewing of that show came to a screeching halt in 2018 when we began to experience the severe emotional pain of our own loses in our family and we could not bear to add salt to those very painful wounds.  We had something like 24 episodes that continued to record and last night, on March 11th, we caught up with the episode where they were trying to deal with the recent diagnosis of their mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis. 

In the episode, Randall, is dealing with the pain of the loss of his 2 fathers (biological and adopted), not knowing his biological mother, and now having to deal with losing his adopted mother to this horrible disease.

He makes the statement of his two fathers, and immediately I mention to Luisa that it reminded me of an incident that occurred with our youngest son Nick when he was about 5 years old. 

Nick has always been the very positive going person that always sees the glass half full in everything.  "Nick, how did you do in your test today?" we would ask.  To which we would get a thumbs up and a response of "Great!".  Only later for us to come to the realization that he had actually bombed it... but hey, always the eternal optimist.

He had a kid in class that told him that he had 2 dads.  His biological dad and his step dad because his mother had recently re-married.  Nick thought that was so amazing that he told his friend, "You have 2 Dads?", "That is AWESOME!".  

It left quite an impression on the kid that he told his mother and his mother let us know that same day  how wonderful and receptive Nick was to this fact and that it meant a lot to them how cool Nick's reaction was.

I then thought of my own two dads.  My father, Rafa, who would have turned 84 on February 23rd of this year and who I lost in April 2018, and my father in law, Miguel, who passed away on March 11, 2019 and has a birthday coming up shortly.  Having woken up on the 11th full of emotions and Facebook reminders of his passing, only to be reminded further of this loss when watching this episode.

Both of them impacted me in so many ways that I would not be the father I am today without them in my life.

To learn from Nick's eternal optimism of having a glass half full, I try not to be depressed about losing both of my dads during this time and thought about how great they were.  About how much I appreciated the fact that I had two amazing father figures that I will be eternally grateful to have and for the constant reminders of who they were, how much they were loved and how much they both loved me.

I miss them both dearly along with all of the laughter's we shared. 

Next month, on April 2nd, will be the painful reminder of coming home from FL and not seeing my dad alive one last time or holding his hand as he departed this earth.  The following month will be the reminder of my mom joining him after her more than 12 year battle with Alzheimer's.

Finally, in the episode, Randall is struggling with his mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis and how he needs to do everything possible to not lose her like he lost everyone else.  It was a painful reminder of my attempt to want to take mom to an Alzheimer's specialist 3 hours away to get her into a clinical trial.  I could not bare the thought of not doing everything I could for my mother to prevent the desease that would ultimately take her life.  I remember clearly the day that I left her house, after having driven back from Charleston and concluding, on my way to my own house, that it was not something we could put mom through.  

The torture of putting her through 3.5 hour trips each way, to a clinic where she would undergo the additional stress of having to answer questions such as who is the president, what day is it, what is your birthday... 2 x per week, and then to be exposed to untested medicine that could give her serious side-effects, or maybe worse yet, the hope given by what could in the end be just a placebo that would not have cured her, was just unimaginable for me.  I could not do that to her.  

Randall has not come to this conclusion yet, but that was the day I concluded I was losing my mom and I was powerless to do anything about it.  One of the most painful days I have ever experienced and to some extent, even more so than when she actually passed away.

In this one episode, Luisa and I saw and replayed in our minds, everything that we had recently experienced in our lives.  It was a definitely case of Life imitating Art and Art imitating Life.