Author: foodjules

Well, my father is doing a little better. He’s still at the hospital in a lot of pain, but hopefully will be released within the next couple of days. I am confident that with some time, his pain and ribs will heal.

Unfortunately, the sadness continues this weekend. On Friday, we lost another family member to cancer. It is so sad and my heart goes out to my cousins who have to go through the pain of losing their father. They lost their mother a few years back, also to cancer, so this is very, very sad for all of us. It must be so difficult to lose both parents in such a short time and so young. All I can think about it is how perhaps the father is going back to be with his dear wife and share the news of their beautiful grandchildren, as she never got to meet any of them.

My heart aches for them and in memory of how I felt that day that our Julian left us. May they be comforted by our love in the weeks, months and years to come. We love you and hope your parents will take care of my Julian.

I just can’t believe it…. I thought our days at the hospital were over but we were there yet again today, in the Emergency Room. This time it is my father. He fell off the ladder this afternoon and ended up in the ER with three cracked ribs and a collapsed lung. They are still running more tests to be sure that’s all that happened to him. It was so very difficult walking into that hospital and into that ER. The first thing I noticed were the stretchers out front. My heart started racing. When the chest x-ray man came into the room, I had images of all those chest x-rays they gave my poor Julian. They always came into our room during the middle of the night and early in the morning to give him x-rays. It was awful to watch them move his tiny, helpless body around and the tears coming down his cheeks. I was so tired of all those x-rays.

Today was difficult. It was supposed to be a happy day but ended up being a sad day. My father will be alright. It will take many weeks to heal, but his pain will heal. Mine has not healed nor will it ever heal.

Going into that hospital brought back so many bad memories. Watching my father in so much pain brought back even more memories. My father could verbalize “ouch” but my Julian couldn’t verbalize it… he just shed tears and had that look on his face, “Mommy, this hurts. Please help me”….

When is this going to stop? I am so tired of this. Why is this happening? I wish God would just leave me alone! I just want to be left alone and get some peace… just some peace. Every time I try to move forward, I always get pushed right back. It just doesn’t seem right. None of this seems right!

Sometimes, I just want to scream!! This is too difficult. There is so much anger, sadness and resentment towards family, friends, God, and all that has happened. It is very overwhelming and so very difficult to overcome. How can we make these feelings go away? How can we breathe again?

This entire experience makes me feel so out of place… it just seems so wrong for all of this to have happened and to be feeling so distant from everyone.

I want to be happy again, to be normal. Sometimes, I just want to run away and struggle with feelings of wanting to move far, far away, just to get away from it all and start all over again. Would that make it any easier?  Can that help the pain go away?

What can help? Who can help? I don’t even know myself. All I know is that I need help. We all need help sometimes. We all need love. We need people to listen. We need people to ask how we’re doing. We need people to offer themselves up to help us in all different ways. We need each other. What we don’t need our people’s opinions about how we should be feeling. We don’t need critism. We don’t need awkwardness. We don’t need isolation.

We all deserve and need love and support. We need a warm embrace, some kind words, a thoughtful gesture. When times are tough, we rely on each other to help us get through it. We do it together. The best gift you can give someone is of yourself. Be kind to others. Be sincere. Be gentle. Love.

Some days, you wake up and are grateful for a beautiful, sunny day and your family and friends that surround you. You are ready to move forward and enjoy the day. You look forward to enjoying those beautiful memories you are going to share with the special people in your life. Even, if it’s just sitting around reading a book together with your kids, or going shopping with a friend or talking on the phone with your mother.

You love all of the special people in your life so you do it for them, you wake up and move forward for them and you do it for yourself. Don’t kid yourself, we all want to be happy and we all want a sunny, happy day, so we try our best to give that to ourselves and we try our best to give that to our loved ones. Friends, cousins, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, they make life worth it. They make you enjoy that day. So, we try our best. That’s all we can do.

When life throws you a curve ball and you’re not sure what to do with it, just try your best, to love all those that love you and do what’s right, what makes you feel good and what makes others around you feel good. That’s all we can do sometimes, is try our best. Isn’t that what we were told when we were kids? It still holds true then, doesn’t it?

But sometimes, it takes so much energy to do all of this… sometimes, it is extremely difficult to move forward. You can’t help but remember everything that has gone wrong in your life, things and people you have lost, especially when it is so very cloudy outside. It is so depressing without the sun. No wonder so many suffer from depression on these rainy, cloudy days…. the sun really motivates you to get outside and enjoy the day, to move forward.

So, I’m sending all of you some sun…. some warmth… and some love. Go out and enjoy the day, just one day at a time.  Give your loved ones a phone call, a hug and/or a kiss and watch the sun shine inside all of you. For that’s all we can do, is to try our best.